Heidegger's Worlds. Inner Circle Seminar 266 (21 February 2021)

Heidegger’s ‘Worlds’
Early Freiburg Lectures (1919-25)
A 100^th-anniversary revaluation
The ‘self-world’ and other ‘worlds’
Why did Heidegger propose and then give up his three-‘worlds’ theory?

Anthony Stadlen
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 266
Sunday 21 February 2021
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Martin Heidegger

Martin Heidegger at home in Freiburg

In the 1940s, the psychiatrist Ludwig Binswanger described many idiosyncratic ‘worlds’ of his patients, such as Ellen West’s ‘swamp world’, ‘tomb world’ and  ‘aetherial world’; these undoubtedly were phenomenological descriptions of the patients’ actual experience. He also, though only for a short time, tentatively proposed a relatively constant triad of ‘worlds’ supposedly of more general application: ‘Umwelt’ (‘around-world’), ‘Mitwelt’ (‘with-world’), ‘Eigenwelt’ (‘own world’). Half a century on, the existential therapist Emmy van Deurzen added a fourth: the ‘Überwelt’ (‘over-world’). These four ‘worlds’ have been taught in training institutes and regarded as an important part of existential therapy, at least in London, for more than thirty years. But do they really make sense as a way of understanding our being-in-the-world-with-others? How is it that, for example, personal relationships are assigned in one book to the ‘Eigenwelt’ and in another book by the same author to the ‘Mitwelt’? How could such relationships be restricted to one or other such partial ‘world’ or ‘dimension’, rather than by their very nature embodying a shared search for wholeness that always already precedes and transcends such fragmentation into ‘worlds’?

As it happens, unmentioned by (and perhaps unknown to) Binswanger and van Deurzen, Martin Heidegger had already, in his Freiburg lectures a hundred years ago, proposed a triad like Binswanger’s, though with ‘Selbstwelt’ (‘self-world’) rather than ‘Eigenwelt’ – only to denounce it a few years later, even before he wrote Being and Time (1927), as misconceived. Today we shall explore Heidegger’s reasons for this ‘turn’ in his thinking. An ‘Überwelt’ would have been even more alien to him, implying a quasi-schizoid split-off world of ‘meaning’ and ‘spirituality’, rather than meaning and spirit illuminating the one world in which we all live, move and have our being. In any case, if there were to be an ‘Überwelt’, we may ask, why not also an ‘Unterwelt’ (‘underworld’), as so powerfully documented throughout the millennia from ancient mythology to Freud and Jung? Of course, Heidegger, like Freud, acknowledged and alluded to such ordinary and familiar ‘worlds’ as the ‘work-world’, the ‘world of mathematics’, the ‘classical world’, the ‘dream-world’, the ‘wish-world’; but by 1927 he had firmly dismissed his own earlier schematic threefold of ‘worlds’; and he wrote, definitively, in Being and Time: ‘The world of Dasein is Mitwelt.’

That is to say, our Mit-sein, our being-in-the-world-with-others, is not one ‘world’ or ‘dimension’ among others of being human. Rather, it is what being human is.

It is hoped that today’s seminar will involve creative and respectful dialogue between those who have found it helpful and constructive to conceive experience in terms of a three- or four-‘world’ scheme and those who have found this an artificial and misleading conceptualisation.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ

Cost: Psychotherapy trainees £140, others £175, some bursaries; coffee, tea, Durrants rock, mineral water included; payable in advance; no refunds or transfers unless seminar cancelled

Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE

Tel: +44 (0) 208 888 6857 or: +44 (0) 7809 433250

E-mail: stadlen@aol.com or: stadlenanthony@gmail.com

For further information on seminars, visit: http://anthonystadlen.blogspot.com/

The Inner Circle Seminars were founded by Anthony Stadlen in 1996 as an ethical, existential, phenomenological search for truth in psychotherapy. They have been kindly described by Thomas Szasz as ‘Institute for Advanced Studies in the Moral Foundations of Human Decency and Helpfulness’. But they are independent of all institutes, schools and universities.

Buber, Heidegger, Lėvinas on the ‘Holy’. Anthony Stadlen conducts Inner Circle Seminar 262 (13 September 2020)

Buber, Heidegger, Lėvinas: On the ‘Holy’

Anthony Stadlen
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 262
Sunday 13 September 2020
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ

Cost: Psychotherapy trainees £140, others £175, some bursaries; coffee, tea, Durrants rock, mineral water included; payable in advance; no refunds or transfers unless seminar cancelled

Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE

Tel: +44 (0) 208 888 6857 or: +44 (0) 7809 433250

E-mail: stadlen@aol.com or: stadlenanthony@gmail.com

For further information on seminars, visit: http://anthonystadlen.blogspot.com/

The Inner Circle Seminars were founded by Anthony Stadlen in 1996 as an ethical, existential, phenomenological search for truth in psychotherapy. They have been kindly described by Thomas Szasz as ‘Institute for Advanced Studies in the Moral Foundations of Human Decency and Helpfulness’. But they are independent of all institutes, schools and universities.

Locked Up: ‘Patients’ and their Gaolers. 15. Claude Eatherly. Hiroshima Pilot. Anthony Stadlen conducts Inner Circle Seminar 261 (9 August 2020)

Locked Up: ‘Patients’ and their Gaolers
15. Claude Eatherly
Repentant Hiroshima Pilot
An investigation into his alleged ‘insanity’
75 years after Nagasaki (9 August 1945)

Anthony Stadlen
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 261
Sunday 9 August 2020
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Gunther Anders

Claude Eatherly

Bertrand Russell

Today is the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. Major Claude Eatherly, Commander of the bomber group responsible for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks on 6 and 9 August 1945 respectively, personally guided the aircraft carrying the Hiroshima bomb. In striking contrast to the other servicemen involved, who were feted as heroes, he could not reconcile his conscience with what he had done. He was, as a result, certified and incarcerated as ‘mentally ill’. The philosopher Gunther Anders, a former student of Martin Heidegger, initiated a correspondence with Eatherly in his asylum, published in 1961 as a book, Burning Conscience, with a Preface by Bertrand Russell, who wrote:

‘No unbiased person, after reading Eatherly’s letters, can honestly doubt his sanity. [...] The world was prepared to honour him for his part in the massacre, but, when he repented, it turned against him, seeing in his act of repentance its own condemnation.’

We shall explore this as a paradigm case of a procedure of locking up ‘inconvenient’ people that is still prevalent in our society today.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ

Cost: Psychotherapy trainees £140, others £175, some bursaries; coffee, tea, Durrants rock, mineral water included; payable in advance; no refunds or transfers unless seminar cancelled

Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE

Tel: +44 (0) 208 888 6857 or: +44 (0) 7809 433250

E-mail: stadlen@aol.com or: stadlenanthony@gmail.com

For further information on seminars, visit: http://anthonystadlen.blogspot.com/

The Inner Circle Seminars were founded by Anthony Stadlen in 1996 as an ethical, existential, phenomenological search for truth in psychotherapy. They have been kindly described by Thomas Szasz as ‘Institute for Advanced Studies in the Moral Foundations of Human Decency and Helpfulness’. But they are independent of all institutes, schools and universities.

Doing ‘Nothing’: The Work of Mothers and Psychotherapists. Naomi Stadlen conducts Inner Circle Seminar 260 (5 July 2020)

Doing ‘Nothing’

The Work of Mothers and Psychotherapists

Naomi Stadlen
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 260
Sunday 5 July 2020
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Naomi Stadlen

Mother, grandmother, existential psychotherapist and supervisor Naomi Stadlen teaches, at the New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling, a unique course on the existential-phenomenological study of familes. She also runs a group, Mothers Talking, which she founded nearly thirty years ago. Her books What Mothers Do – especially when it looks like nothing (2004) and How Mothers Love – and how relationships are born (2011) are translated into many languages and revered by mothers round the world. Her third book, What Mothers Learn – without being taught, will be published in April 2020.

She writes:

‘This seminar explores parallels with What Mothers Learn – without being taught. But you don’t need to have read the book, or be a mother, to take part. Mothering is similar in many ways to psychotherapy. Both are intimate. Both raise ethical questions. There is no set way to do either, nor an end-product. There can be no ‘finished child’ or ‘completed client’. And though children and clients have much to learn, mothers and psychotherapists are plunged into learning too. I will explain what I have learned from listening to mothers, to introduce a discussion on psychotherapy. Perhaps psychotherapists, like mothers, learn much that isn’t – and probably couldn’t be – taught.’

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ
Cost: Psychotherapy trainees £140, others £175, some bursaries; coffee, tea, Durrants Rock, mineral water included; payable in advance; no refunds or transfers unless seminar cancelled
Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE
Tel: +44 (0) 20 8888 6857  iPhone: 07809 433 250
E-mail: stadlen@aol.com  or: stadlenanthony@gmail.com
For further information on seminars, visit: http://anthonystadlen.blogspot.com/

The Inner Circle Seminars were founded by Anthony Stadlen in 1996 as an ethical, existential, phenomenological search for truth in psychotherapy. They have been kindly described by Thomas Szasz as ‘Institute for Advanced Studies in the Moral Foundations of Human Decency and Helpfulness’. But they are independent of all institutes, schools and universities.

Fort!–Da! A century of speculations on Freud’s grandson’s game. Daniel Benveniste conducts Inner Circle Seminar 259 (14 June 2020)

A photograph of little Ernst with his reel is not here: it is fort, not da.
It may be seen at this seminar, or on the flyer that I will send on request.
Anthony Stadlen

Fort!–Da!
1920–2020
A century of speculations on Freud’s report
on his grandson’s game in
Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920)

Daniel Benveniste
conducts Inner Circle Seminar No. 259
introduced by Anthony Stadlen
Sunday 14 June 2020
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

In September 1915 Sigmund Freud watched his 18-month-old grandson Ernst Wolfgang Halberstadt repeatedly and ‘very skilfully’ throw a wooden reel on a string into his cot with a cry ‘o-o-o-o’, which Freud thought meant ‘fort’ (‘gone’), and then make it reappear with a joyful ‘da’ (‘there’). This became the paradigm case for a century of far-reaching speculations, including those of Freud himself on the ‘death instinct’ in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), of R. D. Laing in The Divided Self (1960), and of Jacques Derrida in The Post Card (1980), as well as of Melanie Klein, Donald Winnicott and Jacques Lacan. Ernst became eventually W. Ernest Freud, the only grandchild of Freud to become a psychoanalyst, and the only other psychoanalyst to practise using Sigmund Freud’s legendary couch. 

But is it really possible to derive such consequences from a grandfather’s report of his little grandson’s game a hundred years ago? W. Ernest Freud told Anthony Stadlen that he could not even remember playing the game. How could any of the interpretations over the last hundred years be tested?

Today, Daniel Benveniste, clinical psychologist and Honorary Member of the American Psychoanalytical Association, discusses these questions in the light of his comprehensive research, including extensive interviews with W. Ernest Freud himself, as reported in his masterly biography, The Interwoven Lives of Sigmund, Anna and W. Ernest Freud: Three Generations of Psychoanalysts (2015). 

________________________________

Daniel Benveniste wrote for the centenary of little Ernst’s actual playing of the game in September 1915:

September 13, 2015

Bellevue, Washington

To all those who are interested in Fort Da,

On September 13, 1915, Sigmund Freud, along with his sister-in-law, Minna Bernays, traveled north via Munich and Berlin to visit his daughter Sophie, son-in-law Max, and his little grandson Ernst in Hamburg (E. Jones, 1955, p. 181). During this two-week visit, Freud observed something that was destined to contribute to the reshaping of his theory. What he observed was something that went beyond the primary motivation of pleasure and therefore the pleasure principle. It was something that had implications for the compulsion to repeat, the turning of passive into active, the management of loss, and the renunciation of instinctual gratification. He observed Ernst’s game of fort da and its related games of disappearance and return, which he would famously describe five years later in his book Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920/1955).

There is perhaps no case, no dream, no observation of Freud’s that has received more commentaries and alternative interpretations than his observation of his eighteen-month-old grandson Ernst playing with a wooden reel on the end of a string. When his mother left the apartment, for whatever reason, Ernst would repeatedly throw this wooden reel, with a string tied to it, into a curtained cot while holding the other end of the string in his hand. In this way, the reel disappeared into the cot, and, as it did, he said “o-o-o-o,” which Freud and Ernst’s mother, Sophie, understood to mean fort (gone). And when he pulled on the string and the reel reappeared, he said, “da” (there).

That was all there was to it. While Freud reported some other games of disappearance and return that Ernst played, this particular game contained all the main components. Freud saw in this little game of disappearance and return the symbolic representation of the renunciation of instinctual satisfaction, for in this game Ernst found a way to allow his mother to leave without protesting. In managing the distress he experienced in his mother’s absences, he turned passive into active and symbolically took revenge on his mother for leaving him: “All right, then, go away! I don’t need you. I’m sending you away myself.” He symbolized his mother as the little wooden reel. Then, instead of being thrown away or abandoned, Ernst threw the reel away—threw his mother away—and then brought it back—brought her back, when he wanted. Freud also saw in this game a situation (abandonment) that was clearly not pleasant but was repeated over and over again, similar to many neurotic behaviors. From this observation, Freud gained insight into the nature of the repetition compulsion and behaviors motivated by something “beyond the pleasure principle.”

Parts of the game were first described in a footnote to the 1919 edition of The Interpretation of Dreams, and in 1920 a full description was presented and interpreted in a mere four pages in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. No one at that time could have imagined it would later stir the interests and alternative interpretations of Melanie Klein, Donald Winnicott, Erik Erikson, Siegfried Bernfeld, Harold P. Blum, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Jean Piaget, and so many others. 

The fort da baby was Freud's first grandchild, Ernst Wolfgang Halberstadt, who later changed his name to W. Ernest Freud largely because of his closeness to the Freud side of his family. W. Ernest Freud (1914-2008) was the only Freud grandchild to become a psychoanalyst. His story can be found in the recently published book The Interwoven Lives of Sigmund, Anna and W. Ernest Freud: Three Generations of Psychoanalysis. 

http://internationalpsychoanalysis.net/2015/03/14/stephen-frosh-on-the-freud-family/

This week we celebrate the centennial of Sigmund Freud's Fort Da observation and are reminded of his extraordinary genius. Sigmund Freud looked at things others had looked at many times before and saw things no one had ever seen before.

Feel free to forward this note to others you know that might be interested in Fort Da.

Saludos,

Daniel Benveniste

http://www.benvenistephd.com/

________________________________

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ

Cost: Psychotherapy trainees £140, others £175, some bursaries; coffee, tea, Durrants rock, mineral water included; payable in advance; no refunds or transfers unless seminar cancelled

Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE

Tel: +44 (0) 20 8888 6857   iPhone: +44 (0) 7809 433250

E-mail: stadlen@aol.com  or: stadlenanthony@gmail.com

For further information on seminars, visit: http://anthonystadlen.blogspot.com/

The Inner Circle Seminars were founded by Anthony Stadlen in 1996 as an ethical, existential, phenomenological search for truth in psychotherapy. They have been kindly described by Thomas Szasz as ‘Institute for Advanced Studies in the Moral Foundations of Human Decency and Helpfulness’. But they are independent of all institutes, schools and colleges.

Heidegger’s ‘Lost’ Zollikon Seminar: Anthony Stadlen conducts Inner Circle Seminar 258 (3 May 2020)

The ‘Lost’ Zollikon Seminar

Heidegger’s Zollikon Seminars (1959-1969) 
A 60^th-anniversary revaluation
2. Second seminar (the ‘lost’ one). 3-5 February 1960

‘The inappropriate idea – that I feel-in – transpose “myself ” (who am I?) into the others...  This attempt always comes too late. Because I am already with the others – (“you” – thou) in the same world...’


Anthony Stadlen
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 258
Sunday 3 May 2020
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Martin Heidegger
at home, Freiburg

Martin Heidegger   Medard Boss
Feldweg, Messkirch, 1963

Today’s seminar explores what may with justice be called the lost Zollikon seminar. Our new subseries of seminars aspires to retread the path Martin Heidegger took in his Zollikon seminars, this time at sixty years distance. We started by recapitulating the first seminar, of 4 November 1959. But we now know from the new German (Gesamtausgabe) edition of Zollikoner Seminare that there was a very important second seminar, on 3 and 5 February 1960, not reported or even mentioned in the previous edition of the book edited by Medard Boss. Like the subsequent seminars, it was in two parts, on two days. The first part, on 3 February 1960, was held, like the first seminar, in the Burghölzli psychiatric hospital lecture theatre; but the second part of the second seminar, on 5 February 1960, was, as were all the subsequent seminars, held in the more intimate atmosphere, preferred by Heidegger, of Boss’s home in Zollikon.

The new edition of the book contains no fewer than forty-four pages of notes Heidegger made for himself in preparation for this seminar. They are extraordinarily revealing. They include, among innumerable other topics, the Indian thinker Shankaracharya’s 8th-9th-century thinking on deep dreamless sleep. Heidegger also discusses Freud’s thinking on the ‘unconscious’ and on ‘parapraxes’ such as slips of the tongue, of memory, and of hearing. He stresses at the outset that there is to be ‘no polemic, e.g., against Freud’. He discusses the nature of our being-in-the-world-with-others. It is not, he insisted, like ‘tea with sugar’: not the ‘intersubjectivity’ that therapists like to talk about. Heidegger’s lifelong quest was to describe the human being as Da-sein: not as a ‘subject’. There can be ‘intersubjectivity’ only where there are ‘subjects’. That is a degenerate way of being-with, in Heidegger’s view. And it follows, as he points out, that the concept of ‘empathy’ is also degenerate: ‘it always comes too late, because ‘I am already with the others – (“you – [“]thou[”]) in the same world.’

We shall explore Heidegger’s notes for this second seminar as a basis for our own discussion. Your contribution will be warmly welcomed.   

Venue: ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE
Cost: Psychotherapy trainees £140, others £175, some bursaries; coffee, tea, Durrants rock, mineral water included; payable in advance; no refunds or transfers unless seminar cancelled
Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE
Tel: +44 (0) 20 8888 6857   iPhone: +44 (0) 7809 433250
E-mail: stadlen@aol.com  or: stadlenanthony@gmail.com
For further information on seminars, visit: http://anthonystadlen.blogspot.com/

The Inner Circle Seminars were founded by Anthony Stadlen in 1996 as an ethical, existential, phenomenological search for truth in psychotherapy. They have been kindly described by Thomas Szasz as ‘Institute for Advanced Studies in the Moral Foundations of Human Decency and Helpfulness’. But they are independent of all institutes, schools and universities.

Thomas Szasz Centenary: Was Szasz a ‘Cartesian Dualist’? Anthony Stadlen conducts Inner Circle Seminar 257 (19 April 2020)

Thomas S. Szasz
(15 April 1920 – 8 September 2012)
Was Szasz a ‘Dualist?’
A centenary recapitulation and clarification

Anthony Stadlen
conducts Inner Circle Seminar No. 257
Sunday 19 April 2020
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Thomas Szasz
at his 90th-birthday Inner Circle Seminar
Sunday 13 June 2010

Just about everybody, and certainly most so-called existential therapists and Daseinsanalysts if they had heard of him, deplored what Thomas Szasz said. Never mind that he usually didn’t say it. One of the most deplorable things about Szasz was said to be his lack of compassion for those suffering from ‘mental illness’. This was said to be a consequence of his deplorable ‘Cartesian dualism’. Did Szasz lack compassion? Was he a ‘Cartesian dualist’? In honour of Szasz’s centenary, Anthony Stadlen, close friend and colleague of Thomas Szasz, demystifies the muddle.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ

Subscription: Psychotherapy trainees £140, others £170, some bursaries; coffee, tea, Durrants Rock, mineral water included; payable in advance; no refunds or transfers unless seminar cancelled

Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE

Tel: +44 (0) 20 8888 6857  iPhone: 07809 433 250
E-mail: stadlen@aol.com  or: stadlenanthony@gmail.com

For further information on seminars, visit: http://anthonystadlen.blogspot.com/

The Inner Circle Seminars were founded by Anthony Stadlen in 1996 as an ethical, existential, phenomenological search for truth in psychotherapy. They have been kindly described by Thomas Szasz as ‘Institute for Advanced Studies in the Moral Foundations of Human Decency and Helpfulness’. But they are independent of all institutes, schools and universities.

Mutual Analysis: Sándor Ferenczi, Elizabeth Severn, and the Origins of Trauma Theory . Peter Rudnytsky conducts Inner Circle Seminar 256 (1 March 2020)

Mutual Analysis

Sándor Ferenczi, Elizabeth Severn,
and the Origins of Trauma Theory

Peter Rudnytsky
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 256
introduced by
Anthony Stadlen
Sunday 1 March 2020
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Sándor Ferenczi

Elizabeth Severn

On 1 April 2012 Professor Peter L. Rudnytsky conducted the electrifying Inner Circle Seminar No. 175, The Aetiology of Psychoanalysis: Freud’s Abuser, Sibling Incest, and the Affair with Minna Bernays.

Angela Buxton, an existential therapist who attended, wrote:

‘Many thanks for another excellent seminar. This one has shaken to its foundations the way I think about Freud and his writings. I found Prof. Rudnytsky’s work particularly convincing because it fits so well with what I hear when I work phenomenologically with clients who were abused as children.’

Today Peter Rudnytsky  continues to report his fundamental researches into the relationship between the early development of psychoanalysis and the sexual abuse of children. His focus in this seminar moves from Freud to Ferenczi.  

Sándor Ferenczi’s experiment in mutual analysis with Elizabeth Severn has hitherto been known from Ferenczi’s Clinical Diary, where Severn appears as ‘R.N.’ But in his new edition of Severn’s 1933 book, The Discovery of the Self, Professor Peter Rudnytsky has shown that Severn gives us the ‘other side of the story’ by providing disguised case histories both of herself and of Ferenczi. In today’s seminar, Rudnytsky will lead us in a consideration of how Ferenczi and the woman whom Freud called his ‘evil genius’ together revolutionised psychoanalysis by reviving trauma theory, modifying technique, and formulating a theory of the mind based on dissociation rather than repression.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ

Cost: Psychotherapy trainees £132, others £165, some bursaries; coffee, tea, Durrants rock, mineral water included; payable in advance; no refunds or transfers unless seminar cancelled

Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE

Tel: +44 (0) 20 8888 6857   iPhone: +44 (0) 7809 433250

E-mail: stadlen@aol.com  or: stadlenanthony@gmail.com

For further information on seminars, visit: http://anthonystadlen.blogspot.com/

The Inner Circle Seminars were founded by Anthony Stadlen in 1996 as an ethical, existential, phenomenological search for truth in psychotherapy. They have been kindly described by Thomas Szasz as ‘Institute for Advanced Studies in the Moral Foundations of Human Decency and Helpfulness’. But they are independent of all institutes, schools and universities.