Everything in human self-understanding is shouting: only the details have yet to be filled in. Soon, there will be no more puzzles and no unpleasant surprises, no agonizing dilemmas in human existence; the question of the good life will have been settled once and for all, scientifically, without the necessity of endless, unprovable metaphysical speculations. To understand all will no longer be to forgive all, for there will be nothing to forgive; everyone will behave reasonably in the first place.I don’t believe it. and I’m not sure that I would want to live in such a world if it were true.

Do we understand everything about ourselves or only think so?

although Freud was personally conservative in his manner and morality, except where his incestuous adultery with his sister-in-law was concerned, his effect, if not his intention, was to loosen Man’s sense of responsibility for his own actions.Freud powerfully alienated men from their own consciousness by claiming that what went on in their conscious minds was but a shadow play, and that the real action lay deep beneath it, all undiscovered (and undiscoverable) without many hours of talking about oneself in the presence of an analyst.

Freud started it

The absurdity of treating humans as glorified Pavlov’s dogs having become evident and inescapable, a new element was then added to the recipe: *thought*. “Cognitive-behavioral therapy seeks to improve functioning and emotional well-being by identifying the beliefs, feelings and behaviors associated with psychological disturbance, and revising them through critical analysis and experiential exploration to be consistent with desired outcomes and positive life goals.”For those with obsessions and compulsions or mildly depressive feelings, CBT works.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) works

As is almost always the way with converts to anything, believers in CBT come wildly to overestimate its scope, and regard it as a panacea for most, if not all, the disgruntlements of Mankind. Misery has a tendency to rise to meet the means available for its alleviation.It is part of the very foundation of CBT that this is what people commonly do. Therefore, the effectiveness of CBT is perfectly compatible with the spread in the population of the very condition for which it is supposedly the effective cure.

... but it is overrated

You can persuade yourself into the symptomatology of a hundred diseases merely by reading a medical textbook; how much easier is it to do so when the symptoms are explicitly in the mind!

Perhaps there is a prevalence of certain conditions, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, that is “natural” and cannot be reduced, but one cannot help but wonder whether many conditions (for example, various kinds of eating disorders) spread in proportion as they are known about.The Werther effect, after all, is well known: it was named for an epidemic of suicides by young men all round Europe after the publication of Goethe’s *The Sorrows of Young Werther*, in which the romantic hero kills himself because of impossible love.

From knowledgable to sick

There are other ways to promote psychological fragility – by rewarding it. Plaintiffs have a vested interest in maximizing the harm that they have suffered from an accident of some kind. Psychological consequences of injury are both easy to fake and difficult to disprove.And, since the law’s delay is long, the person who fakes neurosis for long enough actually becomes neurotic.Since most people do not like to think of themselves as frauds, the symptoms continue even after the case is settled, so they do not come out as frauds.

Incentives to suffer – courts

Effort of the social security system is even larger. There has long been a struggle to have psychological disorders treated by the system in the same way as physical illnesses, a struggle in which psychiatrists and psychologists have taken part without acknowledging that they (who see vested interests everywhere else) might themselves have a vested interest in the matter.The government agrees to it because this not only creates a new class of dependents upon itself, but allows it to minimize the rate of unemployment: for a sick person is not unemployed, he is sick.

Incentives to suffer – Social security system

The expansion of psychiatric diagnoses leads paradoxically and simultaneously to overtreatment and under-treatment. The genuinely disturbed get short shrift: those with chronic schizophrenia, which seems most likely to me to be a genuine pathological malfunction of the brain, are left to molder in the doorways, streets, and stations of large cities, while untold millions have their fluctuating preoccupations attended to with the kind of attention that an overconcerned mother gives her spoiled child – with more or less the same results.

Considering all diagnosis equal

There is a demand for parity of thought, feeling, and judgment (or lack of it) when we meet or consider people with psychological disturbances. They are never to be thought of as responsible for their own condition or situation, but rather as victims of something exterior to themselves.This determination not to judge is compounded of three intertwined things: <ol><li>fear</li><li>a wish</li><li> hope</li></ol>

Why there is demand for equality of diagnosis?

We fear to judge because, in judging, we may blame those who are truly not blameworthy. We fear to appear censorious, as if there were nothing between complete and consistent moral latitudinarianism and Dickensian hypocrisy. Since the latter is now the only sin, it is best to make no judgment at all.By not judging, we avoid the possibility of error – at least the error of blaming the victim – though not that of exculpating the perpetrator.

1. Fear of misjudgement

We wish to appear understanding. To understand all is to forgive all; therefore, if we forgive all, we understand all. We thus put ourselves in the position of an all-merciful deity, the very deity whose existence we often are angrily to deny. Suffering of any kind, even that which would once have been deemed by most people as self-inflicted, is *ipso facto* evidence of victimhood. Our philosophy is: *I think, therefore I am*, but *He suffers, therefore he’s a victim.And only then can we maintain our pretense to universal understanding and experience the warmth of our own compassion.

2. Wish to appear understanding

"Virtue is not manifested in one’s behavior, always so difficult and tedious to control, but in one’s attitude toward victims. This view of virtue is both sentimental and unfeeling, cloying and brutal: for it implies that those who are not victims are not worthy of our sympathy or understanding, only of our denunciation."

The purpose of such all-encompassing understanding, other than moral self-aggrandizement, is the evasion of one’s own moral responsibility; for it follows that if no one is to be judged (because to judge is to judge harshly), then we can hope that one is not oneself to be judged – not even by oneself. This, in effect, means carte blanche to do as you feel like, because all behavior is put on an equal moral footing.

3. Hope not to be judged

That is why it is not uncommon nowadays to hear someone say “I’m learning to forgive myself” (usually under the guidance of a therapist), as if such learning were hard and valuable work.According to more traditional ways of thinking, learning to forgive oneself is learning how to act without scruple, how to forge ahead without regard to other people, how – in effect – to become a psychopath.Whatever else you may do, you must always love and esteem yourself, otherwise you are doomed to a life of sterile self-denigration.

We try to make it easy for ourselves

The notion of self-love or self-esteem is in itself either ridiculous or repellent. No one ascribes his good character or successes in life to an adequate fund of self-esteem.Self-doubt, within reason, is something to be overcome; self-esteem is complacency elevated to an ontological plane.No sensible person thinks for a moment about whether he loves or esteems himself. To do so is inherently a form of vanity.If it were possible to have too little self-esteem, it is also possible to have too much of it but if any person has – too much or too little (or just enough) – requires a moral judgment.

Focus on the self-esteem and self-love is vanity

Self-esteem is a concept that belongs to the psychology of the Real Me. The Real Me is someone who is inherently good and admirable, by nature good and inside every bad man there’s a good one trying to get out.The Real Me may have no connection to the Me as it acts in the world and appears to others. It is a secret and beautiful garden often accessible only by means of psychology.Real Me is admirable evasion – it allows us to do as we please without having to think badly of ourselves, to experience genuine remorse, or even to examine ourselves honestly.

Psychology of the Real Me

I do not mean here in any way to decry neurophysiology and its accomplishments. But what begins as a scientific advance quickly ends as an urban myth.It is now not uncommon to overhear people talking of their own brain chemistry.They speak with the strange authority of the religiously certain, the imbalance of their brain chemistry being as evident a fact to them.

Arcane science of neurochemistry

The popularity of brain chemistry as the explanation of all human behavior began in the 1980s with the extremely successful marketing of supposedly antidepressant, called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI's).They were undoubtedly effective,  but they had a number of troublesome side effects, not least among them a propensity to send patients to the opposite end of the mood spectrum, where they became manic.Though unproved and now discarded by almost everyone (at least as to the biochemical substance supposedly disordered), helped “to establish a biochemical basis for depression.”

Neurochemical imbalance is not entirely valid

First, because of the development of new antidepressants, the famous – or infamous – SSRIS mentioned above.Second, the very word unhappy has been all but eliminated from common parlance. If someone admits to unhappiness, it might be that his own ill-conduct, foolish or immoral, has contributed to it; but if he is depressed he is the victim of an illness, of something which, metaphysically speaking, has fallen from the sky.

Why is still neurochemical disbalance so popular?

This neurotransmitter reductionism, in which an over-or undersupply of a handful of biological substances in the brain supposedly accounted for all our disasters, should have been laughed out of court on commonsense grounds. The number of conditions for which the SSRI's were prescribed, some of them specially invented to fit the drug, gradually increased until it almost seemed that the whole of human misery was accounted for by errors of cerebral serotonin metabolism. Unhappy? Given to eating in binges? Shy at parties? Take Prozac, or one of its analogues.

SSRI's as panacea

Consider a person accused of a crime. To control himself and behave otherwise than he did. The assumption is that, if it can be shown that the person is neurologically deficient in self-control, he will escape punishment, since he will have been shown thereby to lack the *mens rea* necessary for a crime to have been committed at all.Actually, the logical consequences of this approach are not as liberal as often conceived, and are precisely illiberal, because they Remove moral responsibility from the law, and what you are left with is technical administration.

Paradox of responsibility

Changes in brain scans have been found in drug addicts so the National Institute on Drug Abuse has drawn the conclusion that drug addiction is a chronic relapsing brain disease and nothing else.But the brains of London taxi drivers, for example, have been shown to differ from those of the non-taxi-driving inhabitants of London because those drivers have all mastered.This means that changes in the brain do not indicate that whatever causes them is a brain disease.

Behavior ↔ brain

If complex behavior such as addiction is a chronic and relapsing brain disease, no one should be surprised if addicts awaited their salvation by means of a magic bullet. But to imply that there is or could be such a magic bullet is, in effect, to compound the problem for addicts; it is just what they want to hear so that they can continue their self-destruction with a clear conscience and that self-righteousness that comes nowadays with the awareness of being a victim – the victim of a chronic, relapsing brain disease, as revealed by brain scans.

Counterproductive label

I do not wish to deny that psychologists have done many intriguing and ingenious experiments. But the overall effect of psychological thought on human culture and society, I contend, has been overwhelmingly negative because it gives the false impression of greatly increased human self-understanding where none has been achieved, it encourages the evasion of responsibility by turning subjects into objects where it supposedly takes account of or interests itself in subjective experience, and it makes shallow the human character because it discourages genuine self-examination and self-knowledge.

Net impact of psychology

The author of Admirable Evasions is Theodore Dalrymple, the pen name of Anthony Daniels, a British cultural critic, psychiatrist, and former prison doctor. He is best known for his sharp critiques of modern culture, ideology, and the psychological worldview that he argues has replaced traditional moral thinking.

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.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

philosophy

Philosophy

mentalhealth

Mental Health

books

Books

Theodore Dalrymple

Admirable Evasions

We believe that through hard work, we can make it to the top. And we admire anyone who succeeds—especially if they’ve overcome difficult life circumstances. But whether you succeed doesn’t depend solely on you. It also depends on the structures and institutions within society that can either ease your path upward or make it incredibly difficult.This becomes fairly easy to see when you realize that people who suffer under totalitarian regimes can succeed as soon as they are given freedom.Basically same people, but different results.

The rhetoric of rising

While it is true that success most of the time reflects determination and hard work, it cannot truly be said that it is solely own achievement of the people. What about the parents and teachers who supported them along the way? What about the talents and gifts that are not entirely of their own making? What about the good fortune of living in a society that nurtures and rewards the talents they happen to have?Luck in success is inherent because you were given at least capacity and basic means to achieve it.

Where does the meritocracy truly start?

It is very hard to see that you are not sole creator of your own success and that you need luck to achieve it when the society tells you you are 100 % of responsible for the results of your life.But it also goes hand in hand with fear, because no matter how great the success, there may come a day in the future when we fail. So at the same time, we develop a twisted sense of satisfaction in the failure of others because it means they will not get ahead of us.

Meritocracy leads to individualism... and fear

In the misfortunes of our best friends we always find something not altogether displeasing to us.

A society that rewards merit is also appealing for aspirational reasons. While this can be inspiring, the principle of merit can take a tyrannical turn—not only when societies fail to live up to this ideal, but also—and especially—when they succeed. The dark side of the meritocratic ideal lies embedded in its most alluring promise: the promise of mastery and self-making. This promise carries a burden that is hard to bear.

Double-edged sword

It seems that we should celebrate meritocracy; working-class children could finally compete fairly alongside the children of the privileged. But according to Young, who coined term meritocracy, this would not be an unambiguous triumph—because it would inevitably lead to pride among the winners and humiliation among the losers, along with the belief that everyone deserves what they get.For Young, meritocracy was not an ideal to be achieved, but a recipe for social discord through humiliation. Decades ago, he foresaw the harsh meritocratic logic that now fuels populist anger.

Meritocracy has its limits

Thus the politics of humiliation differs in this respect from the politics of injustice. A protest against injustice looks outward; it claims that the system is rigged against them. A protest against humiliation is psychologically more complex. It combines resentment toward the winners with a constant self-doubt: maybe the rich are rich because they truly deserve it; maybe the losers are, in the end, complicit in their own misfortune. This feature makes the politics of humiliation more explosive than other political sentiments.

Politics of humiliation are very dangerous

There is nothing wrong with hiring people based on merit. In fact, it is generally the right thing to do. When it comes to filling jobs, merit matters for at least two reasons. One is efficiency, the other is fairness.

Isn't it good to reward according to merit?

But the problem is that our technocratic version of meritocracy assigns the moral value of the person not on the merit but on her economic value. In the realm of economics, it simply assumes that the common good is defined by GDP, and that the value of people’s contributions lies in the market value of the goods or services they sell.

Merit on the market = Human value

Meritocracy starts early—at school, where getting into a good college means for almost everybody almost everything. During their attendance students are placed under enormous pressure to meet a long list of requirements in order to gain admission to a good school, which will hopefully increase their chances of success at getting into good university and help them secure a good job afterwards.Because of the cost of entrance exams and higher education itself, success tends to be replicated among those who already succeed, leading to a decline in socioeconomic mobility.

Credentialism – privilege keeper

Meritocratic hubris is a consequence of overestimating our own role and adopting an arrogant—even contemptuous—attitude toward those who, although they have not succeeded financially or socially, clearly do their part in socially valuable work that "just" happens not to be adequately rewarded by the market.But because we base a person’s value on their economic worth, we come to believe that everyone gets what they deserve and we should help only those who are not in bad life situation by their fault.

Meritocratic hubris

The kinder people who understand that we cannot all be at the top of the ladder want to redistribute resources to the poorer ones so they have basic material goods covered. That attitude is distributive justice. "We will distribute resources so even though the market is not very kind to you, we ne need your labor and you should have enough of money to cover your basic needs."That is mostly technocratic attitude. But it is not enough, because if you are on the receiving end it may seem patronizing to you. "Oh you, poor thing, you are not good enough, here is money."

Distributive justice

Distributive justice treats us primarily as consumers—ensuring we have enough resources to meet our needs. But it overlooks the fact that we are also producers. We want to contribute to the whole, yet the contributions of less-educated or less-skilled people are often dismissed, devalued, or ignored. That’s why many rebel and vote for anyone willing to recognize their identity and dignity.The importance of the role of being a producer in a person’s life can be seen in those who no longer need to work—but choose to work anyway.

Contributive justice

"Unemployment means having nothing to do—which means having nothing to do with the rest of us."

In a market society, it’s hard to resist the tendency to equate the money we earn with the value of our contribution to the common good. This confusion isn’t just the result of careless thinking. One way to address it is through public debate and policies that encourage us to consciously and democratically reflect on what truly counts as valuable contributions to the common good—and where market verdicts miss the mark, even if values are subjective.

Thinking about true social contribution

Michael J Sandel is professor of political philosophy at Harvard and his lectures "Justice: What's right thing to do" is one of the most attended courses in the history of school.Most of us believe that if someone has achieved success through hard work, it is a fair state of affairs that cannot be criticized. However, Michael J. Sandel shows that reality is not that simple.

A Times Literary Supplement’s Book of the Year 2020 A New Statesman's Best Book of 2020 A Bloomberg's Best Book of 2020 A Guardian Best Book About Ideas of 2020 The world-renowned philosopher and author of the bestselling Justice explores the central question of our time: What has become of the common good? These are dangerous times for democracy. We live in an age of winners and losers, where the odds are stacked in favor of the already fortunate. Stalled social mobility and entrenched inequality give the lie to the American credo that "you can make it if you try". The consequence is a brew of anger and frustration that has fueled populist protest and extreme polarization, and led to deep distrust of both government and our fellow citizens--leaving us morally unprepared to face the profound challenges of our time. World-renowned philosopher Michael J. Sandel argues that to overcome the crises that are upending our world, we must rethink the attitudes toward success and failure that have accompanied globalization and rising inequality. Sandel shows the hubris a meritocracy generates among the winners and the harsh judgement it imposes on those left behind, and traces the dire consequences across a wide swath of American life. He offers an alternative way of thinking about success--more attentive to the role of luck in human affairs, more conducive to an ethic of humility and solidarity, and more affirming of the dignity of work. The Tyranny of Merit points us toward a hopeful vision of a new politics of the common good.

Admirable Evasions

The Tyranny of Merit

Ondřej Šmída