The Medicalization of Everyday Life: Selected Essays

Given all the syndromes, diseases and disorders out there, how long will it be before everyone in America will be considered nuts? Szasz (psychiatry emeritus, State U. of New York), a leading opponent of the alliance of medicine and the state, examines the inroads metaphor practiced as medicine has made in the US. In this series of essays originally published between 1973 and 2006, Szasz warns that society must determine what exactly constitutes medical practice; he finds more and more examples of how health care has shifted to a deeply disturbing orthodoxy that threatens human freedom, dignity and life itself. Szasz takes on such issues as creating non-diseases, practicing ritual rather than medicine, analyzing drug control's relation to suicide, killing as therapy (as in the case of Terri Schiavo) and confronting the rise of the pseudo-therapeutic state. Annotation 穢2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)