Dalrymple has participated in two of the Intelligence Squared debates that have recently become popular in London and New York. In 2007, he debated on behalf of the “For” side of the topic “Prison Works”, and earlier this year debated the topic “Psychotherapy has done more harm than good”, also on the “For” side (and in contrast to the position of his wife and fellow psychiatrist, who believes in the benefits of psychotherapy).
These debates are quite entertaining, and Dalrymple’s humor comes through in at least the first one (I haven’t yet watched the second one). His side won the day in the prison debate but wasn’t as fortunate in the one on psychotherapy.
Watch them here
By the way, the page includes a brief bio of Dalrymple — brief, that is, compared to this!
Update: The link above is not working, but this one seems to be.
The Skeptical Doctor
Dedicated to the work of Theodore Dalrymple
The second one doesn’t work you have to look here, at least I had to:
http://www.intelligencesquared.com/iq2-video/2009/Psychotherapy-has-done-more-harm-than-good
indeed, the second one doesn’t work. hope they could fix it…
Once again, a great job Steve and Clinton – thanks for spending the time to collate all this stuff.
The Prison Works debate is really interesting and, as you say, Dalrymple’s sense of humour comes across well.
On my computer neither link worked so I accessed the Prison Works debate from Coppers blog here:
http://coppersblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/prison-works.html
It’s worth a quick look there anyway b/c the comments about the debate are really good there.
I find it frightening that the people holding such high postitions are aginst prison.
This one seems to work.