[Itse]

For those interested in the lives of the British underclasses (or just good short stories), the acclaimed "Life at the Bottom" is available free on the internet.

"Life at the Bottom" is a collection of short stories by a psychologist who has worked in the slums both in Africa and Britain, talking about his experiences in Britain.

The stories aren't very long, I recommend giving them a peak.

http://winteryknight.wordpress.com/2...line-for-free/

EDIT: If you were to only read one, I think the first one "The Knife Went In" is propably the best choice.

It is a mistake to suppose that all men, or at least all Englishmen, want to be free. On the contrary, if freedom entails responsibility, many of them want none of it. They would happily exchange their liberty for a modest (if illusory) security. Even those who claim to cherish their freedom are rather less enthusiastic about taking the consequences of their actions. The aim of untold millions is to be free to do exactly as they choose and for someone else to pay when things go wrong.

Violent criminals often use an expression auxiliary to “My head went” when explaining their deeds: “It wasn’t me.” Here is the psychobabble of the slums, the doctrine of the “Real Me” as refracted through the lens of urban degradation. The Real Me has nothing to do with the phenomenal me, the me that snatches old ladies’ bags, breaks into other people’s houses, beats up my wife and children, or repeatedly drinks too much and gets involved in brawls. No, the Real Me is an immaculate conception, untouched by human conduct: it is that unassailable core of virtue that enables me to retain my self-respect whatever I do. What I am is not at all determined by what I do; and insofar as what I do has any moral significance at all, it is up to others to ensure that the phenomenal me acts in accordance with the Real Me.

Why should this occur just when, objectively speaking, freedom and opportunity for the individual have never been greater?

In the first place, there is now a much enlarged constituency for liberal views: the legions of helpers and carers, social workers and therapists, whose incomes and careers depend crucially on the supposed incapacity of large numbers of people to fend for themselves or behave reasonably. Without the supposed powerlessness of drug addicts, burglars, and others in the face of their own undesirable inclinations, there would be nothing for the professional redeemers to do. They have a vested interest in psychopathology, and their entire therapeutic world view of the patient as the passive, helpless victim of illness legitimizes the very behavior from which they are to redeem him. Indeed, the tangible advantages to the wrongdoer of appearing helpless are now so great that he needs but little encouragement to do so.

In the second place, there has been a widespread dissemination of psychotherapeutic concepts, in however garbled or misinterpreted a form. These concepts have become the currency even of the uneducated. Thus the idea has become entrenched that if one does not know or understand the unconscious motives for one’s acts, one is not truly responsible for them. This, of course, applies only to those acts which someone regards as undesirable: no one puzzles over his own meritoriousness. But since there is no single ultimate explanation of anything, one can always claim ignorance of one’s own motives. Here is a perpetual getout.

Third, there has been a widespread acceptance of sociological determinism, especially by the guilt-laden middle classes. Statistical association has been taken indiscriminately as proving causation: thus, if criminal behavior is more common among the poorer classes, it must be poverty that causes crime.

Nobody, of course, experiences himself as sociologically determined—certainly not the sociologist. And few of the liberals who espouse such a viewpoint recognize its profoundly dehumanizing consequences. If poverty is the cause of crime, burglars do not decide to break into houses any more than amoebae decide to move a pseudopod towards a particle of food. They are automata—and presumably should be treated as such.

Sorry for the endless edits. Anyway, I wanted to include a quote that show the book is not all liberal-bashing.

From "Good-bye, Cruel World", talking about a 15-year old girl at a ward for patients who have deliberately overdosed.

She doesn't want to go to a municipal children's home either, and in this I can't entirely blame her. She says she wants to be found a foster family, but the social worker informs me that not only is this difficult to arrange in a hurry but that once any prospective family knows her history—her truancy from school, her bulimia, her wrist-cutting—it will not agree to take her. The only possible solution would be for her to live with her aunt (her mother's sister), where she lived once before and was so happy that she behaved herself. But her mother, exercising parental rights if not duties, has specifically forbidden that, precisely because, I surmise, she behaves well there. Her mother wants to be rid of her as much as she wants to be rid of her mother, but her mother also wants to maintain the fiction that this desire stems solely from her daughter's impossible conduct. In order to disguise her own contribution to the situation and her indifference toward her own offspring, it is imperative that no place be found for her daughter that is so agreeable that her behavior improves there.

(and here's a link to some reviews to give you some idea as to what it's about
http://www.amazon.com/Life-Bottom-Wo.../dp/1566633826)