Fatal Freedom: The Ethics and Politics of Suicide

(Hardback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

"Fatal freedom" is a defence of every individual's right to choose a voluntary death. The author, a renowned psychiatrist, believes that we can speak about suicide calmly and rationally, as he does in this book, and that we can ultimately accept suicide as part of the human condition. By maintaining statutes that determine that voluntary death is not legal, our society is forfeiting one of its basic freedoms and causing the psychiatric/medical establishment to treat individuals in a manner that is disturbingly inhumane according to Dr. Szasz. His work asks and points to clear, intelligent answers to some of the most significant ethical questions of our time: is suicide a voluntary act; should physicians be permitted to prevent it; should they be authorized to abet it The author's analysis of these questions consistently holds forth patient autonomy as paramount; therefore, he argues, patients should not be prevented from exercising their free will, nor should physicians be permitted to enter the process by prescribing or providing the means of voluntary death. Dr. Szasz predicts that we will look back at our present prohibitory policies towards suicide with the same amazed disapproval with which we regard past policies toward homosexuality, masturbation and birth control. This comparison with other practices that started as sins, became crimes, then were regarded as mental illnesses, and are now becoming more widely accepted, opens up the discussion and understanding of suicide in a historical context. The book explores attitudes toward suicide held by the ancient Greeks and Romans, through early Christianity and the Reformation, to the advent of modern psychiatry and contemporary society as a whole. Our tendency to define disapproved behaviours as diseases has created a psychiatric establishment that exerts far too much influence over how and when we choose to die. Just as we have come to accept the individual's right to birth control, so too must we accept his right to death control before we can call our society humane or free.

Reviews

"Fatal Freedom deepens Szasz's commitment and our understanding of what might be called the libertarian tradition. In considering the theme of suicide as part of the larger question of the place of State power in individual decision-making he has made a genuine contribution in advancing the current discourse on matters of profound moment to us all."-Irving Louis Horowitz Professor of Sociology & Political Science Rutgers University
"Szasz demonstrates cogently the rhetoric of suicide by which the decision to end one's life is erroneously depicted as a problem or a disease, which must be solved or cured."-Richard E. Vatz Professor of Rhetoric and Communication, Towson University
"Szasz strikes yet another blow for clarity, dignity, and liberty. When we finally break out of our bad habit of medicalizing moral choice, Thomas Szasz will garner well-earned laurels for having shown us that tyranny administered by doctors with good bedside manners is tyranny nonetheless."-Sheldon Richman, Editor The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty
"This is an important book written with the clarity and unassailable logic which we have come to associate with Szasz. It is a work of scholarship which is immediately accessible and addresses a major issue in our society. It must be read!"-Professor James McCormick Trinity College, University of Dublin
"Thomas Szasz is one of the great independent minds of our age. Once again he has made us think, and about a central moral problem of human existence."-Geoffrey Wheatcroft, journalist and author
An intelligent critique of the cultural misunderstanding of suicide....Szasz is particularly persuasive in hacking through the thicket of medical ethics in "right to die" circumstances.-Kirkus Reviews
One can read this book from the perspective of moral philosophy, political science or clinical medicine....Fatal Freedom is a very serviceable book for physicians, who in one way or the other have to deal with suicide in their medical practice.-Medical Sentinel
This is a book for all that wish to expand their awareness of the historical and modern attitudes toward suicide, and explore differing views on this sensitive topic. Definitely written and efficiently organized, this book would be of interest to medical and legal professionals, the clergy, students of these disciplines, as well as lay people. The book is interesting, easy to read and understand.-Risk: Health, Safety, & Environment
Thomas Szasz advances his defense of autonomy and liberty by speaking out for the right to suicide. Szasz has written many provocative and courageous books. He has done so again.-Ideas on Liberty
"An intelligent critique of the cultural misunderstanding of suicide....Szasz is particularly persuasive in hacking through the thicket of medical ethics in "right to die" circumstances."-Kirkus Reviews
"One can read this book from the perspective of moral philosophy, political science or clinical medicine....Fatal Freedom is a very serviceable book for physicians, who in one way or the other have to deal with suicide in their medical practice."-Medical Sentinel
"Thomas Szasz advances his defense of autonomy and liberty by speaking out for the right to suicide. Szasz has written many provocative and courageous books. He has done so again."-Ideas on Liberty
"This is a book for all that wish to expand their awareness of the historical and modern attitudes toward suicide, and explore differing views on this sensitive topic. Definitely written and efficiently organized, this book would be of interest to medical and legal professionals, the clergy, students of these disciplines, as well as lay people. The book is interesting, easy to read and understand."-Risk: Health, Safety, & Environment

Author Bio

THOMAS SZASZ is Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus at State University of New York Health Science Center in Syracuse. He is widely recognized as the world's foremost critic of psychiatric coercions and excuses and as a leading philosopher of liberty-and-responsibility. He is the author of 24 books, including The Myth of Mental Illness (1961) and Our Right to Drugs: The Case for a Free Market (Praeger, 1992).