Head games: what are the rules for defining mental illness?
Pharmacracy: Medicine and Politics in America, by Thomas Szasz, Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 212 pages, $24.95 Creating Mental Illness, by Allan V. Horwitz, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 289 pages, $32.50 I’VE NEVER MET Zacarias Moussaoui, but I have a feeling we would not get along. At a hearing in Alexandria, Virginia, last spring, the accused terrorist said he prayed for “the destruction of the United States of America” and “the destruction of the Jewish people and state.” He also had harsh words for Russia. As an American Jew descended from Russian immigrants who has close relatives in Israel, I’ve got four strikes against me. Moussaoui not only hates total strangers; he is not exactly gracious toward people who try to help him either. He denounced his court-appointed attorneys as a “bloodsucking death team” of “Jewish zealots.” He accused U.S. Judge Leonie Brinkema, who patiently guided him as he struggled to represent himself, of “preparing me for the gas chamber.” He refuse
