Foucault News

Frédéric Fruteau de Laclos, La psychologie des philosophes (2012)

Clare O'Farrell

30 September 2012

Frédéric Fruteau de Laclos, La psychologie des philosophes. De Bergson à Vernant
Septembre 2012 – PUF – Collection “Philosophie française contemporaine”

L’ouvrage

Décrire la psychologie des philosophes, ce n’est pas fouiller dans leur vie pour exhiber leurs petits secrets. C’est plutôt constater qu’entre les deux extrêmes d’une métaphysique de la durée et d’une anthropologie de l’homme grec, une lignée de penseurs initialement formés à la philosophie a fourni une contribution décisive à l’histoire de la psychologie. C’est exhumer des entreprises originales aussi méconnues que la psychologie historique, objective, comparée d’Ignace Meyerson, ou la psychologie sociale génétique de Philippe Malrieu, ressaisies dans leurs relations concrètes. Mais c’est aussi prendre conscience que nombre de grandes figures de la philosophie française ont croisé la route de ces psychologues au point de retrouver, sans toujours le dire, leur méthode, leur objet ou leurs concepts – comme l’ont fait Jean-Paul Sartre et Michel Foucault. C’est enfin se rendre compte que, par-delà l’opposition des structuralistes à la psychologie et en marge des développements des sciences cognitives, il y a place dans la pensée contemporaine pour ces hybridations « psycho-philosophiques ».

Table des matières

Introduction. Une autre philosophie de l’esprit

Première partie : Anamnèse de la psychologie historique

Chapitre Premier. Naissance d’une psycho-philosophie. Henri Delacroix, le chaînon manquant d’une évolution créatrice
Chapitre II. Discours de la méthode psychologique. L’acte fondateur d’Ignace Meyerson
Chapitre III. Vers une anthropologie historique. Jean-Pierre Vernant, héritier légitime : l’application de la méthode à l’Homme grec
Chapitre IV. Disciples hétérodoxes et possibles théoriques

Deuxième partie : Le retour des refoulés

Chapitre V. Fonction de personne. Arnaud Dandieu, sombre précurseur
Chapitre VI. Devenir-personne. Philippe Malrieu : Pour une psychologie sociale génétique I
Chapitre VII. Enchâssé dans les structures. Philippe Malrieu : Pour une psychologie sociale génétique II
Chapitre VIII. La critique et les œuvres. L’esthétique historique, objective, comparée d’Olivier Revault d’Allonnes

Troisième partie : La levée des obstacles

Chapitre IX. Le cousin Sartre. Parenté de l’existentialisme et de la psychologie historique
Chapitre X. Logos et Historia. La psychologie de François Châtelet
Chapitre XI. Les mots contre les choses. Ce que Foucault a manqué d’être
Conclusion. Que retenir de notre histoire ?

A propos des auteurs

Frédéric Fruteau de Laclos, agrégé et docteur en philosophie, est maître de conférences en philosophie à l’université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne et membre du Centre d’histoire des systèmes de pensée moderne. Il est l’auteur de L’épistémologie d’Émile Meyerson. Une anthropologie de la connaissance (Vrin, 2009) et Le cheminement de la pensée selon Émile Meyerson (Puf, 2009).

Foucault 71 – theatre (2012)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

28 September 2012

See website

Les 26 et 27 mars 2013,
au TAP – Scène Nationale, Poitiers,
Foucault 71,

A Poitiers les 26 et 27 mars 2013

Foucault 71
FEUILLETON THÉÂTRAL EN TROIS ÉPISODES
à voir séparément ou dans la foulée
Par le collectif F71
Direction artistique Sabrina Baldassarra, Stéphanie Farison, Emmanuelle Lafon, Sara Louis, Lucie Nicolas
Direction de production Thérèse Coriou

Michel Foucault philosophe et militant
Toujours vivant ! À lire, relire ou découvrir le philosophe pictavien, il apparaît à l’évidence que la pensée de Michel Foucault éclaire, irrigue et nourrit encore aujourd’hui. Ainsi, vingt années après sa mort, le TAP a-t-il décidé d’organiser un moment de mise en lumière de cet homme hors du commun par une série de manifestations différentes dont le spectacle vivant fait partie, bien entendu. Avec l’aide précieuse de l’Université de notre ville, du Centre National de Documentation Pédagogique de Poitou-Charentes et de partenariats locaux en cours, textes, films, discussions et spectacle vous seront présentés pendant deux jours intenses qui ne seront pas réservés aux seuls connaisseurs. Un programme spécial et détaillé pour cet évènement sera édité ultérieurement.

Foucault 71
Collectif F71
Un collectif de comédiennes délurées s’empare d’une sélection d’archives autour de l’œuvre de Michel Foucault et de son engagement public en 1971. À partir de multiples émissions de radio, conférences de presse, tracts, articles, lettres, dessins et photographies, nous découvrons son travail sur les prisons, et sa réflexion sur le pouvoir de contrôler et de punir. Cela pourrait paraître compliqué, mais c’est en réalité limpide et joyeux. Car ce quintet de jeunes femmes est parvenu à donner une matière théâtrale simple et concrète aux engagements et fulgurances des philosophes de cette époque mais aussi au bouillonnement militant de la rue. En se penchant principalement sur trois affaires célèbres (la création du GIP (Groupe d’Information sur les Prisons), L’affaire Jaubert et Le comité Djellali ), les comédiennes nous servent de guides à travers l’intelligence lumineuse de Michel Foucault.

Nicholas De Villiers, Opacity and the Closet: Queer Tactics in Foucault, Barthes, and Warhol (2012)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

26 September 2012

Nicholas De Villiers, Opacity and the Closet: Queer Tactics in Foucault, Barthes, and Warhol, University of Minnesota Press

Looking beyond the closet at the lives and works of renowned queer public figures

Opacity and the Closet interrogates the viability of the metaphor of “the closet” when applied to three important queer figures in postwar American and French culture: philosopher Michel Foucault, literary critic Roland Barthes, and pop artist Andy Warhol. Nicholas de Villiers proposes a new approach to these cultural icons that accounts for the queerness of their works and public personas.

From a review by Chase Dimock

De Villiers’ three case studies on practitioners of queer opacity, French philosophers Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes, and American art icon Andy Warhol, have all greatly influenced the study and expression of sexuality in contemporary culture. Yet, none of the three ever fully came out of the closet in any conventional sense. All three engaged openly with gay themes in their work, and Warhol never denied his sexuality, but none of the three ever became openly gay self-identified voices of the community. It would be convenient and easy, as many biographers and cultural critics have done, to fault these men for not declaring their identity according to contemporary gay cultural standards set long after their deaths or to perform some one-size-fits-all, pop psychoanalysis to locate the source of shame or guilt that we have been taught to believe is the source of our sexual discretion. But instead, De Villiers’ concept of queer opacity allows us to see the sexualities of these men as they truly were expressed by widening our narrow narrative of sexuality to encompass the peripheries where the genius of these men flourished. Instead of seeing them as closeted, De Villiers praises their queer opacity for inventing new methods of queer expression and transgression.

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Iride. Filosofia e discussione pubblica no. 66 special issue Foucault (2012)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

25 September 2012

Iride. Filosofia e discussione pubblica, n. 66 maggio-agosto 2012

One of the most important philosophical journals in Italy, Iride has published its 66th issue which is largely devoted to Michel Foucault.

Pdf of table of contents

Abstracts in English are below

Nota introduttiva. Sesso come cultura di Arnold I. Davidson
Michel Foucault, L’arte di divenire gay (translated into Italian by Daniele Lorenzini)

NODI / SYMPOSIA
Foucault, l’etica antica e lo scandalo della verità /Foucault, Ancient Ethics and the Scandal of Truth
(a cura di/edited by Daniele Lorenzini)

Frédéric Gros, Foucault e la verità cinica

David Owen and Clare Woodford, Foucault, Cavell and the Government of Self and Others. On Truth-telling, Friendship and an Ethics of Democracy

Judith Revel, Vita altra, attitudine critica, sperimentazione

Religioni, politica e liberalismo
(a cura di Domenico Melidoro)

Domenico Melidoro, Premessa. Limiti e prospettive del secolarismo

Neera Chandhoke, Ri-presentare il secolarismo

Jocelyn Maclure, L’accomodamento ragionevole e la concezione soggettiva della libertà di coscienza

Jeff Spinner-Halev, Liberalismo, pluralismo e religione

FINESTRE / INTERVENTIONS
Daniele Lorenzini, Foucault, il cristianesimo e la genealogia dei regimi di verità

Maurizio Ferraris, Filosofia globalizzata

Abstracts in English

Michel Foucault
The Art of Becoming Gay

In these texts, preceded by an Introductory notice in which Arnold I. Davidson highlights their methodological background and their philosophical value, Foucault discusses, on the one hand, Kenneth J. Dover’s revolutionary book Greek Homosexuality, pointing out the differences between our experience of sexuality and the Greek; on the other hand, he explains his reasons for thinking that, today, we should use our sexual choices as a means to change our existence and to invent new relations and new ways of living.

Keywords: Greek Homosexuality, Art of Living, Sex, Pleasures, Culture of the Self.

SYMPOSIA – Foucault, Ancient Ethics and the Scandal of Truth
(edited by Daniele Lorenzini)

Frédéric Gros
Foucault and the Cynic’s Truth

In his last series of lectures at the Collège de France, Foucault offers a completely new analysis of the Cynic school of philosophy in Ancient Greece. He shows that the Cynic movement inaugurates an innovative characterization of truth as a test for life, rather than as a criterion for the differentiation of logos. This exam allows Foucault to trace an original distinction, within philosophy, between two branches: the Platonic one, which poses the problem of the access to a transcendent world starting from an askesis and knowledge of the soul, and the Cynic one, which instead poses the question of the transformation of the world, beginning with the proofing of one’s own life and a continuous provocation of others.

Keywords: Foucault, Cynicism, Truth, Parrhesia, Resistance.

David Owen & Clare Woodford
Foucault, Cavell and the Government of Self and Others. On Truth-telling, Friendship and an Ethics of Democracy

This essay addresses the ethical and political significance of Foucault’s late work on the ethics of care of the self and parrhesia. We argue, first, that understanding this significance requires seeing Foucault’s investigation of these classical practices against the backdrop of his identification of, and attempt to make perspicuous, the problem of biopolitical governance – specifically the paradox of relations of power and capacity. On this basis we go on, second, to consider how this turn may inform an ethics of democratic governance. In constructing this case, we demonstrate the relationship between the ethics of care of the self as a practice of freedom and the tradition of moral perfectionism identified by Stanley Cavell. This allows us to show how Cavell and Foucault mutually complement each other in the articulation of an approach to an ethics of democracy and we outline the fundamental features of such an approach.

Keywords: Ethics of Care of the Self, Parrhesia, Moral Perfectionism, Friendship, Democracy.

Judith Revel
Life Other, Critical Attitude, Experimentation

How are we to interpret the last sentences of Michel Foucault lectures at the Collège de France, on the 28th of March 1984, where he seems to allude to the necessity to found ethics on the decentralization of one’s position and the assumption of a posture of otherness? And how are we to explain the fact that, after decades of research on the forms of reintegration of the figures of otherness (madness, the pathological, social deviance…) within what he often calls «hegemony of the same», the vast domain of the identity to oneself – and, a contrario, the quest for a radical difference – Foucault returns to this ethical centrality of the position of otherness? The explanation, perhaps, can be found in what the passage from Socratic to Cynic parrhesia secretly contains: a shift that, far from keeping the ethical task within the domain of Logos, makes it somehow slip into the field of Bios, of life. From words to practices of existence, from the search for adequation between discourse and philosophical life to the attempt, at the same time simpler and more radical, to live philosophy, in the last lectures of Foucault emerges an otherness eventually freed – differential, productive, ontologically powerful: the truth-telling becomes truth-living, emancipated from the boundaries and the traps of the order of discourse, and which requires courage while affirming its irreducible freedom.

Keywords: Foucault, Ethics, Truth-telling, Life, Difference.

INTERVENTIONS

Daniele Lorenzini
Foucault, Christianity, and the Genealogy of the Regimes of Truth

Beginning with the 1979-1980 lectures at the Collège de France, Du gouvernement des vivants, this article aims at a reconstruction of Foucault’s shift: from a study of knowledge-power systems to an archaeological-genealogical analysis of the government of human beings by means of truth; or, better yet, a study of the relations between the manifestation of truth, the constitution of subjectivity, and the government of self and others. Therefore, it seeks to explore the meaning of the fundamental notion of «regime of truth» (in its connection with the notion of «truth games»), as well as the Foucauldian project of a genealogy of the modern subject in Western civilization. The conclusion suggests that Foucault’s last series of lectures at the Collège de France are a way to urge us to undertake a «politics of ourselves», and consequently to get rid of the hermeneutics of the self, no matter whether Christian or scientific.

Keywords: Truth, Subjectivity, Christianity, Confession, Politics of Ourselves.

CFP: Special Issue “The Legacy of Richard Rorty” (2012)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

24 September 2012

Special Issue “The Legacy of Richard Rorty”
A special issue of Humanities (ISSN 2076-0787).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 March 2013

Special Issue Editor

Guest Editor
Dr. Neil Gascoigne
Department of Politics and International Relations, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK
Interests: pragmatism, metaphilosophy, scepticism, tacit knowledge, expertise

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

During his lifetime Richard Rorty was unusual insofar as his work was more influential outside philosophy departments than inside. This was in part due to the fact that his ‘deconstructive’ attacks on what he took to be his discipline’s moribund obsession with truth and objectivity generated no small degree of antagonism. But in his attempt to find a place for the intellectual in modern culture his interests inclined increasingly towards those subjects and practices that engage more directly in shaping that culture, and thinkers in these areas were often encouraged to encounter a thinker who rejected the notion that their activities were in some sense lacking the appropriate cognitive bona fides. That Rorty was willing to engage seriously with the work of, amongst others, Foucault, Heidegger and Derrida made him all the more suspect to the one constituency and attractive to the other. Two factors complicate this story, however. On the one hand, the revival of interest in pragmatism has raised questions about Rorty’s neo-pragmatist rejection of the human aspiration towards objectivity; and on the other, thinkers on the political left who are amenable to that rejection are repelled by the ethnocentrism of his liberalism. The purpose of this Special Issue is to explore these and related tensions in Rorty’s work and in so doing help us arrive at a critical evaluation of his legacy. Papers are therefore welcome from those working in any area that conduces to that end.

Dr. Neil Gascoigne
Guest Editor

Submission

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. Papers will be published continuously (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are refereed through a peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Humanities is an international peer-reviewed Open Access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. For the first couple of issues the Article Processing Charge (APC) will be waived for well-prepared manuscripts. English correction and/or formatting fees of 250 CHF (Swiss Francs) will be charged in certain cases for those articles accepted for publication that require extensive additional formatting and/or English corrections.

Keywords

• American exceptionalism
• Sellars
• Dewey
• Pragmatism and neo-pragmatism
• Liberalism
• Truth and Objectivity
• Relativism
• Literary Theory
• Mind and World
• Postmodernism

CFP: Pli, The Warwick Journal of Philosophy: Jean Hyppolite (2012)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

22 September 2012

Call for Papers

Pli, The Warwick Journal of Philosophy: Jean Hyppolite

Man is consciousness and universal self-consciousness (this proposition must not be inverted by expressing universal self-consciousness in terms of man). The manifestation of this universal self-consciousness is no longer the State, but authentic language, which is the dwelling place [demeure] of Being. It is not man who interprets Being, but Being which comes to speech [se dit] in man, and this revealing of Being, this absolute logic – substituted for a metaphysics (which would be more or less theology) – goes through man.

Jean Hyppolite, ‘Ruse de la raison et histoire chez Hegel’

‘Hyppolite is the one who has established for us all of the problems which are ours… Logic and Existence…is one of the great works of our time’. (Michel Foucault)

Jean Hyppolite was a figure of pivotal importance in twentieth century French philosophy. As a translator he produced the first full French translation of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit; as a scholar his careful and innovative readings of Hegel’s entire corpus established him as an authority at home and abroad; and as a teacher and a philosopher he exerted a crucial influence on the generation of thinkers that included Deleuze, Derrida, and Foucault, raising questions about difference, immanence, sense, and method that continue to resonate through contemporary philosophy.

For its twenty-fourth volume, Pli invites papers on any aspect of Hyppolite’s work, his development, and his influence both on his own generation and beyond. Possible topics for papers include, but are not limited to:

The unhappy consciousness: Hegel and Kierkegaard in France
The ‘most obscure dialectical synthesis’: Hegel, Marx and the relation between logic and history
‘There is no primacy of the thesis’: the Absolute as mediation in Logic and Existence
The ontological status of Hegel’s Logic and the nature of Hegel’s critique of Kant
‘The Structuralism Controversy’ and Hyppolite’s contribution to the Johns Hopkins symposium
Hyppolite and Heidegger: onto-logy and the critique of Humanism
Sense and nonsense in Hyppolite and beyond
‘The only secret is that there is no secret’: forms of the rejection of essentialism
Logics of contradiction and logics of repetition: from Hyppolite to Deleuze, Derrida, Levinas…
Hyppolite, Lacan and Verneinung
Hyppolite’s writings on figures other than Hegel, for example, Fichte, Marx, Bergson, Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty
Key concepts in Hyppolite, for example, language, sense, immanence, difference, mediation, ontology, and logos.

Pli also welcomes enquiries from individuals who may be interested in translating short texts by or on Hyppolite (please contact the journal to discuss possible texts).

Varia

As well as works addressing the theme of the issue, Pli is also happy to consider:

Strong articles on any aspect of ‘continental philosophy’
Book reviews (please contact the journal to discuss prospective reviews)
Short translations of important works in continental philosophy.

Submissions should be no longer than 8,000 words, prefaced by an abstract, and sent by email to: plijournal@warwick.ac.uk as a Word, ODT or RTF file. The deadline for submissions is November 1st 2012. Before submitting an article, please ensure that you have read the ‘Notes for Contributors’ on the Pli website as we will only accept submissions that are formatted in accordance with these guidelines.

La pensée française s’exporte-t-elle bien ? Podcast (2012)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

21 September 2012

La pensée française s’exporte-t-elle bien ?
August 2012

Audio podcast

from LES NOUVEAUX CHEMINS DE LA CONNAISSANCE by podcast@radiofrance.com
durée : 00:58:46 – LES NOUVEAUX CHEMINS DE LA CONNAISSANCE – par : Philippe Petit – Dans le cadre de la semaine du Livre EN DIRECT – invités : Monique Labrune, Gilles BOËTSCH, François GEZE, François Cusset – Monique Labrune (Auteur) Directrice des PUF Gilles BOËTSCH (Auteur) Anthropobiologiste François GEZE président-directeur général des éditions La Découverte François Cusset (Auteur) historien des idées, – réalisé par : Mydia Portis-Guérin

Stuart Elden, Peter Gratton – Spinoza and the Biopolitical Roots of Modernity audio available (2012)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

21 September 2012

Progressive Geographies

The audio recording of Peter Gratton’s talk ‘Spinoza and the Biopolitical Roots of Modernity’ at UWS is now available (from here, via’s Peter’s blog).

Abstract: Much has been written about bio-political sovereignty in the wake of Giorgio Agamben’s work, which relies, at least in the first volume of Homo Sacer, on Carl Schmitt’s transcendental account of sovereignty. I will argue, however, that Foucault and Arendt rightly identify what Derrida once called the “changing shape and place of sovereignty” in modernity, which for them is horizontal and disseminated within a presupposed nation. For this reason, we will look to the source of modern philosophical immanentism, Spinoza, to show that he is not extrinsic to this modern bio-politics, and demonstrates how the sovereign exception and its nationalized version work hand-in-glove in the era of which he was a part. In this way, we argue that it is Spinoza’s political theology…

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Franck Salaün, Besoin de fiction (2010)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

20 September 2012

Franck Salaün, Besoin de fiction. Sur l’expérience littéraire de la pensée et le concept de fiction pensante, Paris, Hermann, coll. “Fictions pensantes”, 2010

Présentation de l’éditeur :
Les fictions pensent-elles ? On ne se lasse pas de le dire : l’homme est un animal fabulateur, un producteur de fictions. Notre besoin de fiction est même impossible à rassasier. Mais le clivage traditionnel entre réalité et fiction occulte certaines des motivations de ce besoin et le mode d’existence des univers fictionnels. Face à ce constat, Franck Salaün propose une réflexion sur les différentes façons de recourir à la fiction. Il nous invite, en outre, à envisager la littérature comme un espace de pensée, et les oeuvres comme des systèmes signifiants dont le fin mot n’appartient ni à l’auteur ni au lecteur. Il ne s’agit pas, dans cet essai, de fournir une théorie clés en main de la fiction, mais d’interroger la façon dont les textes pensent — pas seulement àquoi ils pensent, et dans quels buts, mais comment ils pensent. C’est aussi l’occasion de préciser et d’illustrer le concept de « fiction pensante ». L’entreprise peut dérouter, il n’est donc pas superflu de cartographier la région à explorer, en signalant au promeneur quelques sites intéressants, et aux autres orpailleurs les cours d’eau et les sables aurifères.

Franck Salaün enseigne la littérature française à l’université de Montpellier. Auteur de plusieurs essais sur le siècle des Lumières, il a aussi dirigé des volumes collectifs, notamment « Diderot / Rousseau. Un entretien à distance » (Desjonquères, 2006). Son dernier ouvrage porte sur la question du statut des textes au XVIIIe siècle (« L’Autorité du discours », Champion, 2010).

Extract from review by Michael de Vita (2012)
MICHAËL DI VITA
La fiction braque le concept. De Diderot à Bourdieu & Foucault

Vient ensuite la plus longue séquence de cet ouvrage, intertitrée « Sans visage ». Michel Foucault y fait l’objet d’une étude assez étendue et quantitativement plus importante que les séquences précédentes, ce qui d’ailleurs produit chez le lecteur une vive impression de discontinuité qui pourra même lui donner le sentiment de faire face à une greffe textuelle, à un ajout hétérogène provenant d’une marche antérieure ou nouvelle que l’auteur aurait finalement décidé d’ajouter, sans jamais vraiment réussir à fournir de justification quant à ce geste relevant davantage du montage inachevé que de la toile enveloppante qu’incarne idéalement l’essai. Mais cette impression n’annule en rien l’intérêt de la réflexion sur l’expérience littéraire de la pensée qui, malgré le saut dans la forme d’écriture, répond à coup sûr aux exigences du problème que F. Salaün fait varier sous nos yeux depuis les premières lignes de son livre, cette fois en explorant la question du style de Foucault et de sa méthode imprégnée de fiction. « Que se passe-t-il […] si nous cessons d’utiliser les catégories habituelles pour nous tourner vers les discours, leur fonctionnement, leur circulation, et voir comment ils nous construisent autant que nous les construisons ? » (p. 84), voilà le nouvel angle du problème que l’auteur reprend de Foucault qui, en effet, accordait une grande importance à l’expression de la pensée conceptuelle et littéraire, au style et aux rapports politiques qu’enveloppent les discours théoriques ou explicitement fictifs. L’agencement que produisent « les mots sans que nous ayons le pouvoir d’en décider » (p. 90), « se rendre capable de se déprendre de soi-même » (p. 91), « contredire » à « la longue succession des synonymes d’un même vocable » qu’est « l’histoire des hommes » (p. 92) : ce sont là des traductions d’un problème qui développe de façon transversale ce que F. Salaün appelle les « fictions pensantes ».

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Thomas Szasz Dies at 92 (2012)

Clare O'Farrell

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19 September 2012

Dr. Thomas Szasz, Psychiatrist Who Led Movement Against His Field, Dies at 92
By
BENEDICT CAREY
Published: September 11, 2012, New York Times

Thomas Szasz, a psychiatrist whose 1961 book “The Myth of Mental Illness” questioned the legitimacy of his field and provided the intellectual grounding for generations of critics, patient advocates and antipsychiatry activists, making enemies of many fellow doctors, died Saturday at his home in Manlius, N.Y. He was 92.

He died after a fall, his daughter Dr. Margot Szasz Peters said.

Dr. Szasz (pronounced sahz) published his critique at a particularly vulnerable moment for psychiatry. With Freudian theorizing just beginning to fall out of favor, the field was trying to become more medically oriented and empirically based. Fresh from Freudian training himself, Dr. Szasz saw psychiatry’s medical foundation as shaky at best, and his book hammered away, placing the discipline “in the company of alchemy and astrology.”

The book became a sensation in mental health circles, as well as a bible for those who felt misused by the mental health system.

Dr. Szasz argued against coercive treatments, like involuntary confinement, and the use of psychiatric diagnoses in the courts, calling both practices unscientific and unethical. He was soon placed in the company of other prominent critics of psychiatry, including the Canadian sociologist Erving Goffman and the French philosopher Michel Foucault.

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