Fatal freedom : the ethics and politics of suicide / Thomas Szasz.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Szasz, Thomas, 1920-2012.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Suicide--Moral and ethical aspects.

Suicide.

Physical Description:

xii, 177 pages ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Westport, Conn. : Praeger, 1999.

Summary:

One of the most troubling issues we face today is who should control when and how we die. Fatal Freedom is an eloquent defense of every individual's right to choose a voluntary death. Thomas Szasz, 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.

Contents:

1 Speaking of Suicide: Our Self-Mutilated Vocabulary 1

2 Constructing Suicide: What Counts as Killing Oneself? 9

3 Excusing Suicide: The Fateful Evasion 29

4 "Preventing" Suicide: "Saving" Lives 45

5 Prescribing Suicide: Death as Treatment 63

6 Perverting Sucide: Killing as Treatment 89

7 Rethinking Suicide: Death Control, the Final Responsibility 107.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [157]-167) and indexes.

ISBN:

0275966461

OCLC:

40762593