I am not surprised.

He requested a prescription for pain medicine, and was taken to a pharmacy and then home by one of his closest friends. He was found dead a few days later when two other friends went to check on him. It is not known whether the prescription for pain pills is what he used to end his life. Apparently, he swallowed all of those pills, however, he always told me that he had a reserve supply of Seconal and other pills that he would use when he needed to take his death into his own hands.

Tom and I both agreed that the right to life includes the right to death, and that the state has absolutely no business regulating either, so long as the pursuit of liberty did not injure others directly. Tom told me that he was concerned about the effect his suicide would have on his daughters, seeing that their mother, Rosine, had committed suicide, too, after she and Tom were divorced, many years ago. Tom loved his daughters dearly. He loved his son-in-law Dr. Steve Peters dearly, too. And of course he loved his grandson, Andrew Thomas, very much. He frequently told me how proud he was of Andrew, and being a grandfather myself, I could easily relate and enjoy what he told me about him. Morris Chafetz, MD, another close friend of mine, killed himself with pills about a year ago. He used to say that "grandchildren were God's gifts to parents for not strangling their own children." I doubt very much Tom ever felt that way about his daughters, though I hesitate to agree with his idyllic vision of what at times seemed like a perfect family. All families are "dysfunctional," whatever that means.

I will not dwell on his death, it is his life that is important, except to say that over the twenty-four years Tom and I were the closest of friends, he always told me that he planned to end his life by committing suicide, if he was able to do so. "Autohomicide," as he referred to it in his books on the right to death.

I believe it is important to note that his fractured vertebrae was extremely painful. His decision to commit suicide was not an "ordinary" existential one, for example, "I've had enough of life, let's end it on a good note." The pain that comes from injury to the spine is no joke. I know because I have suffered for over seven years as a chronic pain patient myself, the result of failed spine surgery. I was forever grateful to Tom when I struggled for years with my own horrible spine pain, at first due to severe arthritic stenosis, then after surgery, due to having too much bone removed, I believe. Tom was always a major source of existential support. He was also the only friend of mine who guessed that I was seriously contemplating suicide myself because of the spine pain I was in years ago. That's WITH very strong narcotics and other drugs like Lyrica to try to reduce the pain. The writer Hunter Thompson committed suicide most likely because the spinal pain he struggled with was simply unbearable. It's hard for others to imagine let alone understand pain reaching such a level, WITH strong narcotics to palliate the pain, a situation where one who ordinarily rarely contemplates suicide, now seriously considers it as a viable/ethical option.

Tom's view on suicide was simple: The right to life includes the right to death. He always opposed "assisted suicide," and he was extremely critical of people such as Kevorkian and others who advocated assisted suicide, especially as some twisted practice of medicine. Suicide is an ethical issue. It is not a medical issue. And it is certainly not a public health issue, despite what U.S. Surgeon Generals say. (See Tom's response to Margaret P. Battin and Ryan Spellecy in Szasz Under Fire.) Tom always valued autonomy, and I knew there was no way he would ever end up in a nursing home, depending on others to take care of him, if he had any control over the matter. Obviously, he could have had a stroke, or some illness that would have rendered suicide impossible. I suppose he would have found a way even in that kind of situation. People often commit suicide by refusing to eat and drink, so where there is a will, there is a way.

Years ago, during one of our walks around the green lake near Manlius, New York, I asked him if he had written his obituary, we spoke openly about such topics. He looked stunned and I thought for a moment I had finally stepped over the line. Then he said, "Why, that's one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me! No, I've not written one. I imagine The New York Times and other newspapers have one already written. Why don't you write one, Jeff? For the site." I said I would, if he really wanted me to do it, but thought it much more appropriate for his daughters and grandson to do so, depending on how long Tom would live. I expressed my concern about how many of our adversaries would likely take advantage of the opportunity to say critical things about Tom in their own obituaries and tributes, especially psychiatrists at the American Psychiatric Association who fancy themselves as experts on Tom's "flawed philosophies," for example. Ron Pies is one of the worst. (See Tom's reply to Pies, again in Szasz Under Fire. We tried to predict the worst that some people would say, and then decided there was very little we could do about it. Let the heathen rage. (Pies fancies himself an intellectual, capable of toppling Tom's ideas about disease. He's a legend in his own mind, as Clint Eastwood has said elsewhere.)

I'd stay in a nearby hotel when I visited him, usually two nights, and we said goodbye in the kitchen in his home. We hugged, and as I held his arms and he held mine, and we looked at each other, face to face, I remember saying "I love you, Tom." (The first time I said that to him, and he responded in kind, was after our first debatesdebates show at the HBO Studios in Manhattan. George Alexander was on our team, and the show was produced by Warren Steibel. Tom was clearly uncomfortable expressing his feelings of love so directly. I was not. He stumbled not knowing what to say for one of the rare times I remember, then said "I feel the same towards you."

I remembered how similar he was to my own father at that moment. I often struggled to understand the connection between my relationship with Tom and my relationship with my own father. Both were deeply affected by WWII and the rise and fall of national socialism. Transference is too easy an answer. Too simple an explanation. I keep it private as I still work on it.

I asked my father why he never told me that he loved me, as he was approaching death. Then he said "I L-O-V-E You." He was dying of complications from Parkinson's disease and it was difficult for him to speak at times. He would only spell it.

Tom did tell me that he loved me directly, several times after that first close time, and he began to sign his letters and email to me with the word "love" on a more regular basis. I mentioned this to my good friend Nelson Borelli, a very good psychiatrist in Chicago, and Nelson said "I am glad to hear that, Jeff, Tom is coming out of his cave." I am sure Tom signed letters at least from then on to his other close friends in similar ways. It appeared he was getting softer as he got older. If anyone could value autonomy too much, perhaps Tom did. He did not like to admit that he needed people, people like Ron Leifer, for example, someone who knew Tom longer than anyone save his own daughters and brother, and someone who knew Tom better than anyone.

I remember thinking that if there is anyone I would ever go into analysis with again, given the opportunity, I always said it would be Ron. I flew to Ithaca about two years ago to visit Ron in the hospital there. He had a terrible stroke, and while he has made great recovery progress, he is still very weak and limited in what he can do. His mind is still good, though.

When Tom and I considered someone to be the best of persons, we said he or she was a "good guy." Good guys were few and far between. It was the highest award we could bestow on others. (There is, in my opinion, one slightly higher, dismiss it as narcissism if you will, I cherish it and have it pasted on the wall in my university office. Tom and I were talking about something, I simply don't remember what it was, and in an email to him, frustrated to the hilt by the dishonesty and base rhetoric of too many university colleagues surrounding me, I wrote to Tom, not expecting an answer, "I am looking for an honest man." Immediately came the reply that I will always cherish.His email to me read, "Look in the mirror." I was deeply moved.

Tom always insisted that we regard each other as friends. He was never comfortable when I referred to him as "mentor." I remember how we first met. I had written an opinion piece that was published by The Washington Post in the 1980s, and I had come under ferocious attack by members of the "mental health profession." The editors at The Washington Post entitled the article something like "Therapy: Opportunity Fraught With Danger." It was not one of my better pieces, the editors had hacked it, not edited it, but it did make an impression, and a client of mine told me that it was pasted on the bulletin board at the Washington School of Psychiatry for all to read. (This was well before Ken Pope began writing about such relations for the American Psychological Association.) Not one person agreed with my criticism of psychotherapists who had sex with their "patients" under the guise of treatment for mental illness. (Tom often considered social workers among the worst members of the mental health profession, perhaps because they were such blatant servants of the therapeutic state, perhaps because, at least at the masters level, they seemed uniquely stupid, I just don't know. Very few seem to know much about thinking. Most are fluent when it comes to therapy gimmicks.) He and I once talked about what social workers did. He said, "they are the worst." I can see why. They have zero intellectual training. Some psychiatrists went so far as to call me a murderer because people with mental illness who needed help from psychiatrists would not go to a psychiatrist because of what I had written. Thus, their blood would be on my hands, wrote one psychiatrist. I said to my late wife Renee, "I'm going to see what this fellow Thomas Szasz thinks of what I wrote. If he says I'm off my rocker, I'll reconsider." I had called and introduced myself to Tom on the phone. The Internet didn't exist then. I asked him if he would give me his frank opinion of the piece. I can "hear" his voice now as if it was yesterday: "It is very kind of you to send it to me. I would be most happy to read what you have written." A week or two later came a reply. "I think it is absolutely excellent," he wrote. "Look, we cannot please all the people all the time, especially in this business!" I was pleased and the following year or two my students at American University invited him to come down to Washington, D.C. and address a class I taught at American University entitled Psychiatry and the Law. I was an Adjunct Professor then, at both American University and at Johns Hopkins University. I was happy they had invited him, however, I said I would be surprised if he came.

Sure enough, when I walked into class about two weeks later, one of my favorite students, Alex Taylor, came up to me and said "Hey, Professor Schaler, Dr. Szasz accepted our invitation!" It was a grand occasion. I remember looking out into the audience after Alex introduced me, and I introduced Szasz, in the auditorium at American University. I don't think any faculty or administrators came, just students. Todschweigen, as Tom taught me. "Death by silence." Todschweigen [Tod = death + schweigen = silence, thus "death by silence"] In the audience were my students, many psychotherapy clients of mine, my parents, my wife and daughter, Dr. Isaiah Zimmerman, who was my analyst for many years up until that time, and various friends. It was a strange experience. Everyone who was important to me in my life then was there.

I drove Tom back to the hotel he was staying at in Chevy Chase, Md., and he was talking with students and friends on the sidewalk outside of his hotel, for what seemed like forever. I was very tired and I wanted to go home. It was getting late. But first I had to say thank you to Tom, good bye and good night, only Tom would not let go of my hand. That's right. I reached out to shake his hand, thanking him for coming, and he would not let go of my hand. He held on to my hand for over ten minutes. I was smiling and laughing, flattered, and stunned. Above all, I was deeply moved. The rest, as "they" say, is history.

The next thing I knew he invited me to debate all kinds of people with him on public television, I did about sixteen debates broadcast all around the country as a result of Tom inviting me to be on his team as we debated psychiatrists, lawyers, and even the Attorney General of Kansas, Carla Stovall. We were debating issues in Kansas v. Hendricks, recently decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. George J. Alexander was often there with us, or Ron Leifer. George had defended Tom as his attorney when Paul Hoch, MD, tried to have Tom fired as a tenured professor, for writing The Myth of Mental Illness. The debates were formal, an hour long, broadcast on 176 public television stations around the country. I was very nervous when we did the first one, as Tom had told me it was just going to be like sitting around a table talking with William Buckley on Firing Line. After all, Warren Steibel produced Firing Line. I kept saying to Tom, "I don't know, Tom, when Warren called me, he described what sounded like a very formal debate. Are you sure we shouldn't prepare some statements?" "No," said Tom. He turned to my daughter Magda who accompanied us. She was in law school at Columbia at the time. "Your father is getting too nervous about this. Do something!" As we walked into the HBO studios in Manhattan, with minutes to spare, a formal debate was about to begin, all of our opponents had prepared remarks, we had nothing. I looked at Tom with an expression of slight horror, and he shrugged his shoulders and said, "let's go." We demolished the other side. What an experience.

We presented at a conference for First Nations Peoples in Edmonton, Alberta -- that was a big one -- and then there were so many things we did together I simply can't remember them all.

I threw an eightieth birthday party for Tom in Syracuse, with the help of my close friend and colleague, Nelson Borelli, MD, and Mantosh Dewan, MD, Chair, and the Upstate Medical University Dept of Psychiatry, gave the speech bestowing the George Washington Award on Tom for the American Hungarian Foundation at the Waldorf Astoria in New York city, and we had many more wonderful events and adventures together, memories I will always cherish.

I received the Thomas S. Szasz Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Cause of Civil Liberties in 1999 by The Center for Independent Thought, and then was equally honored and surprised when Tom nominated me for the Thomas S. Szasz Award "for Outstanding Contributions to the Struggle Against the 'Therapeutic State'", on February 25, 2006, in California by the Citizens Commission for Human Rights. I gave several talks before thousands of people for CCHR and they were always among the warmest and most generous and kind people I met on the Szaszian trail.

Our friendship grew deeper and deeper, and as usual, one thing lead to another. I became deep friends with Ron Leifer, MD, one of Tom's oldest and closest friends, Richard E. Vatz, PhD., an outstanding person who taught me so much about how to navigate through the treacherous waters of academia as a one hundred percent Szaszian who had emerged one hundred percent out of the psychiatric closet. Rick was close to Tom long before I was. Rick and I shared a deep respect not only for our relationship with Tom, but also for each other. I met Rick when he moderated a debate between Tom and Loren Roth, MD, at Towson University, many years ago. Later, Rick moderated a debate between E. Fuller Torrey, MD, and Tom. Rick was also responsible for having Towson University bestow an honorary doctorate on Tom. My late wife, Renee Royak-Schaler, was a professor there at Towson, and she told me of Rick's relationship with Tom. I brought a whole class of mine from American University to listen to the debate with Torrey.

More and more friendships developed through my relationship with Tom, and I will always be grateful for those great people he introduced me to, people we worked with in various ways: George J. Alexander, Warren Steibel, Roger Yanow -- official "uncle" in the Szasz family, Suzy and Larry and the best spaghetti dinner I've ever had at their home then in Ithaca, Robert Seidenberg, leaders at the department of psychiatry at (now) Upstate Medical University, Andrea Millen Rich, Sheldon Richman, Tony Stadlen, and too many people I've forgotten right now but people who deserve my deepest respect. As I remember saying at one event honoring Tom, while occasionally a teacher becomes a friend, it seems more rare when a close friend is clearly a teacher.

While Tom would not tolerate describing our relationship as anything less than a deep friendship, one simply cannot have a friendship with Tom and not constantly be learning about oneself and the world around us. And just to make sure that I didn't forget we were friends, Tom drove all the way down from Manlius, New York, to sit with my mother at my daughter's wedding in Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania. As my mother said back then, "Tom is always a gentleman." And he never forgot to ask me to give his warmest regards to my mother after that weekend. My daughter's wedding was nine days before nine eleven. Just before the second plane hit the World Trade Center I called Tom from Silver Spring, Md. We spoke regularly together then, and said "quick, turn on the television." And we quietly watched the world change once again, together, on the phone, as the planes hit the buildings and the buildings came tumbling down. "This is history," I said. "This is war," I added.

In psychology that is called a "flashbulb memory." What a memory!

As owner and producer of "the Szasz site," I plan to post several items on this page in honor of Tom's life. I constructed and produced this web site as a public educational service in honor of Tom Szasz's life work. While everything I wrote for this site was done with Tom's approval, Tom always insisted that this site belonged to me, it was not his. While this never stopped him from expressing his opinion to me, he insisted that the public know that I own and produced this site.

The first links below are to several newspaper and blog obituaries. I may add others if they seem interesting.

The second two links are first to excerpts from my book Szasz Under Fire: The Psychiatric Abolitionist Faces His Critics (2004, Chicago: Open Court Publishers). Specifically, the excerpts are from the Introduction that I wrote, documenting everything that happened when Tom's book The Myth of Mental Illness was published in 1961, specifically the attempts by Paul Hoch, MD, Administrator of the State Department of Mental Hygiene, and others to have him removed from his tenured professorship at Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse.

I will add more material about that event and persecution, shortly. It is the only accurate historical account approved by Szasz. We worked on everything in that book together, and like many of his friends, I helped him with editing his books. Following the Introduction is the only autobiography written by Tom. Again, these are the only accurate accounts of critical periods in his life and I am pleased to share my work with Tom with others who will benefit from knowing the truth about what happened.

Following this is a link to a recent debate on www.cato-unbound.org that I was asked to write the lead essay for. It's about Mental Health and the Law, and specifically deals with issues concerning involuntary commitment to mental institutions. I've included this because it is the most recent example of a thought-provoking debate in which I believe readers will see how Jacob Sullum and I put Tom's ideas into action, especially in dialogue with an author of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and a law professor at the University of Maryland.

If you want to use any of this material, you are welcome to do so, provided you cite the source appropriately: (2004). Schaler, Jeffrey A. (ed.) Szasz Under Fire: The Psychiatric Abolitionist Faces His Critics. Chicago: Open Court Publishers, for the excerpts from that books. Contact Jason Kuznicki, editor of cato-unbound, for information about the blog. The links provided below should give you access to all relevant information.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at Jeffrey@Schaler.net

The third link will contain some photographs you may not have seen before. Those will be up shortly. People have offered to send me photographs they took of Tom just for this memorial section of the Szasz site, and I am very grateful for their assistance.

Below these three links are the beginnings of tributes written by close friends and colleagues of Tom's. Other relevant materials will be added shortly. While the tributes are published by invitation, if you would like yours considered for publication here, please write directly to me, Jeff Schaler, at Jeffrey@Schaler.net

While many of us have lost a great friend and teacher, the world should know that there are many people, especially in academia, who will continue to teach students about the importance of Tom's ideas and how we may go further with them. While Tom's physical life is over, his ideas, the seeds he has planted, and the work he has done, is just beginning.

As Tom was fond of saying, "Nothing human is alien to me."

I will miss Tom dearly, as so many of us will. However, I will continue to teach his ideas, as I have done now to many thousands of students over the past twenty three years. The ideas that Tom enlightened us to, will hardly die as he has died. Quite to the contrary, his death only supercharges my desire and motivation to teach so many people in the world, about the relationship between liberty and responsibility. It would be a big mistake for us to think that with Tom's death comes the death of his work, his important ideas, the example he set. He was not perfect, none of us are. We can keep self-appointed engineers of the therapeutic state on their toes, if not on their knees. We owe it to our children, and to their children, to do so. There is no time like the present.

--Jeffrey A. Schaler, Ph.D., MEd