ABSTRACT
Although psychiatric illness is a fi ction, psychiatric coercion is not. In this chapter, I examine how this practice came into being and offer some remarks about its present status.
Incarcerating people is what psychiatrists do. This is why mental illness is rightly considered a stigmatizing term and stigmatized condition, and psychiatry rightly considered a stigmatizing and stigmatized profession. Tennessee Williams was well aware of this when he wrote, “Confi nement [in a mental hospital] has always been the greatest dread of my life.”2
