Szasz examines the similarities between the Inquisition and institutional psychiatry. His purpose is to show "that the belief in mental illness and the social actions to which it leads have the same moral implications and political consequences as had the belief in witchcraft and the social actions to which it led."

    This volume contains the earliest essays, going back more than 30 years, in which the author staked out his position on 'the nature, scope, methods & values of psychiatry.'PrefacePreface to the 1st EditionAcknowledgmentsThe myth of mental illnessThe mental health ethic The rhetoric of rejectionMental health as ideologyWhat psychiatry can & cannot doBootlegging humanistic values through psychiatryThe insanity plea & the insanity verdictInvoluntary mental hospitalization: a crime against humanityMental health services in the schoolPsychiatry, the state & the university: the problem of the professional identity of academic psychiatryPsychiatric classification as a strategy of personal constraintWhither psychiatry?Index