Michael Liccione | February 17, 2016
Some readers might recognize the name “Theodore Dalrymple.” It’s the pen name of the iconoclastic British psychiatrist Anthony Daniels, who in semi-retirement keeps on writing books. His twenty-third is Admirable Evasions: How Psychology Undermines Morality (2015).
An interview he gave soon after the book’s publication sums up his thesis, which is rather unconventional even if, given the course of his long career, not all that surprising. It’s a thesis thoughtful Americans would do well to ponder.
Here’s how the piece introduces it:
“Q: You lead with Shakespeare’s King Lear saying mental illness is ‘the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune…we (blame) the sun, the moon and the stars.’
A: Four hundred years later, it’s still true, but we blame psychology instead of astrology. We call it progress. Literature is far more illuminating into the human condition than psychology could ever hope to be.”
As presented, of course, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. But most of us know people who blame everything and everybody but themselves for their faults—when they recognize those faults at all. Thus:
https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/psychiatrist-not-everything-mental-disease
