Today, particularly in the United States, all of the difficulties and problems of living are considered psychiatric diseases, and nearly everyone is considered to some extent mentally ill. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that life itself is now viewed as an illness that begins with conception and ends with death, requiring, at every step along the way, the skillful assistance of physicians and especially mental health professionals.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Tuesday, March 06, 2018
This Long Disease, My Life
Thomas Szasz (1920-2012), The Second Sin (Garden City: Anchor Press, 1973), pp. 95-96: