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Thomas Szasz said it first . . .

"Although we may not know it, we have, in our day,
witnessed the birth of the Therapeutic State."
--Law, Liberty, and Psychiatry:
An Inquiry Into the Social Uses of Mental Health Practices,

by Thomas Szasz, (New York: Macmillan, 1963, p. 212;
Chapter 18, title: "Toward the Therapeutic State.").

"If you talk to God, you are praying;
If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.
If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist;
If God talks to you, you are a schizophrenic."
--The Second Sin, by Thomas Szasz, (Anchor/Doubleday,
Garden City, NY. 1973, Page 113.)

"Inasmuch as we have words to describe medicine as a healing art,
but have none to describe it as a method of social control or political rule,
we must first give it a name. I propose that we call it pharmacracy, from the
Greek roots pharmakon, for ‘medicine' or ‘drug,' and kratein, for ‘to rule' or
‘to control.' ... As theocracy is rule by God or priests, and democracy is rule
by the people or the majority, so pharmacracy is rule by medicine or physicians."
--Ceremonial Chemistry: The Ritual Persecution of Drugs, Addicts, and Pushers,
by Thomas Szasz, (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1974), p. 139.)


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