Theodore Dalrymple

This is a searing account of life in the underclass and why it persists as it does, written by a British psychiatrist who treats the poor in a slum hospital and a prison in England. Dr. Dalrymple's key insight is that long-term poverty is caused not by economics but by a dysfunctional set of values.

The Worldview that Makes the Underclass

Life at the Bottom

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."

The Mandarins and the Masses

Our Culture, What's Left of It

Pharmacological Lies and the Addiction Bureaucracy

Romancing Opiates

Today, the word prejudice has come to seem synonymous with bigotry; therefore the only way a person can establish freedom from bigotry is by claiming to have wiped his mind free from prejudice. English psychiatrist and writer Theodore Dalrymple shows that freeing the mind from prejudice is not only impossible, but entails intellectual, moral and emotional dishonesty. The attempt to eradicate prejudice has several dire consequences for the individual and society as a whole.

The Necessity of Preconceived Ideas

In Praise of Prejudice

Francis Kenneth

The cultural death of God has created a conundrum for intellectuals. How could a life stripped of ultimate meaning be anything but absurd? How was man to live? How could he find direction in a world of no direction? What would be tell his children that could make their lives worthwhile? What is the ground of morality? Existentialism is the literary cri de coeur resulting from the realization that without God, everything good, true and beautiful in human life is destined to be destroyed in a pitiless material cosmos. Theodore Dalrymple and Kenneth Francis examine the main existentialist works, from Ecclesiastes to the Theatre of the Absurd, each man coming from a different perspective. Francis is a believer, Dalrymple is not, but both empathize with the struggle to find meaning in a seemingly meaningless universe. Part literary criticism, part philosophical exploration, this book holds many surprising gems of insight from two of the most interesting minds of our time.

From Ecclesiastes to Theatre of the Absurd

The Terror of Existence

why European intellectuals surrender to barbarism

The new Vichy syndrome

How Psychology Undermines Morality

Admirable Evasions

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.

A Year of Error, Omission, and Political Correctness in the New England Journal of Medicine

False Positive

Theodore Dalrymple's brilliant new collection of writings follows on the extraordinary success of his earlier books, Life at the Bottom and Our Culture, What's Left of It. No writer today is more adept and incisive in exploring the state of our culture and the ideas that are changing our ways of life. In Not with a Bang But a Whimper, he takes the measure of our cultural decline, with special attention to Britain-its bureaucratic muddle, oppressive welfare mentality, and aimless young-all pursued in the name of democracy and freedom. He shows how terrorism and the growing numbers of Muslim minorities have changed our public life. Also here are Mr. Dalrymple's trenchant observations on artists and ideologues, and on the treatment of criminals and the mentally disturbed, his area of medical interest.

The Politics and Culture of Decline

Not With a Bang But a Whimper

A both witty and lacerating criticism of our sentimentality-centric culture by cultural commentator and former prison doctor Theodore Dalrymple.

The Toxic Cult of Sentimentality

Spoilt Rotten

Graham Underwood is an unusual serial killer. Having spent most of his spare time for the past twenty years reading in the public library, he is able after his arrest to write a sophisticated and bitingly witty philosophical justification for the murder of his many victims.

The Testament of a Serial Killer

So Little Done

In his further reports from the medical fron t line, the pseudonymous Dr Dalrymple turns his diagnostic e ye on the foibles and follies of contemporary Britain, and t he individuals who make up our dangerously unstable but self -righteous society. '

If Symptoms Still Persist

"Mr Rose was not the kind of man to accept defeat without retaliation. Rancour with him was no passing mood but a permanent state, to be nursed by memory and increased by reflection."The protagonists of Theodore Dalrymple's new collection of stories are driven to self-destruction or the destruction of others by a variety of motives, from hatred of a spouse to utopianism. The stories are both topical and timeless.Theodore Dalrymple is a retired doctor and psychiatrist who has written many books, including Life at the Bottom, Admirable Evasions and Midnight Maxims.

The Wheelchair and Other Stories

"More than half a century ago, George Orwell wrote an essay about the decline of the English murder. Since the 1990s, Theodore Dalrymple has witnessed its modern variety in real life. For over a quarter of a century he has treated and examined many more murderers than most as a prison doctor, psychiatrist, and court expert in some of Britain's most deprived areas. Here, he delves deep into his life of personal encounters with the murderous underclass to determine what has changed overtime and what has not. Inimitably, his unique portrait of modern criminals is at the same time a parable of dysfunction in our own culture. Through his experiences, he exposes today's vicious cult of denial, blaming and psychobabble that hides behind a corrosive sentiment of caring. Illustrated with scores of eye-opening, true-life vignettes, The Knife Went In is in turn hilariously funny, chillingly horrifying, and always unexpectedly revealing. Taken together, this lifetime of experience is a clear and unsentimental mirror in which we view modern progress without its varnish."--Publisher description.

Murder and the Decline of Our Culture : Memoirs of a Prison Doctor and Psychiatrist

The Knife Went in

Ramses was the best dog in the world, the cleverest, friendliest, most expres-sive, understanding, amusing dog that ever was, and it was only a happy coincidence that he happened to be ours.

A Memoir

Ramses

"Concision is to the mind what cleanliness is to the body." We all have those sleepless moments late at night when our mind races from one thought to another. Theodore Dalrymple has recently used such moments to collect his thoughts in the form of maxims: those pithy statements of seemingly obvious but overlooked truths. There are 365 of them here, well more than a year's worth of contemplation. By stripping away unnecessary qualifications, Dalrymple's maxims force us to confront the universal and the timeless. Readers will be both provoked and enlightened by these Midnight Maxims: nocturnal thoughts, artfully expressed. Theodore Dalrymple is a retired doctor and psychiatrist who has written many books, including Life at the Bottom, Admirable Evasions and Saving the Planet and Other Stories.

Midnight Maxims

Eric Coombes

Can any of us entirely banish from our hearts and minds grave misgivings about the condition of the culture we now inhabit? Expressions of those misgivings are mostly unheard in public forums, ignored in the dominant media, and, if noticed at all, dismissed by state-supported bureaucracies and commercial vested interests. To have any chance of gaining attention, they must resolve themselves into coherent forms. We need to clarify our perceptions of the things that trouble us, by articulating and developing our thoughts about them. That is, we are in need of serious criticism—serious criticism, aesthetic, social and political—which is notably lacking in the contemporary world, especially in places readily available to the educated non-specialist, such as the 'quality' weekend newspapers, and especially, perhaps, in relation to the visual arts. The pieces collected in this volume are not presented as amounting to an overall account or theory of our cultural condition. They are offered merely as examples of serious criticism, of what we need if we are to begin to think more profitably about our condition, daring, in defiance of contemporary dogmatism, to make the necessary judgements of value without which our culture will continue to disintegrate.

Essays in Cultural Pathology

What is Wrong with Us?

A brief and witty satire on the contemporary health and safety culture by world-renowned doctor-writer Theodore Dalrymple. The unnamed anti-hero is a man who takes to heart every tabloid newspaper health scare, guards himself against every conceivable illness and worries endlessly about his mortality. He wears protective clothing to go shopping when he can't shop online and every inch of unprotected skin is smeared in various creams and lotions. Unfortunately, his caution is his eventual undoing as this elegantly written and amusing novella reaches its climax.

The Examined Life

What is written without pain, said Doctor Johnson, is rarely read with pleasure. Rarely perhaps, but not, I hope, never: for the little essays in this book were written, I must confess, without much angst. In part this was because, in writing them, I had no thesis to prove, no axe to grind, except that the world is both infinitely interesting and amusing, and provides us with an inexhaustible source of material for philosophical reflection. Many of the subjects treated of in this book were found by serendipity or came to me in flashes - it would be immodest to call them of inspiration - of previously unsuspected connection and interest. I can only hope that they entertain the reader as they have entertained me. At least they will do no harm, in compliance with the first principle of medical ethics. - Theodore Dalrymple

Theodore Dalrymple

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