ABSTRACT
The most obvious thing about psychiatry has always seemed to be the fact that psychiatrists have the power to deprive their patients of liberty; in other words, that a group of physicians is legally and medically authorized to incarcerate persons who have been neither charged with, nor convicted of, a crime. It is important to keep in mind that the practice of psychiatry began with the confining of mad persons in insane asylums. The core act of deviance in religion is blasphemy or heresy; in psychiatry, it is delusion or psychosis. In fact, religion may be either a good or a bad word—signifying weakness or strength, irrationality or inspiration, intolerance or courage; science, too, may be a good or a bad word—denoting truth or error, tolerance or authoritarianism, therapy or torture. Sigmund Freud consistently claimed that psychoanalysis is neutral toward religion.
