Reductionism, the view that all aspects of human life and values can be exhaustively explained in terms of physical processes

Doubting Psychology

by SPENCER CASE 

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.

A review of Admirable Evasions, by Theodore Dalrymple. Contrarian Theodore Dalrymple, who investigated the mentality of the British underclass in Life at the Bottom, has frequently described psychology as a modern religion, or pseudo-religion. 

The medical establishment is the brave new priest class, while the anxious therapy patient replaces the penitent sinner. If so, then Dalrymple must be a heretic of the first order. 

On March 24, Encounter Books will release his latest, Admirable Evasions: How Psychology Undermines Morality, in which he contends that psychology has done more to impede human self-understanding than to advance it. Moreover, deference to psychology has led to a culture of self-obsession and a diminution of personal responsibility. 

The book opens with a provocative thought experiment. Suppose all the world’s anti-depressants were flung into the sea, all the psychology books turned into pulp, all psychology departments shut down, and all psychological research halted. Would humanity be the wiser or the more foolish? 

Dalrymple clearly thinks: the wiser. 

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