Table of Contents
Thomas Szasz: the myth of mental illness
Johan Weyer (1515 - 1588)
“Daily experience shows what execrable alienation from God, what fellowship with the Devil, what hatred between relatives, what strife between neighbors, what enmities among the peasants, what feuds between cities, what frequent slaughter of the innocent, are caused by that most fruitful mother of calamities,the belief in the sorcery of witches.”(De Praestigiis)
Prisoners are “constantly dragged out to suffer awful torture until they would gladly exchange this most bitter existence for death,and thus confessed whatever crimes were suggested to them rather than be thrust back into their hideous dungeon amid ever recurring torture.”
Witches “confess many things, especially when subjected to severe torture, which are just fables, trifles, lies, which are not and never were, nor could be according to the nature of things. When there is no proof but the confession of an old woman demented by prison and torture, whom we refuse to believe in other matters, why not in everything else, when nothing positive is to be gained from the deluded confession of a demoniacally possessed old hag.”(De Lamiis)
Zilboorg
Fraud?
Oppression & cure
Homogenizing culture
Defence of the dominant ethic
Excusing the oppressors
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Author: Immanuel
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