Admirable Evasions

Admirable Evasions PDF Author: Theodore Dalrymple
Publisher: Encounter Books
ISBN: 1594037884
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 71

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Book Description
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 scapegoats: 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.

Admirable Evasions

Admirable Evasions PDF Author: Theodore Dalrymple
Publisher: Encounter Books
ISBN: 1594037884
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 71

Get Book Here

Book Description
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 scapegoats: 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.

Summary of Theodore Dalrymple's Admirable Evasions

Summary of Theodore Dalrymple's Admirable Evasions PDF Author: Everest Media,
Publisher: Everest Media LLC
ISBN:
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 22

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Book Description
Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The claim that we have greater insight into human nature than ever before is common. But it is a bold man who claims that he has greater insight than Montaigne or Shakespeare. #2 The first psychological scheme to provide the common man with the illusion of much expanded self-understanding was psychoanalysis. Then came behaviorism, after which there was cybernetics. Now, neuroscientific imaging and a little light neurochemistry persuade us that we are about to solve the mystery of human existence. #3 Freud was a brilliant man, but his career as a scientist was not. He was a liar who falsified evidence, a plagiarist who did not acknowledge his sources, and a self-aggrandizing mythologist who manipulated people. #4 The human mind is not straightforward, and we do not always know the reasons for our thoughts and actions. We can, however, recognize that we can think and direct our thought, and that we can check the accuracy of our thoughts for veracity, decency, and consistency.

Life at the Bottom

Life at the Bottom PDF Author: Theodore Dalrymple
Publisher: Ivan R. Dee
ISBN: 161578019X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
A searing account of life in the underclass and why it persists as it does, written by a British psychiatrist.

Spoilt Rotten

Spoilt Rotten PDF Author: Theodore Dalrymple
Publisher: Gibson Square Books
ISBN: 9781906142254
Category : Children
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In this perceptive and witty book, Theodore Dalrymple unmasks the hidden sentimentality that is suffocating public life. Under themultiple guises of raising children well, caring for the underprivileged, assisting the less able and doing good generally, we are achieving quite the opposite. Dalrymple takes the reader on both an entertaining and at times shocking journey through social, political, popular and literary issues as diverse as child tantrums, aggression, educational reform, honour killings, sexual abuse, public emotions and the role of suffering, and shows the perverse results when we abandon logic in favour of the cult of feeling.

Farewell Fear

Farewell Fear PDF Author: Theodore Dalrymple
Publisher: World Encounter Institute/New English Review Press
ISBN: 9780985439477
Category : English essays
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Farewell Fear is a collection of Theodore Dalrymple's finest essays written for New English Review between 2009 and 2012. His first such collection was Anything Goes (2011). Once encountered, Theodore Dalrymple has become for many of us a shared treasure-the cultured, often mordantly funny social commentator who was for many years a psychiatrist at a British prison. This collection of recent essays captures Dalrymple at his best, ruminating at one moment about why poisoners tend to be more interesting than other kinds of murderers and at another why Tony Blair's mind reminds him of an Escher drawing. No one else writes so engagingly and so candidly about the world as it is, not as the politically correct would have it be. -- Dr. Charles Murray author of Coming Apart and The Bell Curve

Leading a Worthy Life

Leading a Worthy Life PDF Author: Leon R. Kass
Publisher: Encounter Books
ISBN: 1641770996
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
Most American young people, like their ancestors, harbor desires for a worthy life: a life of meaning, a life that makes sense. But they are increasingly confused about what such a life might look like, and how they might, in the present age, be able to live one. With a once confident culture no longer offering authoritative guidance, the young are now at sea—regarding work, family, religion, and civic identity. The true, the good, and the beautiful have few defenders, and the higher cynicism mocks any innocent love of wisdom or love of country. We are supercompetent regarding efficiency and convenience; we are at a loss regarding what it’s all for. Yet because the old orthodoxies have crumbled, our “interesting time” paradoxically offers genuine opportunities for renewal and growth. The old Socratic question “How to live?” suddenly commands serious attention. Young Americans, if liberated from the prevailing cynicism, will readily embrace weighty questions and undertake serious quests for a flourishing life. All they (and we) need is encouragement. This book provides that necessary encouragement by illuminating crucial—and still available—aspects of a worthy life, and by defending them against their enemies. With chapters on love, family, and friendship; human excellence and human dignity; teaching, learning, and truth; and the great human aspirations of Western civilization, it offers help to both secular and religious readers, to people who are looking on their own for meaning and to people who are looking to deepen what they have been taught or to square it with the spirit of our times.

Our Culture, What's Left of it

Our Culture, What's Left of it PDF Author: Theodore Dalrymple
Publisher: Ivan R. Dee Publisher
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
A book that restores our faith in the central importance of literature and criticism to our civilization. In the twenty six pieces Dr. Dalrymple ranges over literature and ideas, from Shakespeare to Marx.

The New Vichy Syndrome

The New Vichy Syndrome PDF Author: Theodore Dalrymple
Publisher: Encounter Books
ISBN: 1594035679
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description
Western Europe is in a strangely neurotic condition of being smug and terrified at the same time. On the one hand, Europeans believe they have at last created an ideal social and political system in which man can live comfortably. In many ways, things have never been better on the old continent. On the other hand, there is growing anxiety that Europe is quickly falling behind in an aggressive, globalized world. Europe is at the forefront of nothing, its demographics are rapidly transforming in unsettling ways, and the ancient threat of barbarian invasion has resurfaced in a fresh manifestation. In The New Vichy Syndrome, Theodore Dalrymple traces this malaise back to the great conflicts of the last century and their devastating effects upon the European psyche. From issues of religion, class, colonialism, and nationalism, Europeans hold a “miserablist” view of their history, one that alternates between indifference and outright contempt of the past. Today’s Europeans no longer believe in anything but personal economic security, an increased standard of living, shorter working hours, and long vacations in exotic locales. The result, Dalrymple asserts, is an unwillingness to preserve European achievements and the dismantling of western culture by Europeans themselves. As vapid hedonism and aggressive Islamism fill this cultural void, Europeans have no one else to blame for their plight.

Around the World in the Cinemas of Paris

Around the World in the Cinemas of Paris PDF Author: Theodore Dalrymple
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781735705507
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
"Everywhere is interesting, especially if inhabited." Paris is the best city for seeing films from anywhere and everywhere in the world. You can travel around the globe in the cinemas of Paris. This is precisely what Theodore Dalrymple did. Here are his reflections - historical, cultural, philosophical - on the 33 films that he saw, often combined with his own reminiscences of the various countries he had visited himself. The universal and the particular are inextricably combined in this highly original and amusing book. Theodore Dalrymple is a retired doctor and psychiatrist who has written many books, including Life at the Bottom, Admirable Evasions and Embargo and Other Stories.

Neither Trumpets Nor Violins

Neither Trumpets Nor Violins PDF Author: Theodore Dalrymple
Publisher: World Encounter Institute/New English Review Press
ISBN: 9781943003570
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
New English Review Press once again takes on the great ideas of our time in this sequel to The Terror of Existence by Theodore Dalrymple and Kenneth Francis. This volume adds another interesting mind to the mix: the philosopher Samuel Hux. Together these thinkers take on some of the most prominent philosophers influencing our age, pointing out strengths and weaknesses in their works, worldviews. and characters. Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Sartre, Machiavelli, Plato, Schopenhauer, John Stuart Mill and Bertrand Russell are covered as are the less well-known Trumbull Stickney and Jonathan Edwards. If you liked The Terror of Existence, you'll love Neither Trumpets Nor Violins. It's food for the mind.