"Szasz argues that the word schizophrenia does not stand for a genuine disease, that psychiatry has invented the concept as a sacred symbol to justify the practice of locking up people against their will and treating them with a variety of unwanted, unsolicited, and damaging interventions. . . . Szasz is an incisive, exciting, and dramatic writer. He loves the clever analogy, the well-turned phrase, the dramatic surprise."—George W. Albee, Contemporary Psychology
"Szasz is a valuable critic and agent provocateur. . . . Szasz has much to say which requires answering."—Anthony Storrs, Spectator
"Dr. Szasz mounts an incisive two-pronged assault on modern psychiatry and what he regards as its mirror-image, the ‘anti-psychiatry’ of R. D. Laing and his followers. . . . Timely and urgent reading."—Publishers Weekly