Dr. Szasz, non-psychiatric physician
Dr. Szasz argued against coercive treatments, like involuntary confinement, and the use of psychiatric diagnoses in the courts, calling both practices unscientific and unethical. He was soon placed in the company of other prominent critics of psychiatry, including the Canadian sociologist Erving Goffman and the French philosopher Michel Foucault.
Edward Shorter, the author of "A History of Psychiatry: From the Era of the Asylum to the Age of Prozac" (1997), called Dr. Szasz "the biggest of the antipsychiatry intellectuals."
"Together," he added, "they tried their hardest to keep people away from psychiatric treatment on the grounds that if patients did not have actual brain disease, their only real difficulties were 'problems in living.' "
This attack had some merit in the 1950s, Dr. Shorter said, but not later on, when the field began developing more scientific approaches.
To those skeptical of modern psychiatry, however, Dr. Szasz was a foundational figure.