Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement

The Manufacture of Madness . . . is strictly an 8-to-1 jolt, a blockbuster. This is Szasz at his best: driving relentlessly; writing with consummate artistry and a dazzling, indeed overwhelming, scholarship. . . . It is the most important of Szasz’ work to date, and it is a definitive statement, a classic of its kind, both as the underground history of psychiatry and, no doubt, as prophecy. (Hospital and Community Psychiatry)

Quite possibly [Dr. Szasz] has done more than any other man to alert the American public to the potential of an excessively psychiatrized society. (Edwin Schurr, The Atlantic)

In this seminal work, Dr. 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.'

Thomas Szasz is the author of over six hundred articles and twenty-four books. He was a practicing psychiatrist and a professor of psychiatry emeritus at the Health Science Center, State University of New York, in Syracuse.