Letter to "Philosophy Now"

Open letter to "Philosophy Now":

NO SUCH THING AS "MADNESS".

Dear Editor,

Peter Benson writes the following in the current issue of "Philosophy Now" (August/September 2017 - issue 121):

[Foucault] "... is not claiming that there is no reality to madness outside of our discourses about it. 

No-one, to the best of my knowledge, has ever seriously made such a claim."

Peter Benson therefore needs to improve his knowledge. As do many others it seems.

Many have very seriously questioned the concept of madness and asserted that it does not exist and that it is a bankrupt concept, even if the unjustly idolized Foucault is not included among them. The belief in "madness" has undoubtedly done more harm than "madness" itself, which is a concept devoid of scientific meaning anyway.

Perhaps most salient and definitely with most impact among those who have asserted the non-existence of insanity is of course Thomas Szasz (1920-2012).

In "The Myth of Mental Illness" (1961) and elsewhere he asserted that the whole concept of "mental illness" is an impossibility and effectively a "category error" to borrow a phrase from Gilbert Ryle. 

In his 1987 book "Insanity: the Idea and its Consequences" he argues with great rigour that the concept of "insanity" is "an empty vessel".

Szasz's ideas are of course relevant to wider philosophy. For example, he wrote an excellent set of essays "The Medicalisation of Everyday Life" (2007) that deal with broader issues, and not just those relevant to the important tasks of opposing coercive psychiatry and opposing what he called the Therapeutic State -  the alliance between psychiatry and the state.

Szasz should be a hero to homosexual rights proponents like Peter Benson as Szasz was one of the few to contend that homosexuality was in no way a "mental illness". But whilst  this campaign was successful, the yet more important task of convincing society that this was because nothing at all is a "mental illness" remains unfulfilled. The avoidance of a great deal of suffering is one motivation to keep trying to fulfill this task.

Yours faithfully,

"Citizen Sofa". London.

I now suppose I should have written that at least one person has seriously questioned the concept of madness. And then have included the observation of the great thinker John Stuart Mill:

“If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”

--------------------------

Note added 8th October 2017:

The above letter was actually published to my great surprise and great delight in the OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2017 Issue (No.122) of "Philosophy Now", in the Letters section under the title "No Madness in Philosophy Now".

I was impressed with their obvious commitment to freedom of speech.
I personally think it is a very important issue.
A lot of current cultural and media discourse across the entire world is related to the question of so-called "mental illness" and "mental health", and I feel it is important to present this alternative view of it.

--------------------------

"Foucault never rejected the concept of mental illness." Thomas Szasz.
"Nor did Foucault support the abolition of psychiatric slavery" Thomas Szasz.