ABSTRACT
To be sure, one could say that the work of Thomas Szasz has far greater support in allied disciplines such as sociology and political science than in his own native grounds. Calling attention to the contributions of the social sciences may be the greatest sin committed by Szasz in the eyes of his critics. For it is the medical model of psychiatric practice that comes under the sharpest sort of critique in his work. Ultimately, the achievement of Szasz is the unique ability to bring into a discipline that, ostensibly at least, has come to pride itself on its indifference to moral claims, precisely a sense of morality—an ethic of responsibility. The "struggle for self esteem" which Szasz offers is a lonely struggle—and again, one that has a curious analog in Freud's notions of self-liberation through rather than against the therapeutic process.
