The local magistrates ordered that the costs should be paid from public funds. By Myth he does not mean that psychological disorders are not real experiences. He means that to call them illnesses is misleading because they share little in common with physical illness. Szasz says that psychological disorders have only one significant characteristic in common with bodily diseases. This is that the sufferer is to some extent disabled from performing some activities.
Psychological disorders are actions rather than events and they are of some value to the patient.
The patient, however, is not malingering. He is not fully aware of what he is doing and it is the psychiatrist's job to help him find out. Physical illnesses, on the other hand, just happen to a patient, and cannot be cured by self-knowledge. You have to kill the bug, set the bone, or whatever. Hysteria, for example, is a psychological disorder that manifests itself as physical illness.