The fatal weakness of most psychiatric historiographies lies in the historians’ failure to give sufficient weight to the role of coercion in psychiatry and to acknowledge that mad-doctoring had nothing to do with healing

The fatal weakness of most psychiatric historiographies lies in the historians’ failure to give sufficient weight to the role of coercion in psychiatry and to acknowledge that mad-doctoring had nothing to do with healing (Thomas Szasz, Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society’s Unwanted)