Lloyd I. Sederer, MD

“Reacher” season 1 is now available to stream on Amazon Prime.

When Reacher (Jack, no middle name) is in peril, which happens frequently in the Reacher books, 2 Tom Cruise films, and throughout this long-awaited series, you can rest assured: “Don’t worry about him.”

Reacher does not seek trouble—trouble finds him. When it does, mercy on the evildoer behaving badly.

There are 25 Reacher books, all with the same protagonist—a run matched only by Nancy Drew—created by Lee Child, a successful, but laid-off British TV director. He came to the States at 39 and began writing a book a year. His first Reacher book, 

bestseller list, as has every one since—quite a few have been #1. A Reacher book sells every 9 seconds around the globe.

The Reacher streaming series, based on Lee Child’s books, with 8 parts at ~50 minutes each, is a treat and a relief. Reacher has not disappeared from the screen—only Tom Cruise, who played him in 2 full-length films. The credible Reacher we have been waiting to see is played by Alan Ritchson, with keen understatement and as much deadliness. Credit for the series is given to 

, but the story, events, and characters are drawn from a number of Child’s books.

Reacher gets off a bus in a Southern town. He wants to learn more about Blind Blake (1895-1934), a blues artist who potentially died there. The town is prospering after hard times. A businessman, Kliner (Currie Graham), came to town 5 years earlier, built a lucrative company (ostensibly legally), and then rained money to rebuild a broke down town. He buys off some cops, and the mayor, so it looks like crime will pay.

Not so: When the threat of exposure of Kliner Industries is at risk, Kliner and his psychopath son (Chris Webster) get dead serious about keeping the lid on Kliner’s operations. You know—only dead men don’t talk. His company’s customer is a band of merciless South Americans, and unless Kliner keeps delivering his product, he will be toast—and not the kind served with breakfast.

Soon after getting off the bus, trying to have a piece of Georgia’s famed peach pie, Reacher is arrested for murder. This is not the best way to befriend the town’s chief detective, Oscar Finley (Malcolm Goodwin), or a home-grown, tougher-than-nails female police officer, Roscoe Conklin (Willa Fitzgerald), but it will do. A killing, exacted in a distinctly “Venezuelan way,” has marred the bucolic town, and there are far more gruesome murders to come. Jail alone has not left Reacher in a very bad mood, because of what happened to his older and taller brother. There is no stopping Reacher, Finley, and Roscoe from hunting down—with intent to kill—the individuals responsible for spilling blood and stoking fear. Suspense and danger mount and gallop (like a Reacher novel) to a fiery end. Don’t worry: Remember, Reacher is there.

Reacher shines as a character when working with smart women, built to repel trouble and usually in uniform. In this case, there are two. The town cop, Roscoe, and Reacher’s former military sergeant, Neagley (Maria Sten), who is called in from the “private sector” to add more firepower to the action. With Reacher paired with Detective Finley, a tweedy Harvard obsessional running from his life in Boston, we have a bit of a reprise of the “Odd Couple,” like Felix and Oscar did for a long time on network TV. Reacher’s older brother, Joe, and parents appear in carefully staged flashbacks, giving Reacher’s character more depth and texture. The ensemble plays like a finely tuned orchestra, but with guns, not violins.

 The first is his size, weight, and strength. At 6’5,” 250 pounds, Reacher metes out justice no matter what the enemy strength may be. As a former major in the Army’s military police (MP), Reacher is used to rounding up criminals—those that are trained to kill.

 The second is Reacher’s brain. With an eidetic memory, the sleuthing powers of Sherlock Holmes, and a singular focus on getting the job done. He also can think like his foes—which helps a lot in finding and outwitting them.

 The third is Reacher’s character. Vigilante justice allows him to break a lot of rules. He cannot abide with losing. He is an itinerant—here one day, gone the next. After a score of years in the Army, going where ordered, he is now a free man. As a minimalist, Reacher does not need much, materially or emotionally. He carries only a folding toothbrush, his passport, and some retirement cash wired to Western Union. Clothes? He tosses those after 3 days and gets a new, inexpensive outfit.

A great deal of truth is written into the Reacher fiction oeuvre. I have read it all. Child is a wise man and a gifted storyteller. As Philip Roth said, if you want the truth, read fiction.

is a psychiatrist, public health doctor, and nonfiction writer.

Articles

Reacher: a wicked action-packed new show. 

Reacher: Don’t Worry About Him

 reported that those identified as “vaccine hesitant” are “all-in” for taking medication (if ill, of course) for the treatment of COVID-19.

 from COVID-19 with a highly effective (if not lasting) vaccine that has been given safely to millions are ready for COVID-19 

 with pills. Standing tall for pills—but 

 the vaccine—is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, an anti-vax champion who has erroneously claimed that vaccines cause sterility.

, instead of taking a vaccine given safely to many people. In the United States alone, more than 200 million doses of the Moderna vaccine have been administered since its United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval in December 2020.

Yet, 200 million doses are not enough evidence to sway many a vaccine refuser, including the Florida governor. Instead, tens of millions of 

Americans—not strangers, but family, friends, and coworkers—are becoming ill. When will a brilliantly lit fire under resistance be ignited? Stoked because resisters are significantly sicker with COVID-19 than those who were vaccinated (and boosted). Their illness is much more likely to require hospital care and disproportionably fill the hospital morgue. These are our relatives, friends, and coworkers—not strangers—who are overloading our hospitals and overwhelming our doctors and nurses. Yet they will be eligible to receive COVID-19 treatment medication: “all in” to receive a largely unproven, perhaps unsafe, vial of tablets or capsules.

 moment in the COVID-19 vaccination siege (see Brad Pitt’s film credits; otherwise see Homer, then Virgil) where COVID-19 treatment serves as a Trojan Horse that can enter the heretofore unassailable, closed doors (and minds) of the vaccine hesitant? The timing may be right: Might COVID-19’s protracted impact, now more than 2 years of raining economic misery and killing over 800,00 Americans,

 unlatch the doors now closed to vaccination? Soften calcified opinions?

We know that people change their minds (and behaviors) 

—about what to wear, what to eat, close relationships, where to go or live, cigarette smoking, and dying by suicide. Every person has the 

to change their mind, with time and when circumstances change. Change is the rule more than the exception.

Estimates are that 2.4 billion pills are ingested every year in the United States.

 Americans love pills! A handy fact, as COVID-19 continues to destroy.

I do not imagine a drift to prevention will engage many of those prone to storm US government institutions, or the rioters in the known to be civil country of Canada. Baked-in mis- and disinformation and a “live free or die” ideology generate stubbornly held convictions. These are high walls to scale, which make the United States a poor performer on the world stage of citizens vaccinated. Recall, however, that minds—and habits—were changed about tobacco when disinformation was replaced with the truth that smoking kills. 

We do not need to bat 1000, nor could we. But what about a US vaccination batting average of 800 (80% who get 2 shots, plus booster). Might that goal be oiled by unanimity of mind for treatment? Not so big a step from prevention.

How many lives would be saved? Family health and financial suffering diminished? Business recovery made possible, all by prevention—before illness? Being able to keep open our favorite local restaurants, bodegas, cleaners, and car washes, and restoring zest to the entertainment industry?

 say caregivers—everywhere, every day. But not shots? The Trojan Horse, with its army of influencers, is about to broach the gates of the fortress that heretofore has said, “no” to COVID-19 vaccination. People do change their minds. A lot has happened in these past 2 years to kindle change. Will treatment strike the match that will kindle the fires of prevention? As has been said by many a foe to our country, “Americans may be stubborn, but they are not stupid.”

I learned in medical school to meet individuals where they are and help them go where they fear going. Bring on the pills! Let’s see how far pills might change public opinion—especially about the COVID-19 shots.

 is a psychiatrist, public health doctor, and nonfiction writer.

1. Facher L. Some Americans are hesitant about Covid vaccines. But they’re all-in on unproven treatments. 

. January 27, 2022. Accessed January 31, 2022. 

https://www.statnews.com/2022/01/27/some-americans-are-hesitant-about-covid-vaccines-but-theyre-all-in-on-unproven-treatments/

2. Jeong A. DeSantis suggests vaccines hurt fertility. A study indicates otherwise—but says catching coronavirus might. 

. January 21, 2022. Accessed January 31, 2022. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/01/21/covid-vaccine-infertility-pregnancy-desantis/

3. Perrone M. US gives full approval to Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine. 

. January 31, 2022. Accessed January 31, 2022. 

https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-moderna-vaccine-approved-dc6f5ac9eeb31667d5a28f0954335b65

4. Adam D. The pandemic’s true death toll: millions more than official counts. Nature. January 18, 2022. Accessed January 31, 2022. 

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00104-8

5. Preidt R. Americans taking more prescription drugs than ever. 

. August 3, 2017. Accessed January 31, 2022. 

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiU84Oxrvr1AhVfjokEHeZdCRUQFnoECAIQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.webmd.com%2Fdrug-medication%2Fnews%2F20170803%2Famericans-taking-more-prescription-drugs-than-ever-survey&usg=AOvVaw1ET-1IJzYVG9YJ2Yr5JinK

Millions of unvaccinated Americans are becoming ill. How will a brilliantly lit fire under resistance be ignited?

The Trojan Horse and Breaching the Fortress of Vaccine Refusers

Your space capsule has just landed after 4 years of hurtling about in the galaxy. All radio communication was lost some years earlier when your ship was hit by a movie camera from a Brad Pitt film. You cannot sue since 

 has yet to open an intergalactic court. You are oblivious to how you immediately will be thrown into the game. Perhaps by the rescue folks in the helicopter—why are they wearing masks instead of helmets? Unbeknownst, you now have been tagged to play COVID Dodgeball. Funny, NASA thought you might bring back some horrific infectious disease from exposure to a contagious asteroid growth. Is the space program out to lunch, or do they need better funding?

COVID Dodgeball is a new game going “viral” across the United States, definitely surpassing “Minecraft” in followers. It is called 

.* Do not be fooled: You may think you are not playing, but you are. It is inescapable, unless you are living alone in the Arctic Circle (pets do not count).

COVID Dodgeball can be played in any and all settings, and by persons of any age, gender, race, or ethnicity: in supermarkets, at concerts, at parades, at home, in cars and subways, in nursing homes, in movie theatres—you name it. It can even be played at the DMV (as I discovered—but too late).

Billions of Earth’s inhabitants are tossing the dodgeball at subsonic speeds without regard for who it hits, or how badly. The legions of sick, those getting sick, and those not evidently sick are sources of the dodgeball, which is why COVID Dodgeball is really hard to win. It is everywhere, but not in your dog, cat, or goldfish. A dust mite is 2000 times the size of the spherical COVID critters, caked with really tiny spikes that know how to get into your RNA.

Put your ripe space suit back on, get a big oxygen tank, and go on an unplanned crash diet. There are not many others with your dodgeball defenses since the space program has withered in recent decades. You are the lucky one, assuming you do not want to get sick and maybe die.

The rest of Earth’s inhabitants, being much larger than dust mites, are easy prey to the invisible, evil dodgeball—except 

 those who are wearing face masks. Once the ball has hit the defenseless others, its primary goal—and the purpose of the game—is to replicate better and faster than mice or rabbits, trying to forestall future human efforts to win the game. Were you thinking of a moral defense? Think again. The dodgeball has no conscience, being raised without parents; it does not fuss over stopping your breathing. Have mercy on those without space suits; some may be family.

What about the children, you may ask? They are smaller targets and mostly have intact inner defenses against the dodgeball. But they nevertheless are participants in the game because they can and will hurl the ball right at you, while feeling pretty fine themselves—most of them, most of the time, so far.

Multinational pundits declare that zombies do not play dodgeball. These 

 tiny creatures have their own, apparently satisfying, ways of pummeling you.

But all heretofore said must be just about

 to many of our bodily organs if we fail to dodge the errant ball. But the dodgeball is a 2-headed devil.

 side of the dodgeball is studded with different also very tiny, but precise and misery-making spikes. These prey on 

. Are you drinking too much? Taking grammy’s oxycontin? Predicting your early demise? No appetite, or too much appetite. Forget about sleep. Dodgeball hits do cause a lot of mental distress, including anxiety, depression, alcohol and drug abuse, and posttraumatic stress disorder. That is the other side of the dodgeball—and reason enough to dodge as best you can. Plus, there is the mysterious long (course) spike that lingers for months, messing with thinking, word finding, and auditory nerve functioning, while inducing major-league exhaustion, as if you had run a marathon even though you are just trying to get out of bed.

These COVID Dodgeball-generated feelings and thought problems do not appear to be transmissible, even to those yet to be born. But their psychic pain can run deep and stay too long (I can say, as a fully trained psychiatrist). The psychic spikes of the dodgeball are also invisible to the naked eye, yet they produce torment not to be sneezed at—to those tagged by the dodgeball, and to those who care about them.

As you surely have concluded, COVID Dodgeball must be a big seller. How? Ask your broker or watch an evening business show—there are many of them. But, unlike Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson, there is no stock to be had for COVID Dodgeball, although this spares investors from the tumult of market “corrections,” especially while we are contending with COVID.

There are tens of millions—more—of individuals in the United States 

 carrying the wicked dodgeball, with its 2-sided protrusions designed to whack you. There are winners and losers. Winners are those who played the game artfully. Losers are those who are older, ill with other illnesses, or immunocompromised, and those who did not put on their spacesuits.

My great thanks to Heidi Anne Duerr, associate editorial director at 

We’re all playing the “viral” game—but how do we win?

COVID Dodgeball

When I left New York City in the summer of 2020, as did many others (especially those like me who are at high risk for COVID-19), I left the "Writing  for the Lay Public" workshop that I cofounded with Deborah Cabaniss, MD. That moment meant losing the ongoing, exceptional personal and professional privilege the workshop afforded me. No more thinking and writing with some of the most generous, thoughtful, and dedicated people I have known. No more of the heartening feeling (in short supply nowadays) I took from witnessing the trust and support the group members gave one another. And no one to teach me!

Once a month, repeating each academic semester, those who had signed up to attend gathered for 90 minutes. We were all there to listen and respond to a fellow workshop member’s draft—an approximately 800-word article written for the workshop and read aloud there. Because this workshop was hosted by the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia Medical School, attendance was limited to members of the department, including residents, fellows, graduate students in psychology, junior and senior faculty, and members of the neuroscience community. The department chair came for 1 meeting to read and hear comments on an essay he wanted to publish—a kind endorsement of the workshop.

As I recall, there were 10 participants 9 years ago, and 30 at the end of the 9-year run. Workshop members’ nonfiction commentaries and essays found their ways into dozens of online publications, including 

Some workshop members came for 1 semester; others for a few sequential semesters. Some left and returned, and a handful of die-hards have participated for about all of the 18 semesters.

I co-led the workshop with a senior faculty member in the Psychiatry Department’s Resident and Fellow Training Division. As a psychoanalyst and writer of professional books, she was a great complement to what I had to offer—which, I think, was mostly a faith in those seeking to give voice to their professional (and personal) experiences, latent without a medium for expression.

This was not a didactic course. There was no homework, either (except for writing). Collectively, participants and coleaders created a safe and supportive environment for all who wanted to build on the craft of nonfiction writing. The workshop members were the best teachers: They listened and commented 

, as might the intended audience for the article. The discussion often considered who the audience was for the written piece. We frequently asked, what is your message or point of view?

Clarity of writing, not literary or grammatical skill, carried the day. Essay beginnings and endings, brevity, and a steady, narrative line that carried the reader from the first to the last paragraph were stressed—humor and levity, as well, to help the “medicine” go down. All of this was done virtually once COVID-19 emerged.

The topics were as varied as the participants. Though, to my mind, they all sought to make sense of being human and our so very transitory lives. The writings were about loss; wonder; transitions; setbacks and successes; love and attachment; mental and addictive disorders; our brains and bodies, inseparable; trying to comprehend a paradoxical and ironical world; those individuals and communities who seemed to have lost their moral mooring; those who have abandoned the common good; professional experiences that taught or transformed; change or the impediments to change; and more. In other words, whatever the author set out to portray. Inescapably, the last few semesters had many essays about life surrounded and invaded by the viral demon, COVID-19, including virtually practicing the art of psychiatry and psychotherapy.

At times, I also provided the writing workshop (or a variant of it) at the New York Academy of Medicine; at professional meetings; and at workshop lunches with residents, fellows, and psychology trainees after a Grand Rounds. These workshops were remarkable in their energy, creativity, participation, and wise consideration of grave (and humorous) happenings. What was missing from these one-time events, however, was the power of a group that had come together, built trust over time, and sought to learn how to write well by encouraging and teaching one another.

I write this remembrance on the eve of starting again—as the only remedy I could divine was starting again, somewhere else, with a different community of participants.

Here’s how a writing workshop encouraged this doctor’s enthusiasm. 

The Writing Workshop: Giving Voice to Unique Professional Experiences

by Bret Stetka; Portland: Timber Press, 2021

When the fireball of planet Earth cooled, some 4 billion years ago, land (rock) and water (seas) remained. But no life. Yet, our planet was endowed with the climate and chemicals needed to germinate proto-RNA and DNA. Which, in (lots) of time, fashioned the molecules essential for the creation of life, at first free-floating, then enveloping themselves with permeable perimeters to become single cells, then becoming multicellular organisms, and so forth.



It is an incredible story. Treat yourself to reading this book, and its extraordinary depiction of the human brain’s evolution so far—and where we might be going.

After these not-at-all modest beginnings, Stetka keeps us marching ahead in time: He vividly portrays life’s wondrous journey from our likely common progenitor, the sea sponge (titular for him), to the abundance of life we see today. His “time-travel” depicts, through elegant science reporting and great storytelling, for example, how this improbable organism, without organs or nervous system, launched us. A “tortured {evolutionary} mess” ensued, which spawned plant and animal phyla, from which we all are descendants. We have in 

, a Science Bible, if I may—how A begat B, which begat C, and so forth. Written by a lone man with clarity, brevity, and humanity. Bravo!

Our guide and narrator, understandably, is particularly fascinated by what he calls, “Upright Citizens,” particularly chimpanzees, bonobos, apes, and humans (all members of the Family of Hominids). I had no idea how I, too, would become enraptured by this odd lot of fellow creatures (and even more enraptured by human evolution) until I read Stetka’s tales. It has been said that a great book cannot be great due to its subject alone; the writer, as well, must be passionate about their subject and infect the reader with that same ardor. Stetka is a keen observer and raconteur. This book, his first, is replete with bon mots, phrases, wise asides, and a sprinkling of irony and humor, which make you want to turn to the individual beside you (in my case, my wife) and say, I gotta read you this! That is what awaits you in 229 pages (plus notes, bibliography, and index)—lest you think this book is a door stopper of 1000 pages!

Bret Stetka is a nonpracticing physician; a science writer who frequently contributes to 

 and NPR, and whose work has appeared in 

 is massive, including self-awareness, community, violence, attachment, empathy, problem-solving, birth and death (including grief), tools, sex, genetics, neuroscience, competition, language, the ceremony and ritual (thus spirituality and religion) integral to creating society and culture, symbolic cognition (at the root of creativity), mental disorders, and the awesome and fearful germ-line editing and engineering that CRISPR-Cas9 has introduced.

How did we become “us”? What were the unique and the universal steps along the way? Where on earth are we headed? Crack open this book and take a read. You will be transported, illuminated, and delighted.

is a psychiatrist, public health doctor, and medical journalist. He is Adjunct Professor at the Columbia/Mailman School of Public Health. The author's latest book (#13) is

How did we become what we are and where on earth are we headed? 

A History of the Human Brain From the Sea Sponge to CRISPR, How Our Brain Evolved

Edited by C.V. Haldipur, James L. Knoll IV, and Eric v.d. Luft; Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2019
	324 pages • $44.95 (hardcover)

I was a first-year psychiatric resident at Upstate Medical Center, at the SUNY in Syracuse. I would be dazzled and envious sitting in a seminar with the by then legendary, Dr Thomas Szasz. Everyone seemed to regard him in either a hallowed or contentious way since his book, 

, was published almost 10 years earlier. My envy, by the way, came from wanting to have a mind like his: I was ready to make a deal with the devil if I were suddenly able to think as well as he did. His capacity to formulate, articulate, and argue ideas was as keen as was this lean, diminutive (in size) Eastern European who never lost his accent.

The seminar would end, as would my academic cocoon. It was time for me to leave the classroom and run a few blocks to the state psychiatric hospital, where my on-call would begin at 5 pm. Breathless, I arrived at the admitting office to find the Syracuse police waiting for me. They were surrounding a 250-pound agitated, psychotic man. Sometimes there would be two patients. However many, patients were generally exceptionally displeased to be held against their will. The local cops smiled and said, “Hey Doc, you’re late. Here’s your patient. We’re outta here.”

“Myth” certainly confronted the reality I experienced at that moment. As it did throughout my career as a psychiatrist. I have had to wrestle with Szasz’s ideas, especially during my years as Medical Director of 

, Mental Health Commissioner for NYC, and, for the past 12 years, as Chief Medical Officer of the largest state mental health agency in the United States. I am grateful for Szasz’s influence on me, which has insisted that I take no ideas for granted, recognize the social power I can exercise, and try to do the right thing, even if that sometimes meant running counter to his teachings.

C.V. Haldipur, James L. Knoll IV, and Eric v.d. Luft have written what might be considered, in the best sense of the term, an 

. They have compiled an extraordinary group of psychiatrists, philosophers, ethicists, social scientists, researchers, humanists, and forensic experts-many who knew Dr Szasz personally or who had debated him in public or on paper, or both. Yet this edited compilation is not hagiography; instead, it is a penetrating, deep, and intrepid exploration of Szasz’s oeuvre, and the indelible impact he has had on the practice of psychiatry, in this country and abroad. Even if younger members of my profession (and philosophers of history and science) do not know his work, they live under its long and fulsome shadow.

Szasz’s intellectual tools were history, philosophical argument, ethics, logic, and humanism. He was a master at demonstrating how metaphor can take on the power of fact, and how it was used in ways that could erode liberty. The most renowned, and enduring, of his metaphors is the “myth of mental illness.” His work in the book so titled, and some 30 volumes and hundreds of papers that followed, brought him the mantle of being “anti-psychiatry.” But he was not; he was a libertarian who held the importance of freedom over everything else (and he was clear to also say that with liberty came personal responsibility).

Haldipur and colleagues unbundle Szasz’s vast range of intellectual productions in 19 chapters divided into three book sections in 

Intellectual Roots of Szasz’s Thought; The Concept of Mental Illness

; and Szasz’s Larger Impact, as well as a superb summary epilogue by Dr Haldipur. The writings consider not just the material Szasz produced but the man and his compelling, often disruptive, rhetoric. The chapters draw from psychiatry, psychoanalysis (Szasz was formally trained as an analyst in Chicago before moving east), forensics, social contract theory, values, ethics, language, communications theory, and good old clinical wisdom.

The contributors do not shy away from some of Dr Szasz’s most contentious claims, including: his highly vocal opposition to involuntary hospitalization and treatment of people with mental illness; his unwavering position that suicide was a right, not to be denied people under any circumstances (hard to bear since we know the compulsion to kill oneself is usually transient-not necessarily in thinking but in action, which can result in an irrevocable act-and that those who do not die are almost always grateful they survived); that “doctoring” was inimical to helping people with “problems in living,” as was prescribing psychoactive medications; to allowing people with mental disorders to “

; and the inanity of the insanity defense.

Thomas Szasz was born in Budapest, Hungary. His educated, Jewish parents fled their native country to the United States in 1938, when Hitler invaded Austria. They understood that Hungary was next in the Nazi’s sights (as it later would be oppressed by Communism). Szasz was 18 and multilingual when he arrived in this country, speaking French and German in addition to his native Hungarian, but he spoke not a word of English. You would never know because it was in the English language he immediately excelled in medical school and medicine.

Tom Szasz, whom I knew and learned from for 50 years, was a man whose persona was warm and engaging, except when publicly delivering his polemical arguments. He meant to admonish about the unintended consequences of would-be good intentions-that individuals needed to be protected from the power of the collective. His aim was to stir, not lull, the minds of all of us entrusted with the privilege of serving people with mental (and addictive) disorders. You may not have agreed with him, but he would surely put your assumptions and conventions to the test. There was no such thing as casual thinking or parroted instruction when in a conversation with him. That was a gift, whether you felt it or not, to all who knew, read, and debated him over the decades of his intellectual prowess.

in 2012 at the age of 92. I wonder what he would think of this comprehensive, intellectually challenging, carefully and clearly written analysis of his work? While I cannot imagine what he might say from a podium, I believe, privately, he would have appreciated the rigor, range, and intelligence brought to bear in this book. For those who knew or read this extraordinary man, your reading 

 will light up your remembrances. For those who barely know him or his work, you will surely be amazed by his contributions, whether you think them right or not (or some of both).

The Addiction Solution: Treating Our Dependence on Opioids and Other Drugs

 (Scribner, 2018), is now available in paperback.

Mental Illness vs Brain Disorders: From Szasz to DSM-5

This article was originally published 4/24/19 and has since been updated.

Dr Sederer is Adjunct Professor, Department of Epidemiology, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, and Distinguished Psychiatrist Advisor to the New York State Office of Mental Health (OMH). The author reports no conflicts of interest concerning the subject matter of this article.

 Appelbaum PS, Gutheil TG. “Rotting with their rights on”: constitutional theory and clinical reality in drug refusal by psychiatric patients. 

A penetrating, deep, and intrepid exploration of Szasz’s oeuvre, and the indelible impact he has had on the practice of psychiatry, in this country and abroad.