Existential Pioneers. 3. Laing: The Divided Self (1960) 50 Years On. Inner Circle Seminar 158 (5 December 2010)




R. D. Laing
Hampstead Heath, 1960

Existential Pioneers

3. R. D. Laing
(1927–1989)
The Divided Self (1960)
50 Years On

Anthony Stadlen
conducts Inner Circle Seminar No. 158
Sunday 5 December 2010
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

 

Fifty years ago this month, in December 1960, R. D. Laing’s first and best known book, The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness, was published. It attracted little attention at first, but by the end of the 1960s it had become a bestseller.

Laing stated his purposes as: (1) ‘to make madness, and the process of going mad, comprehensible’; and (2) ‘to give in plain English an account, in existential terms, of some forms of madness’. In today’s seminar we explore the book in some detail, and ask how far it fulfils these stated purposes. This will necessarily entail our asking what Laing meant by ‘madness’, in the light of his statement that ‘the critical test of whether a patient is psychotic is a lack of congruity, an incongruity, a clash, between him and me’. We shall pay particular attention to some of Laing’s memorable case studies, and also to the differences between the arguments of Laing’s book and of Thomas Szasz’s book The Myth of Mental Illness published a few months later. Much has been written about The Divided Self, most of it based on very inadequate reading of it. Today’s seminar will try to do justice to this brilliant book’s strengths and weaknesses.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk/)
Cost: Students £108, others £135; some bursaries; mineral water, coffee, tea, biscuits, liquorice allsorts included
Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE
Tel: +44 (0) 20 8888 6857 E-mail: stadlen@aol.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.

Existential Pioneers. 2. Erna Hoch (1919–2003). Inner Circle Seminar 157 (7 November 2010)




Erna Hoch with Gobind Kaul, Kashmir

Existential Pioneers

2. Erna Hoch

(1919–2003)

An exploration of her life and work

Anthony Stadlen

conducts Inner Circle Seminar No. 157

Sunday 7 November 2010

10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Erna Hoch was born on 18 March 1919 and died on 29 August 2003 aged 84. She was a highly original Swiss Daseinsanalyst and psychiatrist, who worked for many years in India and Kashmir. She transcribed some of Heidegger’s Zollikon seminars for Medard Boss in vivid detail, wrote many articles and books on Daseinsanalysis and Indian thought, and worked as what she called a ‘messenger between East and West’, helping Boss and Heidegger to compare Heidegger’s concepts with those of traditional Indian philosophy.

Erna Hoch was a woman of great intelligence and integrity, who knew the value of, but was level-headed and clear-sighted about, philosophers, gurus, and Daseinsanalysts. In today’s seminar, Anthony Stadlen will report his discussions with her on the history of Daseinsanalysis, and on her and Boss’s independent experiences as disciples of the guru Gobind Kaul in Kashmir. We shall also study extracts from some of her articles and from her books Indian Children on a Psychiatrist’s Playground, Sources And Resources: A Western Psychiatrist’s Search For Meaning In The Ancient Indian Scriptures, Hypocrite or Heretic: To Pretend or to Protest, and The Madhouse on the Lotus-Lake.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk/)

Cost: Students £108, others £135; some bursaries; mineral water, coffee, tea, biscuits, liquorice allsorts included

Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE
Tel: +44 (0) 20 8888 6857 E-mail: stadlen@aol.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.

Existential Pioneers. 1. Gion Condrau (1919–2006). Inner Circle Seminar 156 (10 October 2010)

Gion Condrau

Existential Pioneers

1. Gion Condrau
(1919–2006)
An exploration of his life and work

Anthony Stadlen
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 156
Sunday 10 October 2010
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Gion Condrau was born on 9 January 1919 in Disentis, in the Romansh-speaking canton of Graubünden, Switzerland. He died, aged nearly 88, on 21 November 2006 in Zürich. He was, after Binswanger and Boss, the world’s leading Daseinsanalyst. He was Medard Boss’s comrade-in-arms, analysand, pupil, colleague, friend – and, after Boss’s death in 1990, his successor. Until 1979, he was a Christian-Democratic People’s Party politician, first in the Herrliberg local council and then in the Zürich cantonal and Swiss national parliaments. He attended Heidegger’s Zollikon seminars; published many books on daseinsanalysis; and founded many societies and clubs, from the Bob Club of his home town Herrliberg to the central institutions of Daseinsanalysis, but without losing his anarchic mischievousness and irreverence.

In today’s seminar we shall explore some of his writings, including his case studies in his book Martin Heidegger’s Impact on Psychotherapy (1998). We shall discuss his differences with Boss. And Anthony Stadlen will report on his own work with Gion Condrau to demystify and demythologize the historiography of Daseinsanalysis.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk/)
Cost: Students £108, others £135; some bursaries; mineral water, coffee, tea, biscuits, liquorice allsorts included

Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE
Tel: +44 (0) 20 8888 6857 E-mail: stadlen@aol.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’.

Melanie Klein: Narrative of a Child Analysis. Inner Circle Seminar 155 (19 September 2010)

Melanie Klein

Melanie Klein

Narrative of a Child Analysis (1961)
An examination of Mrs Klein’s most comprehensive case study
for the 50th anniversary of her death

Anthony Stadlen
conducts

Inner Circle Seminar No. 155
Sunday 19 September 2010
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.




‘Richard’

Melanie Klein (30 March 1882 – 22 September 1960) is renowned as a pioneer of the psychoanalysis of both adults and children. Her theories of unconscious phantasy as a fundamental modality of experience from birth onwards radically transformed psychoanalytic thinking, though not without controversy. She died fifty years ago. Today, we examine her monumental case study, Narrative of a Child Analysis, published the year after her death. It gives a session-by-session account of her psychoanalytic work with a ten-year-old boy, ‘Richard’, during the second world war. We shall study critically Mrs Klein’s way of making interpretations: how she derives their content from the available data, and how she imparts them to the little boy. But we shall also ask what is involved existentially and ethically in the psychotherapy of children, which is a flourishing industry today. Can children below the age of consent enter into such a contract? Is child psychotherapy a form of child exploitation, even if the child enjoys it or benefits from it? Does the new information which this seminar will (without disclosing his identity) reveal about the later life and relationships of the boy throw light on this question? Your contribution to the discussion will be most welcome.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk/)

Cost: Students £108, others £135; some bursaries; mineral water, coffee, tea, biscuits, liquorice allsorts included

Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE
Tel: +44 (0) 20 8888 6857 E-mail: stadlen@aol.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.

Freud and Schoenberg: Metapsychology and Serialism. Inner Circle Seminar 154 (18 July 2010)

Arnold Schoenberg

Sigmund Freud

Peter Stadlen

Marie Pappenheim

Freud and Schoenberg

Metapsychology and Serialism

The ‘unconscious’ in psychoanalysis and music

For the centenary of the pianist and musicologist

Peter Stadlen

Anthony Stadlen

conducts

Inner Circle Seminar No. 154

Sunday 18 July 2010

10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

This seminar will compare the work of two great Viennese-Jewish early-20th-century innovators, the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and the composer Arnold Schoenberg. Freud’s books on dreams and ‘hysteria’, and such works as Schoenberg’s 1909 opera Erwartung, were linked by their revolutionary phenomenological explorations of delirium and the ‘unconscious’ – as well as by that opera’s librettist Marie Pappenheim, whose portrait by Kokoschka is shown here, and who was a cousin of Breuer and Freud’s ‘hysterical’ patient ‘Anna O.’ (Bertha Pappenheim). However, after these initial ventures into the unknown, Freud and Schoenberg attempted to ‘organise the delirium’ (as Pierre Boulez would put it several decades later) by giving a structure – Freud’s ‘metapsychology’ and Schoenberg’s ‘serialism’ – to what they claimed lay ‘behind’ experience. This seminar celebrates the centenary of Peter Stadlen (born 14 July 1910), pianist and musicologist, who gave the first performance of Anton Webern’s Piano Variations and continued to insist on the authentic articulation of extremes of phenomenological emotional expression and meaning in this music as imparted to him by Webern, but questioned both the audibility and the logic of its ‘metapsychological’ serial structure. We shall explore the implications for psychotherapy.

This seminar addresses fundamental questions for psychotherapists and musicians, and for anyone with an interest in either of these fields. No previous knowledge will be assumed.



Venue: ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE
Cost: Students £108, others £135; some bursaries; mineral water, fruit juice, coffee, tea, biscuits included
Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE
Tel: +44 (0) 20 8888 6857 E-mail: stadlen@aol.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.

Szasz conducts 90th-birthday seminar: The Myth of Mental Illness 50 Years On. Inner Circle Seminar 153 (13 June 2010)

Thomas Szasz
Photograph by Andrew Thomas Peters
August 2008

Thomas Szasz

conducts his 90th-birthday seminar

The Myth of Mental Illness

50 Years On

Inner Circle Seminar No. 153
conducted by Thomas Szasz
introduced by Anthony Stadlen
Sunday 13 June 2010
10 a.m. – 12 noon   2 p.m. – 4 p.m.

 

Thomas Szasz celebrates his 90th birthday (15 April 2010) by conducting his third Inner Circle Seminar, 50 years after his epochmaking paper ‘The Myth of Mental Illness’ (1960) and book The Myth of Mental Illness (1961). HarperCollins has just released a 50th-anniversary, expanded edition of the book, which those attending his seminar are asked to read in advance. The book has been enormously influential, but most readers do not appreciate how fundamental and radical is the change in thinking and practice it embodies and calls for. Many courses ‘teach’ this book, but few teachers understand it. It is perhaps too simple, too revolutionary. In today’s seminar Professor Szasz will explain his thesis on ‘mental illness’, and how it has been misunderstood. Then he will address your questions, perplexities, and challenges. His lecture will open out into an Inner Circle Seminar, which means, as participants know, an intense search for understanding through dialogue, in which beginners as well as international experts and scholars share their perplexities in a respectful atmosphere, even though there will be a larger attendance than at the usual seminars. Those who attended Professor Szasz’s previous Inner Circle Seminars, in 2003 and 2007, know how electrifying this dialogue can be.

 

Venue: Portman Hotel, 22 Portman Square, London W1H 7BG (http://www.radissonblu.co.uk/hotel-london/contact)

Subscription: Students £108, others £135; some bursaries; no refunds unless seminar cancelled

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

Tel: +44 (0) 20 8888 6857 E-mail: stadlen@aol.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.

Laura Barnett, Havi Hannah Carel, Lawrence Goldie conduct: Illness, Life, Death. Inner Circle Seminar 152 (16 May 2010)

Illness, Life, Death

Laura Barnett

Existential and Psychoanalytic Approaches


Laura Barnett
Havi Hannah Carel
Lawrence Goldie

conduct

Inner Circle Seminar No. 152
introduced by
Anthony Stadlen
Sunday 16 May 2010
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.



Laura Barnett is an existential psychotherapist and supervisor in the NHS and in private practice. She manages the Cancer Counselling Service and the Psychological Aftercare Service for Intensive Care Patients, which she set up at Mayday University Hospital, Croydon. She is editor of *When Death Enters the Therapeutic Space: Existential Perspectives in Psychotherapy and Counselling (2009).


Havi Hannah Carel

Havi Hannah Carel is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of the West of England. In her writing she has movingly interwoven her own experience of rare, life-threatening illness with her philosophical reflections on life and death. She is author of What Philosophy Is (with David Gamez, 2004), Life and Death in Freud and Heidegger (2006) and *Illness: The Cry of the Flesh (2008).



Lawrence Goldie

Lawrence Goldie is a consultant psychiatrist and psychoanalytic psychotherapist who has published widely. For decades he was a lone pioneer practising psychoanalytic psychotherapy for cancer patients at the Royal Marsden and other hospitals. He also devised and ran a course, ‘Caring for the Bereaved and Dying’, for doctors, nurses, and other medical auxiliaries. He is author of *Psychotherapy with Cancer Patients: Bearing Cancer in Mind (with Jane Desmarais, 2005).



*Participants are asked to prepare for the seminar by reading, if possible, the books marked with an asterisk above.



Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk/)



Cost: Students £108, others £135, in advance; some bursaries; mineral water, coffee, tea, biscuits, liquorice allsorts included



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

Tel: +44 (0) 20 8888 6857 E-mail: stadlen@aol.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.

Dr Jack Newman conducts: The Medicalizing of Motherhood. Inner Circle Seminar 151 (9 May 2010)

Dr Jack Newman

The Medicalizing of Motherhood

Implications for Psychotherapy

Dr Jack Newman
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 151
introduced by
Naomi and Anthony Stadlen

Sunday 9 May 2010

10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Dr Jack Newman of Toronto is the doctor that mothers trust. As a paediatrician he passionately denounces the medicalization, based on medical ignorance, of ordinary healthy mothers, breastfeeding babies, and the mother-baby relationship. This seminar will explore the implications for psychotherapy. Many theories of mother-baby relationships can be traced back to certain confident assertions on breastfeeding, separation, and so on by psychoanalysts such as Freud, Klein and Winnicott. What is the evidence for these assertions? Are they grounded in sound observation – or on unproven assumptions? Naomi and Anthony Stadlen will invite Dr Newman to comment on some of these assertions from the psychoanalytic literature in the light of his profound practical knowledge and experience of mothers, babies and breastfeeding. This seminar will be attended by mothers with their babies, as well as by psychotherapists and other professionals. Everybody’s contribution will be warmly valued.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk/)
Cost: Students £108, others £135, in advance; some bursaries; mineral water, coffee, tea, biscuits, liquorice allsorts included; mothers with babies £15, mineral water and liquorice allsorts included, plus optional £9 for morning and afternoon coffee, tea, biscuits
Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE
Tel: +44 (0) 20 8888 6857 E-mail: stadlen@aol.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.

Szasz in the 21st Century. 10. Antipsychiatry: Quackery Squared (2009). Inner Circle Seminar 150 (14 March 2010)

Thomas Szasz

Thomas Szasz
in the 21st Century

10. Antipsychiatry:
Quackery Squared (2009)

Anthony Stadlen
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 150
Sunday 14 March 2010
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.




R. D. Laing

Today we discuss Thomas Szasz’s tenth 21st-century book, Antipsychiatry: Quackery Squared (2009), a detailed critique of R. D. Laing, with whom Szasz is often, erroneously, coupled. For more than half a century, Szasz has consistently opposed what he identifies as the two paradigmatic practices of psychiatry: compulsory treatment (coercing the innocent) and the insanity defence (excusing the guilty). In Antipsychiatry, Szasz shows that, despite what many suppose, Laing did not object to either of these activities in theory, and in fact practised both. Szasz also criticises Laing for equivocating about the concept of ‘mental illness’ which is used to justify these two practices.

The aim of this seminar is a balanced evaluation. The Inner Circle Seminars have offered, in recent years, a subseries of eleven seminars devoted to each of Szasz’s ten 21st-century books, culminating in the 90th-birthday seminar which Thomas Szasz will himself conduct on 13 June, discussing 50 years of his book The Myth of Mental Illness. But we have also offered, in recent years, another, well attended, subseries of eleven seminars, devoted to each of the eleven families in Laing and Esterson’s book Sanity, Madness and the Family: Families of Schizophrenics (1964).

Today’s seminar will move in the tension between the seriousness of Szasz’s well-founded criticisms of Laing and the seriousness of some of Laing’s work, such as his research with Aaron Esterson on families, and his existential-phenomenological clarification of personal responsibility and praxis (in Sartre’s sense) in the theoretical foundations of psychoanalysis and interpersonal analysis. This seminar will be a unique opportunity for an informed clarification of the differences between Szasz and Laing. It will also serve to prepare for Thomas Szasz’s eagerly awaited 90th-birthday seminar on 13 June 2010, when he will discuss his epochmaking book The Myth of Mental Illness 50 years on (a new edition is released by HarperCollins this month). Each Inner Circle Seminar is self-contained. You may attend any or all.

 

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk/)

Cost: Students £108, others £135; some bursaries; mineral water, coffee, tea, biscuits, liquorice allsorts included

Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE
Tel: +44 (0) 20 8888 6857 E-mail: stadlen@aol.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.

Szasz in the 21st Century. 9. Psychiatry: The Science of Lies (2008). Inner Circle Seminar 149 (21 February 2010)

Thomas Szasz
Photograph by Andrew Thomas Peters
August 2008

Thomas Szasz
in the 21st Century

9. Psychiatry:
The Science of Lies (2008)

Anthony Stadlen
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 149
Sunday 21 February 2010
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Reflection on the philosophy of psychotherapy is an urgent necessity. The survival of true psychotherapy is threatened by state regulation. Too few psychotherapists have insisted, with Thomas Szasz, that ‘mental health’ is a metaphor. It is therefore not surprising that the Government plans to regulate psychotherapy as a ‘health profession’. The Inner Circle Seminars, however, seek to clarify psychotherapy as a moral, not a medical, practice.

Thomas Szasz remains the world’s foremost moral and existential philosopher of psychiatry and psychotherapy. He has already conducted two Inner Circle Seminars. He will conduct another on 13 June 2010 for his 90th birthday (15 April 2010), 50 years after his paper ‘The Myth of Mental Illness’ (1960) and book The Myth of Mental Illness (1961), a new edition of which will be released by HarperCollins in March). In preparation for his 90th-birthday seminar, we are studying in turn his ten books published since the millennium. Today we discuss his ninth 21st–century book, Psychiatry: The Science of Lies (2008). Each seminar is self-contained.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk/)

Cost: Students £108, others £135; some bursaries; mineral water, coffee, tea, biscuits, liquorice allsorts included

Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE
Tel: +44 (0) 20 8888 6857 E-mail: stadlen@aol.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.

Szasz in the 21st Century. 8. The Medicalization of Everyday Life (2007). Inner Circle Seminar 148 (24 January 2010)




Thomas Szasz
Photograph by Andrew Thomas Peters
August 2008

Thomas Szasz
in the 21st Century

8. The Medicalization of Everyday Life:
Selected Essays (2007)

Anthony Stadlen
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 148
Sunday 24 January 2010

10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Reflection on the philosophy of psychotherapy is an urgent necessity. The survival of true psychotherapy is threatened by state regulation. Too few psychotherapists have insisted, with Thomas Szasz, that ‘mental health’ is a metaphor. It is therefore not surprising that the Government plans to regulate psychotherapy as a ‘health profession’. The Inner Circle Seminars, however, seek to clarify psychotherapy as a moral, not a medical, practice.

Thomas Szasz remains the world’s foremost moral and existential philosopher of psychiatry and psychotherapy. He has already conducted two Inner Circle Seminars. He will conduct another on 13 June 2010 for his 90th birthday (15 April 2010), 50 years after his paper ‘The Myth of Mental Illness’ (1960) and book The Myth of Mental Illness (1961), a new edition of which will be released by HarperCollins in March. In preparation for his birthday seminar, we are studying in turn his ten books published since the millennium. Today we discuss his eighth 21st–century book, The Medicalization of Everyday Life: Selected Essays (2007). Each seminar is self-contained. You may attend any or all. Your contribution to the discussion will be welcome.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ
(http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk/)
Cost: Students £108, others £135; some bursaries; mineral water, coffee, tea, biscuits, liquorice allsorts included
Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE
Tel: +44 (0) 20 8888 6857 E-mail: stadlen@aol.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.