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if the mind is not "literally" a part of the body, what is it "literally" a part of? The ether?

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We no the human brian is responsive to chemicals. That is how the brian werks. Kemikal massages are used to communicate our thoughts, our response to emotions.

New research is showing that the introduction of certain chems to the brain can dramatically alter the personality.

Some of this research is desturving in what it implies, that in certin ways we are not much more than a chemical reaction of the brain, and if this balance of chemicals is disturbed or altered by the introduction of a new balance of chemicals, you can become a different person.

This is ground braking research, I dont have a link but read it recently. THe point beeing, our brian is a chemical cocktail that defines our personalitey

Thomas Szasz did not make the politcal decision to shut down mental hospitals and throw people on the street.

It is true that is what happened, but if you listen to the Cato speak Szasz makes he point to what happened to leperocy when the sufa drugs came along.

There were at least 3 large leper colonies in America and when they were no longer contagious they were free to go or stay if they wanted too with the understanding that the state would no longer be responsible and over time, the leper colonies were phased out.

So why couldn't the government do the same with the people who were institutionalised by the state?


It is Szasz's enemies who tag him with the responsibility for the troubled people wandering down the streets.

Szasz just pointed out that it was wrong that the mentally ill be kept under lock and key when they had commited no crimes.

Szasz had no politcal power to impliment the policys of throwing people into the streets.

So blame the politicians not Thomas Szasz. Szasz pointed the establishment to the leper colony solution and was ignored.

The brain exists and can be found on the autopsy table.


The mind is the medical version of the soul.


The mind and the soul are found right beside each other.

One is medical metaphor and one is religious metaphor and neither are literal.

Szasz stil rules.

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One is medical metaphor and one is religious metaphor and neither are literal.

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... that's beautiful, man

So ... if even Szasz admits that physical withdrawal exists, how can you also say that addiction is psychosomatic or "invented by psychiatrists" or otherwise an otherwise fraudulant concept? Are you NOT saying that, or are you saying that?

It seems to me to be one or the other.

Addiction is a medicalized moral judgement.

You are a drug addict. Is that a medical diagnosis? No. That is a moral judgement. Esstially less than 100 years old, because when we check the liturature, John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, for instance, Mill mentions addiction only once when he metions he was addicted to his bad habits.

Today the bad habit is the addiction.

Lust for please and some people are gluttons about and that leads to spiritual death. How is that for a thousands of years old "diagnosis" that has stood the test of time and culture. Is that not what addiction really amount to the person has arrived at spiritual death.

So we are dealing with moral, social and spiritual issues but medical, not on your life. There is nothing the medical doctor can do for the so-called addict. The addict needs a soul doctor.

Best help for addicts is self-help groups and they are free.

Drug Treatment:
Just Say No

By JEFFREY A. SCHALER

The Baltimore Sun
March 30, 2004
Op-Ed, page 13A

Self help means self help. It doesn't mean state help.
The state should stay out of the religious and secular cure of souls.


THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY should reject Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s plan to enhance drug treatment and education programs.

Drug users can pay for their own "treatment" if they really want help. They found the money to buy drugs, they can find the money to buy treatment. State funding for addiction treatment only helps addiction treatment providers.

The most popular way of helping people with drug and alcohol problems is through free self-help programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and SMART Recovery. Citizens create these programs and groups on their own. They are self-supporting. Self help means self help. It doesn't mean state help. The state should stay out of the religious and secular cure of souls.

If people are willing to break the law to get money to buy drugs, they should be punished for breaking the law. Drug use is not a valid excuse for law-breaking. Many illegal drug dealers are neither violent nor drug users. Why do they need treatment? Treatment for what? They're in jail for illegal, consensual business transactions. Medicine has nothing to do with it.

If the state views criminal acts as stemming from a mythical disease called drug addiction, then people labeled as drug addicts must necessarily be exculpated for the harm they do to others. Viewing crime as a product of addiction is a version of the insanity defense. It's also a slippery slope. Any number of criminal behaviors can be said to stem from "behavior disease."

Common sense tells us that addiction is a choice, not a disease. Behaviors cannot be diseases. Homosexuality and heterosexuality refer to behaviors, not to diseases. Drug use is a behavior, not a disease. Going to the church, synagogue or mosque of your choice is a behavior, not a disease.

People struggling with real diseases - heart disease, diabetes, AIDS, rheumatoid arthritis, cancer and cirrhosis of the liver - have nothing in common with people who selfishly ingest drugs to avoid coping with problems. They can't choose to abstain from cancer or diabetes.

As they say in AA, "The first thing to go is the truth." The truth is that drug users complain and lie about how they can't control their behavior. The truth is there's no such thing as an involuntary behavior. The truth is that comparing drug users to people with real diseases is cruel to people with real diseases.

A final point to consider is that treatment for addiction is increasingly viewed by courts as a religious activity. When the state entangles itself in treatment, it violates the free exercise and establishment clauses of the First Amendment. The state conceded this point in Maryland vs. Norfolk in 1988, a case involving an atheist who was sentenced to attend AA meetings after he was convicted of driving while intoxicated.

I was a consultant to the Maryland chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and Ellen Luff, who argued that case. Ms. Luff, a longtime member of AA, argued that the state had no business "inside a person's head." Maryland Circuit Judge John W. Sause Jr. agreed.

As they consider the Ehrlich administration proposals, Maryland legislators would be wise to examine the evidence that treatment for addiction is simply a problem masquerading as a cure.

Jeffrey A. Schaler teaches in the department of justice, law and society at American University's School of Public Affairs. He lives in Ellicott City.

[Because of occasional requests for clarification regarding Dr. Szasz's co-founding of CCHR, I am posting the following statement-JAS]

Statement by the Owner and Producer of the Site

The following statement is intended as response to requests for clarification regarding Dr. Szasz's co-founding of the Citizens Commission for Human Rights (CCHR). Thomas Szasz is not now nor has he ever been a Scientologist or a member of the Church of Scientology.

Dr. Szasz co-founded CCHR in the same spirit as he had co-founded -- with sociologist Erving Goffman and law professor George Alexander -- The American Association for the Abolition for Involuntary Mental Hospitalization (AAAIMH; see http://www.szasz.com/abolitionist.html)

Scientologists have joined Szasz's battle against institutional psychiatry. Dr. Szasz welcomes the support of Jews, Christians, Muslims, and any other religious or atheist group committed to the struggle against the Therapeutic State. Sharing this battle does not mean that Dr. Szasz supports the unrelated principles and causes of any religious or non-religious organization. This is explicit and implicit in Dr. Szasz's work. Everyone and anyone is welcome to join in the struggle for individual liberty and personal responsibility -- especially as these values are threatened by psychiatric ideas and interventions.

Jeffrey A. Schaler, Ph.D.
Owner and producer of www.szasz.com
jeffschaler@attglobal.net
February 11, 2003

Like I said Scientologists have joined Dr. Szasz. He did not join them. They share the same goal of abolishing institutional psychiatry.

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

Just for sport I read the piece you posted on Mental Illness.


The author does a good job of presenting Thomas Szasz's viewpoints but errs in a number of important areas.

Foremost is that Rudolph Virchow long ago left humanity with a definition of disease that pathologists have used for 100 years.

Rather than crtitic the entire post I will just point you to




http://psychrights.org/Articles/leifercritic.pdf#search='A%20critique%20of%20psychiatry'

That is a critique of medical-coercive psychiatry.

After you read Szasz it makes reading the post you put up very difficult because it say a lot of things that I know just ain't so.

Hey Buors, why don't you just buy a tape recorder and play yourself back, you would realize that you are a total idiot.

All this talk you have done has gotten away from the real issue of why this post was put here; you're hatred and intolerance of others...

You claim to be a libertarian; yet again you have no clue.

Here is an excerpt from the book "For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto" by Murray N. Rothbard.

"THE LIBERTARIAN CREED rests upon one central axiom: that no man or group of men may aggress against the person or property of anyone else. This may be called the "nonaggression axiom." "Aggression" is defined as the initiation of the use or threat of physical violence against the person or property of anyone else. Aggression is therefore synony­mous with invasion.

If no man may aggress against another; if, in short, everyone has the absolute right to be "free" from aggression, then this at once implies that the libertarian stands foursquare for what are generally known as "civil liberties": the freedom to speak, publish, assemble, and to engage in such "victimless crimes" as pornography, sexual deviation, and prosti­tution (which the libertarian does not regard as "crimes" at all, since he defines a "crime" as violent invasion of someone else's person or property). Furthermore, he regards conscription as slavery on a massive scale. And since war, especially modern war, entails the mass slaughter of civilians, the libertarian regards such conflicts as mass murder and therefore totally illegitimate."


I know your an idiot so I will point out that i put the part about sexual deviation in bold.


Lastly, quit representing Manitaba and Winnipeg your giving us a bad name...

What a moron and a coward you are HyponoticRobot. Your just like that Wiki fuck, cut people with knives but afraid to tell us your name.


The opinions of sock puppets are meaningless to me.


Why don't you be a man about it?


You, like that Wiki fuck seem to be too stupid to differentialt between a personal opionion and political policy, but, for your information I am looking for someone just like you to take over the Leaderhip of the Manitoba Marijuana Party.


You can thereafter run it any way you see fit.


Put up or shut the fuck up.

You can send Marc Emery an e-mail and all the arrangements will be made.

Thanks for stepping up.

The "mind" is a metaphor. A concept. An idea.

The "soul" is a metaphor. A concept. An idea.


Metaphor and literal are opposites.


He died of a broken heart. (metaphor)


He died of a heart attack. (literal)


The mind will be found right beside the broken heart on the autopsy table.