How Modern Psychology Undermines Freedom and Responsibility: A Conversation with Theodore Dalrymple

Frequent Law and Liberty contributor Theodore Dalrymple discusses with Richard Reinsch his latest book, Admirable Evasions: How Psychology Undermines Morality. Dalrymple, a former psychiatrist in the British prison system, diagnoses modern psychology’s tendency to enable its subjects or is it objects to engage in self-absorption not self-examination. The ultimate effect of various psychological schools, Dalrymple observes, is that of an acid eating away the responsibility and freedom of the human person. His solution: a return to literature, and with that, a return to the authenticity and realism of human action and its limitations.