Re-examining psychiatric interventions from a cultural-historical and political-economic perspective, Szasz demonstrates that the main problem that faces mental health policymakers today is adult dependency. Millions of Americans, diagnosed as mentally ill, are drugged and confined by doctors for non-criminal conduct, go legally unpunished for the crimes they commit, and are supported by the state - not because they are sick, but because they are unproductive and unwanted. Obsessed with the twin beliefs that misbehaviour is a medical disorder and that the duty of the state is to protect adults from themselves, we have replaced criminal-punitive sentences with civil-therapeutic programmes. The result is the relentless loss of individual liberty and erosion of personal responsibility - symptoms of the transformation of a Constitutional Republic into a Therapeutic State, unconstrained by the rule of law.

Re-examining psychiatric interventions from a cultural-historical and political-economic perspective, Szasz demonstrates that the main problem that faces mental health policymakers today is adult dependency. Millions of Americans, diagnosed as mentally ill, are drugged and confined by doctors for non-criminal conduct, go legally unpunished for the crimes they commit, and are supported by the state - not because they are sick, but because they are unproductive and unwanted. Obsessed with the twin beliefs that misbehaviour is a medical disorder and that the duty of the state is to protect adults from themselves, we have replaced criminal-punitive sentences with civil-therapeutic programmes. The result is the relentless loss of individual liberty and erosion of personal responsibility - symptoms of the transformation of a Constitutional Republic into a Therapeutic State, unconstrained by the rule of law.