States of Mind

Episode 15: Thomas Szasz

June 4, 1983

Despite remarkable advances in medical science over the past century, there is still no clear medical understanding of the causes of most forms of insanity. Dr Thomas Szasz, author of The Manufacture of Madness and The Myth of Mental Illness, argues that madness has been misrepresented as a disease, and that this has enabled psychiatrists to tyrannise and imprison the mad in the name of philanthropy or therapy.