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An Admirable Evasion: How Psychology Dehumanizes Us
An Admirable Evasion How Psychology Dehumanizes Us Author:Theodore Dalrymple An Admirable Evasion is a short book in which Dalrymple tries to show how human self-understanding has not been advanced by psychological thought of different schools which have held out the false promise of great advance. Psychological explanations of human behaviour are not only ludicrously inadequate oversimplifications, taking the part for t... more »he whole, ignoring the most obvious evidence, and generally doing violence to everyday experience, but they are socially harmful, in that they allow the person who believes in them, or at any rate some version of them, to evade his personal responsibility for his acts and put the blame elsewhere: his childhood, his genes, his neurochemistry, evolutionary pressure, etc. Psychoanalysis, behaviourism, modern neuroscience and evolutionary psychology prevent the kind of honest self-examination that is necessary in the formation of human character, and promotes instead a shallow psychobabble, which is self-obsession without such self-examination. Among other deleterious effects, psychology has promoted the gross overuse of medicines that affect the mind. The book also discusses the metaphysical reasons objections to the assumptions of psychology, and suggests that literature is actually more illuminating than psychology will ever be. Psychology destroys the awareness of the tragic dimension of life.« less