Never heard of him. Thomas Szasz, but other than Sazz, rhymes with jazz, don’t ask me to pronounce it correctly, please, and worth quoting because we like to acknowledge wisdom in men, as it does exist, but especially highlighting those who question the accepted wisdom, as Szasz does, or did, given he died in 2012. And, TBH, he was a psychiatrist but with a Jungian twist (although he would probably deny this!!) and Jung is my guy, if it’s a contest between Jung and Freud (it ain’t, but you get my drift): “The plague of mankind is the fear and rejection of diversity: monotheism, monarchy, monogamy and, in our age, monomedicine. The belief that there is only one right way to live, only one right way to regulate religious, political, sexual, medical affairs is the root cause of the greatest threat to man: members of his own species, bent on ensuring his salvation, security, and sanity.”
“The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.” (Amen to that, Tom)
“The self is not something that one finds. It is something one creates.”
“If you talk to God you are praying; if God talks to you you have schizophrenia.If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist; If you talk to the dead, you are a schizophrenic.”
“Our adversaries are not demons, witches, fate, or mental illness. We have no enemy whom we can fight, exorcise, or dispel by “cure.” What we do have are problems in living — whether these be biologic, economic, political, or sociopsychological. In this essay I was concerned only with problems belonging in the last mentioned category, and within this group mainly with those pertaining to moral values. The field to which modern psychiatry addresses itself is vast, and I made no effort to encompass it all. My argument was limited to the proposition that mental illness is a myth, whose function it is to disguise and thus render more palatable the bitter pill of moral conflicts in human relations.”
“In the animal kingdom, the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined.” (I think this is my personal favorite)
“Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time; serenity, that nothing is.”
“Prostitution is said to be the world’s oldest profession. It is, indeed, a model of all professional work: the worker relinquishes control over himself … in exchange for money. Because of the passivity it entails, this is a difficult and, for many, a distasteful role.” (No, maybe this one is my fave…)
“The wise treat self-respect as non-negotiable, and will not trade it for health or wealth or anything else.” (or this one…LOL)
“Why is self-control, autonomy, such a threat to authority? Because the person who controls himself, who is his own master, has no need for an authority to be his master. This, then, renders authority unemployed. What is he to do if he cannot control others? To be sure, he could mind his own business. But this is a fatuous answer, for those who are satisfied to mind their own business do not aspire to become authorities.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Szasz
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(12)61789-9/fulltext