This is the core tension of , a concept famously championed by psychiatrist Thomas Szasz . Szasz argued that what we call "mental illness" is not a medical condition in the physical sense, but rather a "metaphor" for problems in living . The Story of Two Diagnoses Imagine two neighbors:
Elias leaned forward, his hands steady—a detail the doctor missed. "Is it a disease, or is it a description? If I am overwhelmed by a world that demands I work fourteen hours a day to afford a roof, is my fear a biological failure or a logical response?" The Myth of Mental Illness
has a tumor. It can be seen on an MRI; its cells are demonstrably different from healthy ones. This is a physical illness —a deviation from the structural integrity of the body. This is the core tension of , a