> if it "DOES NOT EXIST" then what is it?

What I am trying to say is that I think that Szasz and the others who have written about the "myth of mental illness" and who have been dismissed by the bulk of the psychiatric community, have a great deal of truth in what they say. That is, what we have been taught to believe about "mental illness" and what causes it, is full of errors and misrepresentations. What the real thing is, I tried to say. It is the destabilization and mental confusion that is generated in susceptible people (most of us, particularly as children) by the discrepancies between our actual feelings and thoughts and what we are taught is acceptable. That suffering and deprivation of normal affectional connections to (mostly) caregivers leads to horrible frustrations and lashing out at other people in trying to make sense of our distress. And thus produces more like us.