More than fifty years ago, Thomas Szasz showed that the concept of mental illness - a disease of the mind - is an oxymoron, a metaphor, a myth. In this book, he argues that his writings belong to neither psychiatry nor antipsychiatry. They stem from conceptual analysis, social-political criticism, and common sense.

Challenges conventional beliefs about psychiatry. The author asserts that, in fact, psychiatrists are not concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of bona fide illnesses. Psychiatric tradition, social expectation, and the law make it clear that coercion is the profession's determining characteristic.

Portrays the integral role of deception in the history and practice of psychiatry. This work argues that the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness stands in the same relationship to the diagnosis and treatment of bodily illness that the forgery of a painting does to the original masterpiece.

Szasz attacks the sacred cows of contemporary American society. In his acerbic and aphoristic style he rails against the hypocrisy and fraudulence of the futile and murderous war against drugs, the sordid and often self-seeking practices of psychotherapy and the atrocities of psychiatry.

Presents a collection of topical essays. Pivoting the analysis on news-making events, this book exposes the fallacies of our penchant for interpreting the behaviour of 'sane' persons as goal-directed and therefore sensible, and the behaviour of 'insane' persons as caused by a 'mental illness' and therefore senseless.

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