The Thomas S. Szasz Award
for Outstanding Contributions to
the Cause of Civil Liberties


History shows that individual rights have been incessantly violated and are always threatened by coercive authority. That the price of liberty is eternal vigilance is a truth long evident to friends of freedom. Those exceptional individuals who dedicate themselves to guarding the liberties of their fellow man against the encroachment of the state deserve our recognition and our gratitude.

For more than five decades, Thomas S. Szasz has distinguished himself as the preeminent defender of individual rights in the fields of psychiatry and psychology. He has remained a steadfast champion of the classical-liberal values of voluntary interaction, the rule of law, and an open society. His struggle on behalf of civil liberties has been indefatigable, sustained despite intense opposition over a lifetime of brilliant intellectual accomplishment.

Uncompromising in his classical liberal beliefs, Thomas Szasz has been ready—indeed eager—to do battle with massive and entrenched establishments. His struggle on behalf of civil liberties has been indefatigable, sustained over a lifetime of brilliant intellectual accomplishment.

It is only just, therefore, that an effort be made to perpetuate the work of Thomas Szasz, by recognizing and honoring those who follow in his footsteps.

The Thomas S. Szasz Award is a tribute conferred annually by the Center for Independent Thought (LFB's parent organization) on a person or organization, American or foreign, judged to have contributed in an outstanding degree to the cause of civil liberty. The award, which includes a $1,000 prize and plaque, was established to honor Dr. Szasz's career-long battle for civil liberties, property rights, and limits on government power.

Emeritus professor of psychiatry at the State University of New York Health Science Center/Syracuse, Szasz is the author of some 25 books, hundreds of scholarly articles, and a regular column in The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty. His most recent books are The Medicalization of Everyday Life: Selected Essays and Coercion as Cure: A Critical History of Psychiatry.

Szasz's other books include The Myth of Mental Illness; The Therapeutic State; Ceremonial Chemistry: The Ritual Persecution of Drugs, Addicts and Pushers; Insanity: The Idea and It's Consequences; Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society's Unwanted; Fatal Freedom: The Ethics and Politics of Suicide; Pharmacracy: Medicine and Politics in America; Liberation by Oppression: A Comparative Study of Slavery and Psychiatry, and "My Madness Saved Me": The Madness and Marriage of Virginia Woolf


Past Szasz Award Recipients:

2006: Historian Robert Higgs (general category) for his work on the reasons and methods by which government grows and usurps liberty, particularly how the state creates and exploits fears in order to expand its power over its subjects. Psychologist-philosopher Robert Spillane (professional category) for his many year's of work in the fight against what Szasz calls the medicalization of moral behavior, as well as his campaigns against the mass drugging of children.

2005: Libertarian/feminist Joan Kennedy Taylor for her lifelong devotion to liberty. Brian Caplan, economist at George Mason University, whose recent paper, "The Economics of Szasz: Preferences, Constraints, and Mental Illness," restates Szasz's philosophy of human behavior in economic terms. The paper appeared in the journal Rationality and Society.

2004: Irving Louis Horowitz, has worked for several decades to develop a political sociology that can measure the extent of a society's personal freedom and State-sanctioned violence. Jacob Sullum, author, journalist, and winner of the general award, relentlessly defends the rights of consenting adults to consume even potentially harmful products, such as drugs and tobacco. He is a consistent champion of all civil and economic liberties.

2003: Ward Connerly, outspoken advocate of equal rights and opponent of governmental racial preferences, was selected for his achievements in reshaping the national dialogue on race in America, and moving the nation toward the ideal of a colorblind government. Anthony Stadlen, a London psychotherapist, was selected for his outstanding writing and teaching in the way of Thomas Szasz.

2002: U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, a tireless defender of individual freedom in all spheres during his long tenure in the U.S. House of Representatives. While his emphasis has been on economic freedom, he has also battled on behalf of personal privacy and civil liberties. Keith Hoeller, editor of the Review of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry, for his newspaper columns about the dangers posed to individual liberty by the mental-health laws.

2001: Renowned columnist and author Nat Hentoff for his vocal and unwavering defense of civil liberties, decrying, without partisanship, attempts to abrogate the Constitutional guarantees of free speech, privacy, due process, and equal protection under the law. Dr. Ron Leifer for championing Thomas Szasz's views on mental illness, liberty, and responsibility in his private practice as psychiatrist, in his writing and teaching, and in his psychiatric testimonies.

2000: Law professor George J. Alexander, for more than thirty years, has championed the application of Szasz's views on mental illness to the law, in his numerous publications, his teaching, and his lectures.

1999: Jeffrey Schaler, for his leading role in the development of secular, autonomous self-help groups for people with problems related to drug use. Chip Mellor and Clint Bolick of the Institute for Justice, for their litigation and cutting-edge constitutional work in favor of economic liberty, property rights, and school choice.

1998: Robert D. Kephart for his long-time support for liberty-oriented organizations.

1997: David Kopel and Paul Blackman for No More Wacos. Bettina Bien Graves for lifetime achievement.

1996: Philip Zimmerman for developing Pretty Good Privacy encryption software.

1995: James Bovard for "prolific writing about government abuses of individuals in their economic and personal lives." Julie Stewart for her work as founder of Families Against Mandatory Minimums.

1994: Professor Lord Peter T. Bauer for being "an eloquent champion of free markets and the rule of law around the world."

1993: Richard Vatz for promoting the work and ideas of Thomas Szasz.

1992: Richard A. Epstein for Forbidden Grounds and for a "lifetime of intellectual work on behalf of individual liberty and property rights."

1991: Karl Hess for lifetime achievement.



Click below to read
Richard E. Vatz and Jeffrey Schaler's article
on Dr. Szasz and Psychiatry:

Psychiatry's Valid but Dishonest Reconsiderations
 Much of the newest wave of psychiatric self-criticism is salutary and
headed in the right direction; the problem is the field's unwillingness
to credit the psychiatrist who paved the way



Bukovsky and Levatter
Named Winners
of 2007 Szasz Award

Former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, who spent years in psychiatric prisons for opposing the brutal communist regime, and Arizona physician and author Ross Levatter have been named the winners of the 2007 Thomas Szasz Awards for Outstanding Contributions to the Cause of Civil Liberties.

Bukovsky won in the general category, Levatter in the professional category.

The Szasz Award, named for the prominent opponent of psychiatric coercion and other forms of oppression in the name of health, is a tribute conferred annually on persons or organizations, American or foreign, judged to have significantly advanced the cause of civil liberty. The award is intended to encourage civil libertarians to persevere in the battle to protect personal autonomy from state encroachment.

The general award is given to an author or activist who has done exceptional work to popularize the importance of civil liberties. The professional award is given to a specialist (psychiatrist, physician, psychologist, sociologist, or economist), who has made advances in civil liberties on a theoretical level. The winners each receive a plaque and $1,000.

According to Wikipedia, Bukovsky "was one of the first to expose the use of psychiatric imprisonment against political prisoners in the USSR. He spent a total of twelve years in Soviet prisons, labor camps and in psikhushkas, forced-treatment psychiatric hospitals used by the regime as special prisons." Bukovsky was arrested and imprisoned several times for organizing events on behalf of persecuted dissents.

"In 1971," according to Wikipedia, "Bukovsky managed to smuggle to the West over 150 pages documenting abuse of psychiatric institutions for political reasons in the USSR. The information galvanized human rights activists worldwide (including inside the country) and was a pretext for his subsequent arrest in the same year. At the trial in January 1972 Bukovsky was accused of slandering the Soviet psychiatry, contacts with foreign journalists and possession and distribution of samizdat (Article 70-1, 7 years of imprisonment plus 5 years in exile)."

While in confinement, he and an imprisoned psychiatrist wrote A Manual on Psychiatry for Dissidents.

In 1976 the Soviets authorities deported Bukovsky in a trade for a communist leader from Chile. Among his writings since gaining his freedom are To Build a Castle (1979), Soviet Hypocrisy and Western Gullibility (1987), and To Choose Freedom (1987).

One of his most recent writings is a Washington Post op-ed (http://tinyurl.com/bcoew), "Torture's Long Shadow," in which he criticized the Bush administration's use of torture on suspected terrorists because, among other reasons, it corrupts those who wield it. "[I]f Vice President Cheney is right and that some "cruel, inhumane or degrading" (CID) treatment of captives is a necessary tool for winning the war on terrorism, then the war is lost already," Bukovsky wrote.

In responding to Bukovsky's selection for the award, Dr. Szasz said:

"Bukovsky, more than any other recipient of these Awards so far, has experienced first hand the brutality and injustice of psychiatric coercion. Moreover, he has denounced, with great courage and eloquence, what is usually called the 'political abuse' of psychiatry, a practice I and many of us consider intrinsic to every and all use of psychiatric force, regardless of alleged 'medical' justifications for it. I salute Vladimir Bukovsky for his enormous contribution to alerting the world to the dangers of psychiatric power.

"As the allegiance of Church and State, justifying theological coercion, was and is, eo ipso, incompatible with a free society, so too is the alliance of Psychiatry and the State, justifying 'therapeutic' coercion."

Ross Levatter, a radiologist in Arizona, has contributed a long list of articles and reviews discussing and elaborating Szasz's critique of the "therapeutic state," the government's use of coercion in the name of health. Levatter's work has appeared in The Freeman and Liberty magazines. He received his medical degree from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine in 1982.

To read Dr. Levatter's acceptance remarks, CLICK HERE.

Now accepting nominations for the 2008 Szasz Award

Nominations for the 2008 award will be accepted through August 31, 2008. Material relevant to the award is invited for submission. For more information or to place a nomination, send email to Andrea Rich or write to:

Szasz Award Nominations
73 Spring St., Suite 408
New York, NY 10012