Admirable Evasions: How Psychology Undermines Morality

by Theodore Dalrymple

In Admirable Evasions , Theodore Dalrymple explains why human self-understanding has not been bettered by the false promises of the different schools of psychological thought. Most psychological explanations of human behavior are not only ludicrously inadequate oversimplifications, argues Dalrymple, they are socially harmful in that they allow those who believe in them to evade personal responsibility for their actions and to put the blame on a multitude of on their childhood, their genes, their neurochemistry, even on evolutionary pressures.

Dalrymple reveals how the fashionable schools of psychoanalysis, behaviorism, modern neuroscience, and evolutionary psychology all prevent the kind of honest self-examination that is necessary to the formation of human character. Instead, they promote self-obsession without self-examination, and the gross overuse of medicines that affect the mind.

Admirable Evasions also considers metaphysical objections to the assumptions of psychology, and suggests that literature is a far more illuminating window into the human condition than psychology could ever hope to be.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Science, Cultural, Politics, British Literature

130 pages, Paperback

First published March 24, 2015

About the author

Anthony Malcolm Daniels, who generally uses the pen name Theodore Dalrymple, is an English writer and retired prison doctor and psychiatrist. He worked in a number of Sub-Saharan African countries as well as in the east end of London. Before his retirement in 2005, he worked in City Hospital, Birmingham and Winson Green Prison in inner-city Birmingham, England.

Daniels is a contributing editor to City Journal, published by the Manhattan Institute, where he is the Dietrich Weismann Fellow. In addition to City Journal, his work has appeared in The British Medical Journal, The Times, The Observer, The Daily Telegraph, The Spectator, The Salisbury Review, National Review, and Axess magasin.

In 2011, Dalrymple received the 2011 Freedom Prize from the Flemish think tank Libera!.

Reviews

[Petra X · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dalrymple is an old curmudgeon or else a cutting-edge iconclast and might have been friends with Christopher Hitchens. Both of them liked to use the knife edge of their fine writing to cut through the crap of modern life that we take for granted, and neither mind in the least if they offend people doing it.

Dalrymple doesn't like Freud, Freud the fraud, he goes in for both wrecking Freud's work and character assassination. He doesn't like psychotherapy at all. He thinks that by giving people an excuse for their behaviour they can get away with doing it repeatedly without ever reflecting on themselves and why they do it, "it was my upbringing, my mother....", "it is a chemical imbalance in my brain". Everyone is presumed to be good, the 'real them' would always do their best if it wasn't for that.

Dalrymple uses Mehdi Nemmouche as an example. He was defended as a good kid in school, quiet, not aggressive, as an adult "never had any problems with anybody" but Nemmouche shot and killed four people at the Jewish Museum in Brussels in 2014. And he had seven convictions for robbery with violence in ten years. The excuse for him not behaving like his "real self" was that he was radicalised into anti-Semitism whilst serving a five year sentence, otherwise he wouldn't have indulged his psychopathic behaviour in trying to murder as many Jews as he could. Not his fault. The truth is that he was known as an "extremist proselytiser" who tried to organise group prayer and spoke of jihad" in prison, he was the one doing the radicalising. In 2013 he was the jailer of four French journalists taken as hostages, they said, "he was a"strict and violent" overseer". But his defence team said he had a difficult upbringing, not his fault that he couldn't behave like his "real self" kind and caring, quiet and religious.

Dalrymple says that "criminal law is supposed to be protective of the public, not curative of the criminal (even supposing that there is something wrong with him in the first place that requires a "cure"." American sentencing goes along with that by and large. But

The European Court of Human Rights recently ruled that whole-life sentences to prison are against Man’s fundamental rights because they eliminate the possibility of repentance and redemption (known in the trade as rehabilitation).

Did the prison system think that Nemmouche was rehabilitated after so many violent crimes? They were wrong, weren't they? With the harsh sentencing of America, those four people would still probably have been alive.

This is obviously Ian Brady, partner of Myra Hindley, the infamous Moors Murderers en.wikipedia DOT org/wiki/Moors_murders

A serial killer really did once upbraid me in print for suggesting that he – who three decades earlier had kidnapped at least five children, sexually abused and tortured them to death, then buried them in a remote place in the moors – should never be released from prison, on the grounds that he now spent much of his time making Braille books for the blind, which was more, he claimed, than I had ever done to help anyone. In other words, he had redeemed himself, and canceled out the torture and murder of five children, by subsequent good works, thus expressing the Real Him; and, in the words of the commonly used cant phrase, he thereby had paid his debt to society, as if good and evil were entries in a system of double-entry bookkeeping, so that if one did enough good works in advance, one would have earned the right to torture and murder five children.)

The author thinks that therapy itself is a self-indulgent pastime doing one's favourite thing, talking about one's absolutely fascinating self to an audience (paid) that hangs on to your every word. My mother went to therapy for a while. I asked her why and she said because she got to talk to someone for an hour a week about herself and they listened to her. I don't know if my mother was a narcissist by clinical definition - I don't go along with the author on psychotherapy - I just know that she didn't love me and spent a lot of time belittling me my entire life. I wonder if she ever said anything about that?

He commits a grievous GR sin that none of us would be allowed in a review.

Recently I was sent for review a book by a woman who had been in analysis for twenty years, with four or five sessions a week, in all about four thousand. Four thousand hours of talking about oneself! Full marks for endurance, if not for choice of subject matter. Whether it did her any good is, of course, a question that cannot be answered definitively. What she would have been like without it must be a matter of fruitless speculation. The author, Barbara Taylor, is a historian who suffered no serious traumas in her life except that of her own personality and the consequences thereof.

So I am really enjoying this book. For those that think everyone not left-wing and woke like them with their ugly protests against free speech is an evil right-wing fascist who ought not to be given space in any forum to air their views, this book would be very triggering indeed. For the rest of us, whether you agree with it or not, it's so well-written and his points so well argued that it is an enjoyable read.

I had never thought of it before, this everyone is a really good person and there is always an excuse, reason, problem from stopping that person being really good and making them into murderers, abusers, thieves, rapists, terrorists, racists etc. I don't believe that people can't help being bad and can be rehabilitated. I think the majority of criminals know exactly what they are doing and that given the very small number of crimes ever cleared up, or in the case of rape and minor theft and violence reported or have the police do more than yawn at, they think they have a good chance of getting away it. I do believe that protection of the public should be far, far more important than rehabilitation. And for this reason it is a five star book.

I didn't agree with his views on psychology and only party on psychotherapy nor his arguments for his position, and so for that reason I deducted a star.

[Nick Imrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Freudianism: It's not my fault, my mother made me do it!
Behaviorism: It's not my fault, incentives made me do it!
CBT: It's not my fault, my bad habits made me do it!
Evolutionary Psychology: It's not my fault, my genes made me do it!
Neuroscience: It's not my fault, my neurons made me do it!
Neurochemistry: It's not my fault, my neurochemical imbalance made me do it!

This is an entertaining little book in which Dalrymple satisfyingly rips a new one into various psychological theories. Each theory has its own absurdities that he lays out wittily, but two main points recur for all of them: that most psychology, like most of human endeavour, is subject to fads and fashions. Most of what was accepted fact or cutting-edge 100 years ago is now dismissed as nonsense, so we shouldn't be too keen assume that our new facts are the final truth. And that just because you've found a theory that can explain something doesn't mean it can explain everything.

Skinner's remark, moreover, suggests that he thought he had found, if not the complete explanation of human life, at least the fundamental principle of such an explanation. All that remained to be filled in was the detail: for example, how Beethoven's late quartets were a conditioned response to Beethoven's then circumstances.

Dalrymple is too harsh on psychology though. A more accurate criticism would be: how psychology can be used to undermine morality.
Promoters of evolutionary psychology like Steven Pinker are keen to emphasise that just because something is evolved doesn't mean it's good or desirable.
In his criticism of CBT, Dalrymple sneers: 'According to CBT, you could think yourself well. [...] Interrupt gloomy thoughts by positive ones and you would soon feel much better: happiness is always but a mantra away.' This is an unjust charicature of CBT which requires a lot more work than just mantras: you have to observe, identify and judge your own thoughts and behaviours, and work to change those that are unhelpful. It's a little bizarre for Dalrymple to be so harsh on this practice as it's really very close to his own suggestions for becoming a better person: painfully honest self-examination. If CBT fails to make a person more moral, well, that is not its aim, but it can hardly be accused of undermining morality when it encourages taking responsibility for your thoughts and feelings.
The chapter on CBT segues into a discussion of the fashionable nature of illnesses. Suicide rates rise after celebrity suicides, dancing plagues once afflicted European villages, hysteria and fainting fits afflicted Victorian ladies; nowadays we have anorexia, OCD and ADHD. He fears that the promotion of the cure - such as free CBT available on the NHS - is as good as promotion of the disease, just as compensation for injury encourages people to exaggerate their injuries. If this is true, it is hardly the fault of psychology - it is the fault of law-makers and health czars who have failed to properly account for incentives in the structures they've built.

Dalrymple also criticises ideas that have taken hold in popular discourse that can't be lain at the door of psychology in general or any theory in particular. For example, the idea of the Real Me. The Real Me would never do all the bad things that I've done, so I shouldn't be blamed for them. And more worryingly, the Real Him would never have done the bad things he's done. If I judge and condemn his actions then I'm a bad person for not having the compassion to perceive the Real Him. In this way, not only are people given a way to avoid responsibility for their actions, but we're all sucked into helping them avoid responsibility. But the Real Me is not a tenet of psychology - it's more like a bastardised version of the Christian idea of the soul.

It's a short book, and I think perhaps there's a longer, more difficult to prove argument underlying this one. Psychology can be used to undermine morality. But excuses for bad behaviour can be found anywhere - indeed as Dalrymple points out, in the 16th century shirkers blamed their actions on astrology: 'It's not my fault, the stars made me do it!', and in the 19th century it was common to blame 'instincts'. The real question is: why are their so many more people nowadays working to undermine morality? Why does they seek to forgive the worst kinds of evil, and view everyone as a helpless victim? The fact that they draft in psychology to do so is just one of many tactics.

[Spencer Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have never read a cleverer, more concise, more profound attack on such a generally accepted institution of so-called "scientific" inquiry. Psychology be damned... This book has been a long time coming for Dalrymple and I felt as moved by it as I was by his earlier works. This is an important beyond important piece of literature. It should be studied. It should influence policy.

This book is also very short, but that is perfect for its form. A long book making the same argument would almost by its very nature be a weaker argument. This argument punches.

Please, please read it.

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely worth reading. There is a huge difference between people who are merely unhappy and those who suffer from severe mental illnesses. Much of psychology and therapy today encourages narcissism, victimhood, and endless self examination with no resolution. So many treatment fads have come and gone over the centuries that one wonders if we aren't still in the dark ages. A better sense of moral teachings might do much to remedy things. We are ultimately responsible for our own behavior.

[Reed · Rating 2 out of 5]

I agree with Dalrymple's critiques of psychoanalysis, behaviorism, and those who possess a superstitious overconfidence in neuroscience and evolutionary psychology as a means of "explaining away" human subjectivity. However, Dalrymple entirely glosses over the subfield of cognitive psychology, which greatly reduces the force of his argument, or that psychology "as a whole" is a waste of time. Likewise, Dalrymple's critique of CBT (cognitive-behavioral therapy) is very one-sided, as he focuses only on CBT's behaviorist roots rather than acknowledge CBT's predominantly cognitive elements.

Readers would do well to investigate the basic history and tenets of cognitive psychology; in so doing, they will find that cognitive psychology is grounded in the same critiques of psychoanalysis and behaviorism as those leveled by Dalrymple. Furthermore, one would discover the empirical construct "metacognition", which is used by cognitive psychologists to measure and promote levels of individual self-reflection and appraisal; a construct Dalrymple seems entirely unaware of, seeing as how he criticizes "all of psychology" for destroying the individual's capabilities for honest self-reflection and sense of moral responsibility.

[E · Rating 4 out of 5]

In able fashion, Dalrymple tears apart everything wrong with the past 100 years of psychology. Nothing is spared--Freud (who is both debunked but still reigning in public culture), behaviorism (it's not that easy), cognitive behavioral therapy (humans aren't lab rats), everyone's-a-victim (so no one is responsible), the elevation of self-esteem (the Real Me would never have did what I just did), obsession with brain chemistry (very very very few people actually suffer from misbalanced brain chemicals), my-genes-made-me-do-it, neuroscience (as if you can just hook up your brain to a scanner and see your flaws), addiction-as-mental-disorder-only (again, absolving the abuser of all blame), neo-Darwinism (evolution made me do it!).

That he does this all in 120 pages is remarkable. Spend a day to read this book. You won't look at your sin the same way again. You won't look at pop psychology at all (I hope). You will begin, and want others to begin, to take responsibility for one's own actions.

[Mary Catelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

A look at the science of psychology and its effects, all the more interesting when you remember it is written by a psychiatrist.

Psychoanalysis, from Freud's falsification of evidence to the kind of psychobabble it induces. Behaviorism, the limits of its cures, and the grandiose claims made by its supporters. Rehabilitation of criminals and its weaknesses and dangers. Anti-depressants and their limits. And more.

[C. Varn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dalrymple's discussions of psychology and psychiatry are to be taken seriously given his work as a prison psychiatrist. His take-downs of behaviorism, psychoanalysis, and the current trends of over-concluding from scant neurological, genetic, or neuro-chemical works are solid beyond what many will read as somewhat conservative moralizing. His points about some of the more absurd conclusions and overreaches about human agency are dead-on, and the expansion of psycho-bubble in understanding the human condition is infuriating. Dalrymple does bring up empirical problems as well as the expansion of self-identification with diagnosis, but his blaming cognitive therapy for this is a bit of a weak argument given that even he admits it does work on most common and mild forms of neurosis, phobia, and low-level depression. That said, Dalrymple is correct in the vast over-claims made for CBT and it's children, one of which he doesn't even mention, "positive psychology" although he hardly needs to as it has been increasingly critiqued. However, this is a small flaw in a book that really encourages us to doubt over-concluding in psychology.

I find the book incredibly readable and really challenging. I wish someone would document more of problems, but I am glad this book exists. Unlike many critiques of psychology and psychiatry, Dalrymple does not deny the reality of human nuero-plasticity or that legitimate and severe psychosis exists. In fact, he points out that ironically with the increased psychologization of our society, deep and profound psychosis receives less and less treatment while minor problems receive more and more therapy.

Dalrymple is a deeply conservative man, but also one who is much more secularly-minded than many old school moralists; furthermore, as he says, the psychologization of crime can actually have more severe and less humane ends than even old notions of moral agency and retribution. Even leftists would benefit from this book as their own tactics and rhetoric has been increasingly psychologized in ways that have damaged their ability to make social change meaningfully apart from capitalist assumptions by focusing on micro-aggressions and privilege and conflating the individual psychology with systemic problems that would exist even without immediate human bias.

Regardless of one's agreement with Dalrymple's particular politics and particular morality; he is highly convincing that unreflective nature of much of what passes for therapy has little basis in science and has eroded notions of agency and human will. This, he says, has unintended consequences and hardly "progressive" ones.

[Graychin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Theodore Dalrmple has been publishing at a dizzying rate the last several years, essay collections mostly, but also more focused polemical pieces such as the wonderful In Praise of Prejudice and the present title. Admirable Evasions is a blistering take down of the practice of psychology, from Freudianism to Behavioralism to fads in neurochemistry, brain scanning, and neo-Darwinism. Dr Dalrymple, it helps to recall, is himself a retired psychiatrist and physician who worked for many years in Britain’s hospital and prison systems. His contention here is that for all its inarguable cultural influence, psychology as a discipline has in fact added nothing whatever to human wellbeing or self-understanding. Instead, it has served to infantilize the individual and support “the triumph of marketing over awareness of the tragic dimensions of life.” Unfortunately for human nature, “the desire for the illusion of understanding is generally greater than the desire for understanding itself.”

A couple quotes:

“The expansion of psychiatric diagnoses leads paradoxically and simultaneously to overtreatment and undertreatment. The genuinely disturbed get short shrift: those with chronic schizophrenia, which seems most likely to be a genuine pathological malfunction of the brain, are left to molder in the doorways, streets, and stations of large cities, while untold millions have their fluctuating preoccupations attended to with the kind of attention that an overconcerned mother gives her spoiled child – with more or less the same results.”

“Seeing victims everywhere you look is the zeitgeist, it is what gives people license to behave as they like while feeling virtuous. Virtue is not manifested in one’s behavior, always so difficult and tedious to control, but in one’s attitude toward victims. This view of virtue is both sentimental and unfeeling, cloying and brutal: for it implies that those who are not victims are not worthy of our sympathy or understanding, only of our denunciation.”

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dalrymple's argument against psychology v the study of human nature.

[Ioana Dana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cartea nu e blândă. Nu te ține de mână. Dar nici nu te umilește. Te provoacă, te obligă să te întrebi: cine sunt dincolo de povestea pe care mi-o spun despre mine?

Eu încă nu am un răspuns complet. Dar am luat aminte, cu ajutorul acestor pagini, că a te scutura de iluzii poate fi o formă de vindecare. Că uneori, normalitatea e mai valoroasă decât originalitatea suferindă. Și că Shakespeare încă știe mai multe despre noi decât orice manual modern de psihologie.

[Samantha Sipper · Rating 3 out of 5]

Laid bare, the basic premise of this book is that psychology has provided mankind with too many excuses for immoral behavior. The book states that, "psychology has become a tool in man's eternal search to evade his responsibilities." The author, Theodore Dalrymple, further suggests that psychology has destroyed the ability of humans for self-examination. Several schools of psychology are explored and rejected by the author in the eleven chapters of this short book. Starting with psychoanalysis, Dalrymple not only debunks the workings of it, but sheds light on the person of Sigmund Freud. He even includes a conversation between a therapist and his patient, which basically shows that psychoanalysis sees us as victims of our past--a past that we can do nothing about. Dalrymple then moves on to behaviorism, which is steeped in the belief that stimulus and response is all there is to life, and that everything human can be explained by it. Again, the author destroys the case for a school of psychology, in this instance behaviorism, being the answer for man's behavior. In the succeeding chapters, other efforts in psychology are explored which include: the effort to have psychological disorders treated the same way as physical illnesses, the lack of self-esteem, the notion of rehabilitation, the theory of a chemical imbalance and the use of SSRIs, genes, brain scans that light up in colors, and neo-Darwinism. Overall, Mr. Dalrymple makes a good case for his position, although I personally have some reservations. This book should be taken in slowly in order to appreciate the author's points. Keep a dictionary handy as well. I read the kindle edition which lacks page numbers, a minor inconvenience.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book. I love books that make me remember that we're neither smarter nor less silly than previous generations. The title comes from Shakespeare, "An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star!" That is to say, some in Shakespeare's day evaded their personal responsibility by blaming astrological influence on their behaviour. Dalrymple points out that in our own time we simply blame our genes, personality, etc. which he thoroughly reveals to be just as much a superstition as Shakespeare's believers in astrology.

[Larissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

"A concepção de amor-próprio ou autoestima ou é ridícula ou é repugnante. Ninguém atribui o seu bom caráter ou sucessos na vida a um fundo adequado de autoestima. Ninguém pode dizer que qualquer conquista humana foi fruto da autoestima. Uma boa dose de dúvida sobre si mesmo é bem mais conducente (mas não o suficiente) para tal conquista."

- Theodore Dalrymple

[Fatima H. Barazi · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Men can change; this is their glory and their burden,
for it is precisely the capacity to change that renders
them responsible for their actions; but what they do may
be irreparable.”

[Pieter · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title of the book refers to a quote from William Shakespeare's King Lear: "... an admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star." As a doctor with a career in many British prisons, he is well-positioned to debunk all 'scientific' theories which criminals or immoral people abuse to plead innocent.

Freud refers to the subconscious, behaviorists believe humans are purely a sum of mental processes, social darwinists assume the only the fittest survives. Or one states that a person cannot be bad, but just ill which can be cured with pills. "It is not my bad as I am ill and cannot be held responsible for my acts." Other politically correct psychiatrists claim we should not hurt feelings. Teachers should break the red pen while correcting tests and criminals should be punished mildly in order not to break their self-esteem. But criminals tend to have no problem to question themselves but use the excuse of the Real Me that could not be shown. Just a big fraud!

As in Hans Christian Andersen's tale of the Emperor's New Clothes, Mr Dalrymple shows the scientific results of this generation of psychiatrists and other quacks are castles built in the air.

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

"An intellectual could almost be defined as a person who follows an argument to an absurd conclusion, and believes the conclusion."

[Jimmy Longley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reviewed as part of my 100 books challenge: http://jimmylongley.com/blog/books/

Run-on Sentence Summary

In this short, stuffy intellectual book, Psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple argues that modern psychology teaches people to think of themselves as victims and undermines accountability and morality.

Impressions

I almost put this book down when I started it because I found the tone to be so off-puttingly intellectual and pretentious. He loves using five dollar words and peppering his writing with random Latin and French phrases, and the whole books reads like this:

> "Behind the self-obsession of the analysand and the portentous banality of the analyst’s interjections lies the idea, self-exculpatory, that we are victims of our past, about which we can do nothing (unless, that is, we pay an analyst for four thousand sessions)."

I powered through and didn’t regret it. The core idea is fairly straightforward. He goes through and talks about several schools of psychological thought that have come up, such as Freud and behaviorism, and trounces them. He takes it for granted that they are discredited ideas now, but reminds us how they were embraced at the time. Freud had some good ideas, but ultimately became a cult of personality. It is obvious now how little of his work was grounded in science, but people at the time embraced it as a dogma.

This warning was reminiscent of what I read in Sapiens about how much modern “scientific" thinking is actually just another form of religion, and is no more valid in helping us understand who we are. Dalrymple is a Shakespeare buff of course, and argues that literature is a better window into human nature than psychology has ever been.

He makes some other interesting points, such as how insane it is that one in six modern adults takes antidepressants, and how the word “unhappy” has essentially dropped out of the modern vocabulary. You can’t possibly be unhappy, then you’d have to be responsible for it. No, you are depressed, you are sick! Its not your fault, here take these pills.

At the end of the day, he treats modern psychiatry as a monolith and so it is difficult to dispute anything he’s saying.

Final Thoughts

Who the hell chooses "Theodore Dalrymple” as their pen name?

Favorite Quote

"As for analysands, you meet some who claim that their lives were much improved by their analysis, but this is as little evidence of the truth or value of psychoanalysis as is the recent convert to Islam’s opinion of the Koran as proof of the prophethood of Mohammed. A little bit of what you fancy may do you good, but it doesn’t make it true."

[Mischa Daanen · Rating 4 out of 5]

...

If all the antidepressants and anxiolytics in the world were thrown into the sea, as Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. once suggested should be done with the whole of the pharmacopoeia, if all textbooks of psychology were withdrawn and pulped, if all psychologists ceased to practice, if all university departments of psychology were closed down, if all psychological research were abandoned, if all psychological terms were excised from everyday speech, would Mankind be the loser or the gainer, the wiser or the more foolish? Would his self-understanding be any the less? Would his life be any the worse? It is not, of course, possible to give a definitive answer to these questions: the experiment cannot be done. But it would be a bold man who claimed that Man’s self-understanding is now greater than that of Montaigne or Shakespeare. How many of us would dare to claim in public that he had greater insight into his fellow creatures than the Swan of Avon? He would be laughed down immediately, ridiculed and ignominiously driven from the platform: and quite rightly so. Such arrogance would have its reward. As to life having improved, how much of the improvement is attributable to psychology? We owe incomparably more to improved sewers than to psychology.

Amen.

[Brandon Bellinghausen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely excellent.

Dalrymple exposes what many have been saying for years: most of what is known as modern psychology is simply a vehicle for excusing what we know to be immoral.

Even though he doesn't really have an epistemological or moral base to stand on (he admits this), he does a great job of exposing the work of "those who masquerade as scientists."

[Bianca · Rating 1 out of 5]

Horrible, terrible...stay away from this trash, couldn´t even read it to the end

[Barry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Too short, but there's some good stuff in here. His criticisms are so cutting and witty -- fun to read if you agree with him. And I do. His "Life at the Bottom" is longer and better.

[Neakea Seng · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book's not worth your time. There's too many strawmans, generalizations, and untruthful loaded languages.

[Nathan Albright · Rating 5 out of 5]

As this is the first book by the author that I have read, I was pleased that the author was both so insightful as well as so articulate.  Admittedly, the author has a somewhat dark view of his subject, namely the absence of genuine therapeutic value (with regards to public health) of psychological approaches, but with good reason.  After all, the author is a retired physician who worked in Africa, the poorest areas of London and in the prison system.  This experience of the criminal and social underclass globally as well as within the United Kingdom is not likely to give one a sanguine view of the advances of psychology as it is used in efforts at public health.  Nor are my own views any more sanguine.  The author shows an admirable appreciation for the blunt honesty and sound wisdom of C.S. Lewis' concerns about the harm that psychological approaches can have when it comes to freedom and responsibility, and the combination of his dry and understated wit and his obvious inside knowledge make this an immensely worthwhile as well as short and pointed work.  It is likely to increase my interest in reading books of his in the future.

The title of this book comes from a pointed quote from King Lear that the author refers to often when looking at whoremaster man and his desire to escape responsibility for his character faults by blaming the stars, or his genes, or his parents, or his economic circumstances and class status, anything rather than to face the truth of his own corrupt and fallen nature and his own responsibility in it.  In eleven chapters that take up just over 100 pages, the author examines various ways that psychology has throughout its history sought to evade responsibility and how this tendency of evasion has led psychology to be of no net benefit, and sometimes of real harm, to society at large.  Beginning with an examination of psychoanalysis, moving on to behaviorist and cognitive-behavioral theories, pharmacology, and bogus theories of self-esteem, the author skewers the cant of psychologists and their lobbyists.  He points out the failures of trying to medicate mental health and the way that targeted and useful therapies have been expanded well beyond their capability and that the growth of diagnoses and drugs has not been followed by an acceptance of responsibility and a genuine desire for improvement on the part of many, a task to which the author commends the study of good literature.

It is easy to agree with the author's discussion of the manifest failures of the psychological professions to lead to a positive change in human life over the past century or so.  The question is what to do about it.  The author advocates a reading of literature with a mind towards self-improvement, but given that the failures of psychology are moral in nature, ultimately any solution of that failure must itself inculcate a system of morality in people.  How is this to be done?  What religious means are possible in order to encourage personal responsibility as well as a sense of dignity that is tied to gratitude for the God who created us and not a futile solipsism that views ourselves as the source of meaning (or lack thereof) in our lives?  It is a trivial task to point out that theories that evade responsibility fail, but it is a less trivial task to examine ourselves and to see where the responsibility lies and what we can do in light of that responsibility.  If we cannot evade responsibility for our misdeeds by pointing to dark pasts and the sins of others, how can we ensure that those who sin in positions of authority are held accountable for the harm that they do to society at large?  These are not easy matters to deal with.

[Cynthia Egbert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Admirable Evasions: How Psychology Undermines Morality by Theodore Dalrymple, 128 pages. I began reading this book early in the year as some friends and I were engaged in a discussion of the power of great literature after reading The Majesty of Books by Sterling W. Sill. It has taken me this long to get through a 128 page book. There was that much for me to slowly ponder and digest. The idea that the science of psychology is increasing our tendency towards being victims and not taking personal responsibility is a powerful one and one that I need to continue to absorb and consider. I do agree that God and great literature are better places to find direction! My copy of the book is all marked and annotated and there is no way for me to pass along every quote but there are a few that I have to share. (I promise, I REALLY did narrow it way down.)

"For Man is not so much a problem-solving animal as a problem-creating one. Pascal said that all of Man's misfortunes come from his inability to sit quietly in a room."

"If psychoanalysis had been invented by cavemen, Mankind would still be living in caves."

"But thanks to the mind's marvelous and subtle ability to think in parallel tracks at the same time, we have a still small voice telling us that our excuses are bunk."

"It was as if, having picked the legs off a fly and observed that the fly no longer flew, an experimenter were to conclude that its legs were a fly's organs of flight."

"The humorist Jerome K. Jerome long ago pointed out, in Three Men and a Boat, that you can persuade yourself into the symptomatology of a hundred diseases merely by reading a medical textbook; how much easier is it to do so when the symptoms are explicitly in the mind!"

"Suffering of any kind, even that which would once have been deemed by most people as self-inflicted, is ipso facto evidence of victimhood. Our philosophical motto is not 'I think, therefore I am', but 'He suffers, therefore he's a victim'."

"Anyone who thinks that self-esteem is a good in itself and not potentially a manifestation of the deadliest of the deadly sins, pride (deadliest because all the others may be derived from it), should be put to reading Coriolanus, wherein the consequences of an excess of self-esteem are laid out to the moral enlightenment of theatergoers."

"Bravery is one of those virtues that cannot be free-standing, and that to be truly a virtue, it must be exercised in pursuit of a worthy goal."

"A man may despise himself for being as he is, but that does not absolve him of the responsibility for being as he is."

"Men can change; this is their glory and their burden, for it is precisely the capacity to change that renders them responsible for their actions; but what they do may be irreparable."

"The illusion of understanding is more important for most men than understanding itself; and what counts as understanding today will be revealed tomorrow as an illusion, often so gross that people will wonder how anyone came to believe it...The illusion of understanding is like the grin of the Cheshire Cat: it is what remains when all else has disappeared."

"Remove moral responsibility from the law, and what you are left with is technical administration."

"Nothing has changed since Shakespeare's day; the poet gives us understanding without providing us with an excuse for our own conduct; rather the reverse. Four lines in Shakespeare are worth a bookful of Trivers."

"As Francis Bacon said, 'reading makes a full man, conversation a ready man, and writing an exact man."

"Be not too hasty to trust, or to admire, the teachers of morality: they discourse like angels, but they live like men." -Samuel Johnson

[Aditya आदित्य]

In this spirited offensive against popular psychology and the 'science' that feeds it, Dr. Dalrymple employs Shakespeare's King Lear and Hamlet, philosophical insights, econometrics of crime & illness, common logic, and a caustic wit, all densely packed in about a hundred pages to turn the entire discipline on its head. His treatment of past stalwarts and current upstarts is alike, brutal and funny, in a manner reminiscent of chastising a wayward child. But despite its artful form, the core content of the argument is simple: ailment or attitude?

Pathologies of the mind are difficult to diagnose, or to be accurate, too easily diagnosed, to the extent that everything is a disorder and everyone is sick. The recent trend towards uplifting the stigma against 'mental' health, with even minor inconveniences being accused of causing trauma, is a telling sign. This book provides a root cause analysis of the phenomena. And in the exploration, the reader is exposed to subtle nuances that strip down the universalistic pretensions of psychology, aiming to simplify and explain the human condition.

The good doctor remains determined to be a sceptic, not radically, but rationally and empirically. He is rather amused by the certitude with which new theories are declared, and bewildered by the glaring inconsistency of the old discarded ones, supposedly holding the key to the existence of mankind, and solving, once and for all, human suffering itself. Life, according to Dr. Dalrymple, is suffering. And this presumption of intrinsic deficiencies in us marks the limitations of our knowledge and understanding. Although pessimistic, reading this doesn't induce hopelessness or despair. On the contrary, this beautiful prose is an honest recognition and acknowledgement of the best in us.

[Denisa Cîrstea · Rating 4 out of 5]

"În același fel, ideea de a pune semn de egalitate între problemele psihice şi cele fizice e greşită din două puncte de vedere: le exagerează și, în același timp, le subestimează pe primele. Paralizia generală a nebunilor, demența sau schizofrenia cronică sunt mai cumplite decât, să zicem, un membru amputat (oricât de neplăcut sau chiar tragic ar fi acest din urmă caz), deoarece atacă tocmai fundamentul uman al persoanei, caracterul şi personalitatea sa, sufletul său, dacă doriți. Bolile psihice subminează capacitatea unei persoane de a gândi, reflecta și hotărî singură. O transformă treptat în exact ceea ce inginerii sociali excesiv de optimişti consideră că sunt oamenii (alţii decât ei): organisme lipsite de capacitatea de a decide de capul lor. Pe de altă parte, cele mai mărunte schimbări de dispoziție sunt luate foarte în serios de pacienţi și terapeuți, ca și cum ar avea o relevanță cosmică. Astfel, ignorarea suferinţei şi cocoloșirea, inclusiv auto-cocoloșirea, ajung de fac casă bună împreună, iar oamenii devin tot mai incapabili să distingă între tragedie și o simplă indispoziție."

[Marco · Rating 4 out of 5]

All of Dalrymple's books revolve around the theme of auto-responsibility and of how the prevalent cultural mores pay a disservice to the end of making people feel accountable for their actions. In the case of this book, the focus is on how some ways of practicing psychotherapy absolve the individual and make it all about someone or something else: their parents, childhood, society, etc.

Very one-sided but an insightful page turner nonetheless, as all of his books have been so far.

On to the next!

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the third book by Mr. Dalrymple that I have had the pleasure of reading. It is one of those books that I am tempted to gift to friends and family so as to share his insight into human nature and modern life. Highly recommended.

[bartosz · Rating 4 out of 5]

"An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star"

Theodore Dalrymple repeats this quote from King Lear as a sort of mantra, in Admirable Evasions: How Psychology Undermines Morality. The main premise of the book is that psychology is detrimental to understanding of the human condition.

The modern man with knowledge of psychology, surely, doesn't posses as much insight as Shakespeare did, the author points out. The knowledge of human behavior and common mechanisms were shown in literature much earlier than in psychology.

The author harps against freudianism, behaviorism, cognitive behavioral therapy, genetic explanations of human behavior, neuroscience, or neo-Darwinism. Common themes of the criticisms, include how a particular method claims to be the be-all and end-all of human understanding, yet lacks nuance. How it tries to absolve people from the consequences of their behaviors i.e "to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star" - to the charge of genes, or neurochemistry or repressed memories.

An interesting offshoot of absolving people out of their agency, is the search of a "Real Me" or "Real Him", to wit - a projection of good intentions abstracted away from real behavior: mothers claiming that their son was a good boy (despite the evidence to the contrary) or intellectuals going our of their way to find the Real Him as in an article "Who knows the real Mehdi Nemmouche?", the person who killed four people at the Jewish Museum in Brussels.

The book argues that, psychological knowledge enters popular culture and distorts viewpoints (arming people with tools to make themselves helpless), but also priorities. Due to an effect similar to the Werther effect some diagnoses become more common (e.g more than 10% of the population is now on antidepressants) which leads to overtreatment yet also of undertreatment of serious clinical cases.

An interesting book by one of my favorite authors on a very controversial subject.