“How such an elaborate theory could have become so widely accepted – on the basis of no systematic evidence or critical experiments, and in the face of chronic failures of therapeutic intervention in all of the major classes of mental illness…”

— Paul Churchland

is something that sociologists of science and popular culture have yet to fully explain.
Paul Churchland. The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul. (1st ed.). MIT Press. 1995. pp. 181: Talking about Freudian analysis.

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Canadian philosopher 1942

Paul Churchland (1942) Canadian philosopher

Paul Churchland. The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul. (1st ed.). MIT Press. 1995. pp. 181: Talking about Freudian analysis.

“The family unit is the institution for the systematic production of mental illness.”

Ashley Montagu (1905–1999) British-American anthropologist

Interview on "The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson" promoting the latest edition of his book The Natural Superiority of Women (orig. 1952)
Quoted in David Berg, Run, Brother, Run http://books.google.gr/books?id=FWwXuRNRup8C&dq=, Simon and Schuster, 2013, p. 242.

“I became interested in writing this book approximately ten years ago when, having become established as a psychiatrist, I became increasingly impressed by the vague, capricious and generally unsatisfactory character of the widely used concept of mental illness and its corollaries, diagnosis, prognosis and treatment.
Although (mental illness) might have been a useful concept in the nineteenth century, today it is scientifically worthless and socially harmful.
In non-psychiatric circles mental illness all too often is considered to be whatever psychiatrists say it is. The answer to the question, Who is mentally ill? thus becomes: Those who are confined in mental hospitals or who consult psychiatrists in their private offices.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

Preface to the First Edition.
The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct (1961)

“Mental illness, of course, is not literally a "thing" — or physical object — and hence it can "exist" only in the same sort of way in which other theoretical concepts exist. Yet, familiar theories are in the habit of posing, sooner or later — at least to those who come to believe in them — as "objective truths" (or "facts"). During certain historical periods, explanatory conceptions such as deities, witches, and microorganisms appeared not only as theories but as self-evident causes of a vast number of events. I submit that today mental illness is widely regarded in a somewhat similar fashion, that is, as the cause of innumerable diverse happenings. As an antidote to the complacent use of the notion of mental illness — whether as a self-evident phenomenon, theory, or cause — let us ask this question: What is meant when it is asserted that someone is mentally ill?
In what follows I shall describe briefly the main uses to which the concept of mental illness has been put. I shall argue that this notion has outlived whatever usefulness it might have had and that it now functions merely as a convenient myth.”

Thomas Szasz book The Myth of Mental Illness

"The Myth of Mental Illness" in American Psycholigist, Vol. 15 (1960), p. 113 http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Szasz/myth.htm

“Aesthetic theories arose one hundred fifty years ago among the wealthy classes of the Christian European world. …And notwithstanding its obvious insolidity, nobody else's theory so pleased the cultured crowd or was accepted so readily and with such absence of criticism. It so suited the people of the upper classes that to this day, notwithstanding its entirely fantastic character and the arbitrary nature of its assertions, it is repeated by the educated and uneducated as though it were something indubitable and self-evident.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

What is Art? (1897)

“Socialism, is in short a manifestation of mental illness or major character deficiency.”

Trevor Loudon New Zealand politician

"Are Socialists Psychos?" https://www.trevorloudon.com/2006/12/are-socialists-psychos/

“Experience has taught us that we have only one enduring weapon in our struggle against mental illness: the emotional discovery and emotional acceptance of the truth in the individual and unique history of our childhood.”

Alice Miller (1923–2010) Swiss psychologist

Source: The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self

“Stress is nothing more than a socially acceptable form of mental illness.”

Richard Carlson (1961–2006) Author, psychotherapist and motivational speaker

“This democratic method of resolving contradictions among the people was epitomized in 1942 in the formula “unity, criticism, unity”. To elaborate, it means starting from the desire for unity, resolving contradictions through criticism or struggle and arriving at a new unity on a new basis. In our experience this is the correct method of resolving contradictions among the people.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People
Original: (zh-CN) 在一九四二年，我们曾经把解决人民内部矛盾的这种民主的方法，具体化为一个公式，叫做“团结——批评——团结”。讲详细一点，就是从团结的愿望出发，经过批评或者斗争使矛盾得到解决，从而在新的基础上达到新的团结。按照我们的经验，这是解决人民内部矛盾的一个正确的方法。

“Mental illness is so much more complicated than any pill that any mortal could invent”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

“How such an elaborate theory could have become so widely accepted – on the basis of no systematic evidence or critical experiments, and in the face of chronic failures of therapeutic intervention in all of the major classes of mental illness…”

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