I HATED this book!

It’s a strong claim to say that mental illness is a hoax, and this book does not back it up.

First of all, the book was far more philosophical than academic. It spends about half the length refuting Freud, which is easy to do since Freud had a lot of silly and biased ideas. Many people have dismantled Freud. But that does not extinguish real insanity or depression.

Second, the author has a poor understanding of the history of insanity. He claims that asylums were just a way to get inconvenient people out of society, yet he only uses a few examples from the 1800s to make his case. Insanity is older than that and he doesn’t seem to understand the history of asylums at all. A much better book The Invisible Plague (Torrey) gives the proper history and shows how insanity is both real and has increased over the centuries. Torrey also directly refutes Szasz, quite well in my opinion.

The book wasted so much time defining its terms and philosophizing that it barely even made a case against modern psychiatry.

The best part of the book were the last sections where he uses game analysis (transactional analysis) to say that many people are just using mental illness as a game. I can’t explain his case here, but I agree with it - transactional analysis is one of my favorite subjects (see Games People Play by Berne). It’s true that some people use illness as an excuse, or for sympathy and attention (not to mention free government money these days). But that does not extinguish true insanity or depression.

His transactional analysis section was alright. Others do it better. But that does not make his case that ALL mental illness is just a social construct. If the book was about “a lot of mental illness is a social construct,” then I wouldn’t have such a problem.

This book has been very influential and is cited in many anti-psychiatry and anti-drug books. This is unfortunate, because it is not even worth reading to me. Besides the flaws in the actual argument, it was bloated, pretentious, and difficult to read. It seems to put a lot more effort into convincing the reader that it had something to say, rather than saying it.

Do not recommend.