Anthony Daniels (psychiatrist)

Anthony (A.M.) Daniels (born 1949) is a British writer and retired physician (prison doctor and psychiatrist), who generally uses the pen name Theodore Dalrymple. He has also used three other pen names.Aut|Theodore Dalrymple. "Where nobody knows your name." (Globe and Mail, Feb. 16, 2008).] Regarding his pseudonym "Theodore Dalrymple", Daniels says he "chose a name that sounded suitably dyspeptic, that of a gouty old man looking out of the window of his London club, port in hand, lamenting the degenerating state of the world."

Daniels has written extensively on culture, art, politics, education and medicine drawing upon his experience as a doctor and psychiatrist in Zimbabwe and Tanzania, and more recently at a prison and a public hospital in Birmingham, in central England. He has travelled in many countries in Africa, South America, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere.

Daniels has revealed in his writing that his father was a Communist businessman, while his Jewish mother was born in Germany and came to the United Kingdom as a refugee from the Nazi regime.Fact|date=May 2008 In 2005 he retired from England to move (with his wife) to France, where he plans to continue writing. His columns frequently appear in "The Spectator" as well as in "City Journal", a magazine published by the Manhattan Institute.

In his commentary, Daniels frequently argues that the so-called "progressive" views prevalent within Western intellectual circles minimize the responsibility of individuals for their own actions and undermine traditional mores, contributing to the formation within rich countries of an underclass afflicted by endemic violence, criminality, sexually transmitted diseases, welfare dependency, and drug abuse.

He contends that the middle class abandonment of traditional cultural and behavioural aspirations has, by example, fostered routine incivility and ignorance among members of the working class. Occasionally accused of being a pessimist and misanthrope, his defenders praise his persistently conservative philosophy, which they describe as being anti-ideological, sceptical, rational and empiricist.

References

Works

* "Coups and Cocaine: Two Journeys in South America" (1986)
* "Fool or Physician: The Memoirs of a Sceptical Doctor" (1987)
* "Zanzibar to Timbuktu" (1988)
* "Sweet Waist of America: Journeys around Guatemala" (1990)
* "The Wilder Shores of Marx: Journeys in a Vanishing World" (published in the U.S. as "Utopias Elsewhere") (1991)
* "Monrovia Mon Amour: A Visit to Liberia" (1992)
* "If Symptoms Persist: Anecdotes from a Doctor" (1995)
* "So Little Done: The Testament of a Serial Killer" (1996)
* "If Symptoms Still Persist" (1997)
* "Mass Listeria: The Meaning of Health Scares" (1998)
* "An Intelligent Person's Guide to Medicine" (2001)
* "Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass" (2001) ISBN 1566633826
* "Violence, Disorder and Incivility in British Hospitals: The Case for Zero Tolerance" (2002) ISBN 0907631975
* "Our Culture, What's Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses" (2005) ISBN 1566636434
* "Romancing Opiates: Pharmacological Lies And The Addiction Bureaucracy" (2006) ISBN 1594030871
* "Junk Medicine: Doctors, Lies and the Addiction Bureaucracy" (2007)ISBN 1905641591
* "In Praise of Prejudice: The Necessity of Preconceived Ideas" (2007) ISBN 1594032025
* "Not With a Bang But a Whimper: The Politics and Culture of Decline" (2008) ISBN 1566637953

External links

* [http://blog.skepticaldoctor.com The Skeptical Doctor] (detailed biography, links to current writings, book reviews, speeches and interviews)
* [http://www.city-journal.org/author_index.php?author=47 City Journal Articles by Theodore Dalrymple]
* [http://www.socialaffairsunit.org.uk/blog/authors.php?author=Theodore The Social Affairs Unit Articles by Theodore Dalrymple]
* [http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm?frm=1636&sec_id=1636 New English Review Articles by Theodore Dalrymple]
* [http://www.google.com/custom?q=anthony+daniels&sitesearch=newcriterion.com&sa=Search&cof=T%3A%23000080%3BLW%3A400%3BL%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.newcriterion.com%2Fimages%2Ftitle.gif%3BLH%3A60%3BBGC%3A%23FFFFCC%3BAH%3Acenter%3BAWFID%3Ae4a0a4f3d504d5ed%3B&domains=newcriterion.com New Criterion Articles by Anthony Daniels]
* [http://daily.nysun.com/Repository/getmailfiles.asp?Style=OliveXLib:ArticleToMail&Type=text/html&Path=NYS/2004/05/17&ID=Ar00104 "Compassionate Conservative"] (profile published in the "New York Sun, "2004)
* [http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/1345 An interview with Theodore Dalrymple]
* [http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/23/sum05/beck.htm Diagnosis: decadence]
* [http://socialaffairsunit.org.uk/digipub/content/view/9/27/1/0/ Violence, Disorder and Incivility in British Hospitals: The Case For Zero Tolerance] (book published by the Social Affairs Unit, 2002)

Reviews

* [http://www.ncpa.org/iss/int/2004/pd032604d.html Book review by Arthur Foulkes of "Life at the Bottom"]
* [http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles5/JacobseDalrymple.php Book review: Our Culture, What's Left of It]
* [http://crossroads.journalismcentre.com/2006/review-making-bad-decisions-by-dr-theodore-dalrymple/ Lecture Review: Making Bad Decision, About the way we think of social problems] by Danya Chaikel for [http://crossroads.journalismcentre.com/ Crossroads] . Lecture given in Maastricht, the Netherlands on 15 November 2006.

Multimedia

* [http://cgi.omroep.nl/cgi-bin/streams?/ncrv/netwerk/X64739_dalrymple-compl_WM_bb.wmv An interview with Theodore Dalrymple about modern society for Dutch public television (video ca. 40 minutes)]
* [http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/ideas_20060925_912.mp3 Audio podcast interview (.mp3 file, 24.1 MB, 52 min. 34 sec.)] on CBC Ideas with Theodore Dalrymple by Paul Kennedy (< site: podcast.cbc.ca)
* [http://www.goodreads.ca/audio/2006-09-25_dalrymple.mp3 Audio podcast interview (.mp3 file, 24.1 MB, 52 min. 34 sec.)] on CBC Ideas with Theodore Dalrymple by Paul Kennedy (< site: goodreads.ca)