Insanity: The Idea and its Consequences

Abstract

The idea of insanity pervades every aspect of our daily lives. Thomas Szasz contends that the term actually functions as a euphemism for problems in living, as an excuse for crime and misbehaviour, as a stigma for invalidating adversaries - and, generally, as a metaphor and legal fiction. In Insanity, Dr. Szasz presents a systematic articulation of the precise character and practical consequences of the idea of mental illness. He shows the way to a better understanding of this almost universally misunderstood condition by first establishing the scientific criteria and linguistic conventions we use for deciding what constitutes bodily disease, and then demonstrating the metaphorical character of the diseases that affect the mind rather than the brain. This book was originally published in 1987 by John Wiley.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 182 citations exist upstream.