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Thomas Szasz Quotes about Children

All Thomas Szasz Quotes Abuse Addiction Age Children quotes Discipline Doubt Feelings Giving Illness Language Learning Liberty Love Madness Mental Illness Psychiatry Psychology Responsibility Schizophrenia Today
Labeling a child as mentally ill is stigmatization, not diagnosis. Giving a child a psychiatric drug is poisoning, not treatment.

Labeling a child as mentally ill is stigmatization, not diagnosis. Giving a child a psychiatric drug is poisoning, not treatment.

Thomas Szasz
Children, Giving, Drug
Thomas Szasz's remarks at the 35th Anniversary and Human Rights Award Dinner of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights International at Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, www.szasz.com. February 28, 2004.

Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily.

Thomas Szasz
Positive, Education, Children
Thomas Stephen Szasz (2004). “Words to the Wise: A Medical-Philosophical Dictionary”, p.40, Transaction Publishers

In the United States today, there is a pervasive tendency to treat children as adults, and adults as children. The options of children are thus steadily expanded, while those of adults are progressively constricted. The result is unruly children and childish adults.

Thomas Szasz
Children, Parent, Today
Thomas Stephen Szasz (1990). “The Untamed Tongue: A Dissenting Dictionary”, Open Court Publishing Company

Parents teach children discipline for two different, indeed diametrically opposed, reasons: to render the child submissive to them and to make him independent of them. Only a self-disciplined person can be obedient; and only such a person can be autonomous.

Thomas Szasz
Children, Independent, Self
"The Untamed Tongue: A Dissenting Dictionary". Book by Thomas Szasz, 1990.

A child becomes an adult when he realizes that he has a right not only to be right but also to be wrong.

Thomas Szasz
Family, Children, Maturity
The Second Sin (1973) "Childhood"

Permissiveness is the principle of treating children as if they were adults; and the tactic of making sure they never reach that stage.

Thomas Szasz
Children, Adults, Principles
Thomas Stephen Szasz (1973). “The second sin”, Anchor

Competence in heterosexuality, or at least the appearance or pretense of such competence, is as much a public affair as a privateone. Thus, going steady is a high school diploma in heterosexuality; engagement a BA; marriage an MA; and children a Ph.D.

Thomas Szasz
Children, School, Heterosexuality

Child psychology and child psychiatry cannot be reformed. They must be abolished.

Thomas Szasz
Children, Psychology, Psychiatry

Like fast-food chains, child psychiatric inpatient units and the wholesale psychiatric drugging of children, in and out of hospitals, are recent...and remarkably popular products and practices.

Thomas Szasz
Children, Practice, Fast Food

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