NEW PALTZ — Dr. Thomas Szasz, who is best known for his 1961 book The Myth of Mental Illness, will speak at SUNY New Paltz on April 20. The topic of his talk will be “Why Mental Illness is Not Mental and Not an Illness.”
Szasz’ career spans more than 50 years and includes more than 700 publications, such as “Does Insanity ‘Cause’ Crime?,” “Suicide as a Moral Issue,” “Is Mental Illness a Disease?,” and his most recent book, Pharmacracy: Medicine and Politics in America. Leaders in medicine, law and the social sciences regard many of his works as the most influential in the 20th century.
Szasz, a professor of psychiatry emeritus at SUNY Health Science Center in Syracuse and an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, came to America from Hungary in 1938. He earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Cincinnati, and his M.D. degree from the College of Medicine of the University of Cincinnati. He took his psychoanalytic training at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, and was a member of the staff there for five years.
His talk at SUNY New Paltz will begin at 7:30 p.m. and will be in Lecture Center 112. The event is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Caroline Stanley at 257-3602.
Szasz’ appearance at SUNY New Paltz is sponsored by the Graduate Psychology Association, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Psychology Department, Student Association, Psychology Club, Philosophy Club, BiGayla, Political Science and International Relations Club and the Biology Club. More details on Szasz and his work can be found at: http://www.enabling.org/ia/szasz/index.html
