If symptoms
persist . . .
TO ADAPT very slightly the words of one of the 20th century's idols with feet of clay, 'Fame at last, fame at last, thank God Almighty, fame at last!' I, who until now have humbly and anonymously tended the garden of human misery, was asked last week on to the television to discuss our prisons with a panel of ex- cons (including The Spectator's High Life correspondent), two prison staff and a feminist criminologist.
On my way from the country to the studio, I was met at the station by a driver who held aloft a placard saying 'Dr Dalrymphele', which made me feel like a hybrid of a Scottish laird and an Ndebele witch doctor.
I was to undergo further transforma- tion at the hands of a make-up artist who had instructions to render me unrecognis- able to the General Medical Council. Half way through, with my grey goatee in place, I looked like Mr Bulganin; this depressed me, because even to remember what Mr Bulganin looked like one has to be middle-aged. Finally, I was trans- formed into a monster: Dr Dalrymple had become Mr Hyde.
My character underwent a horrible transformation also. Under the studio
lights, I started uttering the platitudes that I have spent all my life mocking. I said nothing contentious or witty; I might even have sounded (I hide my face in shame) caring. When the feminist said that the idea of punishment was primitive and without justification, instead of ex- ploding with wraths at such Honderichian humbug, I passed a reformed gangster some Perrier water and kept silent.
I took my revenge in the car that whisked me away from the studio, however. Though the feminist was not actually present in the car with me, she could not turn away the force of my argument or evade my withering scorn. Punishment a primitive idea, indeed! Who was she trying to kid? Which of us would not drive dead drunk at 100 mph down Kensington High Street without it? Society is inconceivable without punish- ment, and indeed life would be meaning- less without it, because there can be no reward where there is no punishment. One can already see the effects of a world without positive or negative reinforce- ment (as rat-psychologists call it) amongst our unemployed youth, who aspire to nothing except a state of video- induced catatonia.
And another thing while I'm at it. There was liberal muttering on the prog- ramme about the need to give prisoners self-respect. I'm all in favour of giving prisoners decent living conditions (a shower and a flush lavatory are not luxuries at the end of the 20th century), with access to proper medical facilities, but the idea that a man who makes his living by grabbing pension money from old ladies or worse should respect himself is preposterous, indeed monstrous. Self- respect is earned, not conferred like a decoration; among criminals it is usually misplaced, and is a hindrance to their reformation.
Naturally, I didn't say any of this; I was eloquent and impassioned only in the car on the way to my hotel. Henceforth, however, I shall always say exactly what I think, no holds barred. Except to my patients, of course.
Theodore Dalrymple
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