Otherwise identical with last year's American edition, the English version has abandoned the original title, Sex by Prescription - in order, it appears, to gratify the author's veritable passion for alliteration. He isn't aware how lucky he is that his latest book has appeared at this particular stage in the history of our culture's reflections on medicine - or rather, by now he is: I happen to know that recently he was shown Ian Kennedy's Reith Lectures (which, highly indebted to Szasz without acknowledgment, criticise him for what he hasn't said), and has decided to remain silent. For me, the relation between the two is particularly baffling: a few years ago I sat on a brains trust with both of them, and Kennedy was highly critical of those very elements in Szasz's philosophy which he has meanwhile assimilated.

LRB 6 August 1981 | PDF Download