The Second Sin

If, as the Old Testament tells us, the First or Original Sin was the knowledge of good and evil, then the knowledge of clear speech was the “Second Sin,” At Babel, God punished man for this transgression with the Divine Confusion, and we have been misleading each other ever since. Dr. Thomas Szasz believes that it is this confusion of language that has produced much of the inhumanity, intolerance, and outright stupidity which today affect everything from our politics to our sex lives. This is Dr. Szasz’s effort to dispel some of this confusion. It is a collection of penetrating, fresh, and often humorous thoughts, ranging from sex and the family to drugs, schizophrenia, and psychiatry. For example, Dr. Szasz points out that when a person acts as if he were speaking to God we say he is praying, but when he acts as if God were speaking to him we say he has “schizophrenia” — and we look to medical science to “cure” him of his “mental illness.” Other excerpts from the Second Formerly, Americans charges with murder were considered innocent until proven guilty; now they are considered insane until proven sane. the primary sexual activity of mankind. In the nineteenth century, it was a disease; in the twentieth, it is a cure. Treating addiction to heroin with methadone is like treating addiction to Scotch with Bourbon.