Abstract

In this book, psychiatrist Thomas Szasz returns to familiar subjects—the collusion between state and medical authorities, the social construction of mental disease—linking them with some other recent topics: so-called False Memory Syndrome and the modern erosion of individual responsibility. Szasz’s central and unifying thesis is that there is no such thing as the mind; he recommends, rather, that we focus on the concept of minding, where this encompasses a host of cognitive operations, including intentionality, thinking, remembering, pondering, and reasoning. Misunderstanding “the” mind as an entity encourages mind-brain identification, gives rise to the concepts of mental illness and disease, thereby legitimating various treatments, and serves to prevent the attribution of responsibility to those who are, in fact, responsible for their behaviour. In a discussion that sweeps from the ancient Greeks through the Middle Ages to Descartes, and finally to contemporary neuroscience, Szasz contends that we have shifted from attributing minding to too much in nature to failing to attribute minding at all. He charges that a combination of brain research and bad philosophy—the Churchlands come in for considerable criticism—has rendered the concepts of the person and of personal responsibility close to otiose.