Legacy of Thomas Szasz
Naomi Stadlen
Memories of Tom's presence leave a special 'legacy' in addition to his writing. He was direct and unpretentious, so all conversation with him felt very real. I thought two examples might convey the inspiring person that he was.
Tony my husband invited me to hear Tom talking at the Wellcome Museum in London. I don't remember the talk but I do remember what happened afterwards. I watched the way Tom fielded questions.
Discussion got going quickly. Psychiatrists and doctors, mostly men in formal dark suits, leapt to their feet to ask questions. These questions sounded increasingly aggressive, so I was very surprised to see how much Tom seemed to enjoy them.
He welcomed each questioner with graceful courtesy. 'I am delighted that you have asked me that question because you have raised an important subject,' he would say, unhurried, and with a strong Hungarian accent. Then, in some miraculous manner, he seemed to take the question and turn it around so that, instead of it sticking its barbs into him and forcing him to defend himself, he examined it and then reshaped it into a tool to put forward what he thought. He grew excited, finding examples to illustrate his response and so in retrospect the question did look important, though not in the deadly way that had been intended.
The moment he stopped, another exasperated suit would jump up and try to corner him. Again, Tom would welcome the question and thank the asker. It seemed to me tht he had 'won' the evening. Not one of those psychiatrits was able to disconcert him.
The second example is from at least twenty years later. Tom was giving a seminar at the Portman Hotel in London on 13 June 2010. It was one of my husband's Inner Circle Seminars to celebrate Tom's ninetieth birthday that April. There was a sound engineer who arrived early, commandeered a large table at the far end of the room, and took a lot of trouble setting up his audio equipment. I felt sorry for him because the seminar was an all-day one and there wasn't much for him to do. He looked middle-aged and quite experienced. I imagined he'd stretch his legs and go for a coffee, once the seminar began.
But by the morning break, he was still at his post, and at lunchtime he was there too. At the end of a long day, I walked back to his table and asked him if the recording had gone well. Yes, he said, it had. I said: 'I hope it wasn't boring for you.' 'It was very interesting,' he replied. I wasn't sure if he meant there had been a technical recording point of interest or if he meant the talk itself. 'It was the talk,' he said. 'The professor explained everything very clearly.' His eyes looked bright with understanding. He said he hadn't expected to be interested. Usually he had to record talks that he didn't understand at all. But everything that Tom said made sense to him. That reveals something significant about Tom. Several of the highly qualified seminanr participants claimed not to have understood Tom at all.
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