Theodore Dalrymple – författare

Theodore Dalrymple, one of Britain's most incisive and wryly entertaining social critics takes on the nation's pervasive cultural decline in An Englishman's Home is His Car Park. This is not just another political commentary; it is a brilliantly observed, deeply felt critique of the everyday slovenliness and "performative behaviour" that has replaced genuine civic pride and the pursuit of excellence. Dalrymple argues that we have settled for a facade of care rather than striving for the best results, a shift that is eroding the nation's spirit. Dalrymple masterfully connects the dots from the micro-the paved-over front garden, the neglect of public spaces-to the macro: a nation seemingly resigned to its own degradation. His thesis on our "collective lack of care" and preference for empty gestures over substantial action is both a shocking revelation and a confirmation of what we see around us. Dalrymple also provides the crucial first step toward a meaningful recovery.

This new collection of essays by the author of Life at the Bottom bears the unmistakable stamp of Theodore Dalrymple's bracingly clearsighted view of the human condition. In these pieces, Dr. Dalrymple ranges over literature and ideas, from Shakespeare to Marx, from the breakdown of Islam to the legalization of drugs. Here is a book that restores our faith in the central importance of literature and criticism to our civilization. Theodore Dalrymple is the best doctor-writer since William Carlos Williams. —Peggy Noonan. Includes When Islam Breaks Down, named the best journal article of 2004 by David Brooks of the New York Times.

This new collection of essays by the author of Life at the Bottom bears the unmistakable stamp of Theodore Dalrymple's bracingly clearsighted view of the human condition. In these pieces, Dr. Dalrymple ranges over literature and ideas, from Shakespeare to Marx, from the breakdown of Islam to the legalization of drugs. Here is a book that restores our faith in the central importance of literature and criticism to our civilization. Theodore Dalrymple is the best doctor-writer since William Carlos Williams. —Peggy Noonan. Includes When Islam Breaks Down, named the best journal article of 2004 by David Brooks of the New York Times.

Theodore Dalrymple believes that almost everything people know about opiate addiction is wrong. Most flawed of all is the notion that addicts are in touch with profound mysteries of which non-addicts are ignorant. Dalrymple shows that doctors, psychologists and social workers, all of them uncritically accepting addicts' descriptions of addiction, have employed literary myths (drugs are creative and intense) in constructing an equal and opposite myth of quasi-treatment. Using evidence from literature and pharmacology and drawing on examples from his own clinical experience, Dalrymple shows that addiction is not a disease, but a response to personal and existential problems. He argues that withdrawal from opiates is not the serious medical condition, but a relatively trivial experience and says that criminality causes addiction far more often than addiction causes criminality.

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.

The New England Journal of Medicine is one of the most important general medical journals in the world. Doctors rely on the conclusions it publishes, and most do not have the time to look beyond abstracts to examine methodology or question assumptions. Many of its pronouncements are conveyed by the media to a mass audience, which is likely to take them as authoritative. But is this trust entirely warranted?Theodore Dalrymple, a doctor retired from practice, turned a critical eye upon a full year of the Journal, alert to dubious premises and to what is left unsaid. In False Positive, he demonstrates that many of the papers it publishes reach conclusions that are not only flawed, but obviously flawed. He exposes errors of reasoning and conspicuous omissions apparently undetected by the editors. In some cases, there is reason to suspect actual corruption.When the Journal takes on social questions, its perspective is solidly politically correct. Practically no debate on social issues appears in the printed version, and highly debatable points of view go unchallenged. The Journal reads as if there were only one possible point of view, though the American medical profession (to say nothing of the extensive foreign readership) cannot possibly be in total agreement with the stances taken in its pages. It is thus more megaphone than sounding board. There is indeed much in the New England Journal of Medicine that deserves praise and admiration. But this book should encourage the general reader to take a constructively critical view of medical news and to be wary of the latest medical doctrines.

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.

First paperback edition of the acclaimed Hardback.

Travelling to the hard-living Dylan Thomas's Boathouse in Laugharne, Wales, psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple considered along the way another foible - the folly of eminent people. Praised for their attainments in one area, high-achievers are more often than not prone to unexpected failings elsewhere. Enter a large cast of anti- and vivisectionists, surgeons, theologians, philosophers, admirals, judges, astrophysicists, Nazi-leaning homoeopaths, and writers such as D.H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, P.G. Wodehouse, and Conan Doyle. In his pithy and amusing style, Dalrymple casts a sobering light on an insuppressible trait of ours - the fallibility of the human mind.

When a country is covered in trash, what does that say about its culture? This passionate plea by The Oldie columnist Theodore Dalrymple is now published for the first time in paperback.

Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol, his last work for publication in 1898 is known the world over for its insight and telling phrases, such as 'bricks of shame', 'souls in pain' and 'that little tent of blue, that prisoners call the sky'. Possibly the greatest and most influential artistic work in terms of penal reform and conveying to outsiders the soul desolate nature and experience of imprisonment, the ballad crystalises the degradation, isolation, fear, introspection and sense of loss involved.This new book also looks at the ballad from a fresh perspective: that of a serving prison officer who has spent a substantial part of his career inside the very prison that Wilde wrote about - noting on a daily basis connections between its fabric, the prison system and the ballad as well as with the town of Reading. The result is a fine work that casts new light on Wilde's incarceration, suggests a number of fresh explanations for some lines of the ballad and puts forward an until now unpublished explanation as to why Reading was chosen for Wilde. Indicative of this approach, Anthony Stokes explains why even C.3.3 is not what it seems, why certain lines in the ballad have been misunderstood by 'experts' given the context and times.But Anthony Stoke's book is much more than this. Based on minute research over more than ten years it traces the history of "Reading Gaol" from early times to the present day, dealing with its role as a bridewell, local prison and today one that carries out ground-breaking work with young offenders. There are also chapters on its use as a place of internment for Irish Republicans in the wake of the Easter Rising, as a top secret Correctional Centre for Canadian troops serving in England during World War II, escape attempts, riots and the executions that took place at Reading over the years including during the time when James Marwood (the inventor of the 'long drop') officiated; much of this based on official records and Execution Log. There are also notes on other interesting prisoners ranging from the notorious Reading baby farmer Amelia Dyer to the Hollywood TV and movie actor, Stacey Keach.But above all it is Oscar Wilde and the "Ballad of Reading Goal" that permeate and inform this book as the author seeks to combine information about the prison with frequently telling explanations that all too often converge with the more universal nerve that was touched upon by one of England's greatest creative minds - making "Pit of Shame" a book for every Wilde afficionado, penal reformer and student of English literature.With a special 16 page collection of illustrations charting life in "Reading Gaol" and of some of its prisoners.