Power and Psychiatry (From Deviance in American Life, P 53-50, 1989, James M. Henslin, ed. -- See NCJ-124163)

• NCJ Number: 124165
• Author(s): T S Szasz
• Date Published: 1989
• Length: 8 pages
• Sale Source: Transaction Publishers
• Publication Type: Survey
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

Psychiatric commitment is a form of social control.

Abstract

Typically, the person who is committed to a mental hospital has not broken the law but is locked up because of a "major mental illness." The people most likely to be committed are the powerless: poor, uneducated people who do not speak the language well, children, and the very old. Psychiatric sanctions came about because they satisfy a popular need for controlling certain behaviors that are not illegal but which "normal" people want controlled. The very essence of the mental hygiene laws is to serve a purpose quite different from the preservation of individual liberty. It is to preserve and promote a common ideology or world view; it is to preserve and protect the family from its excessively disruptive members who interfere with the well-being of the dominant members; and it is to do so under medical and therapeutic auspices.