‘Dialectics of Liberation’ 40 Years On. Inner Circle Seminar 116 (15 July 2007)

Part of the cover of an LP of R. D. Laing’s
opening speech on 15 July 1967
at the Dialectics of Liberation Congress  

‘Dialectics of Liberation’

(15–30 July 1967, The Roundhouse, London)

40 Years On

Anthony Stadlen
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 116
Sunday 15 July 2007
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

For fifteen days in July 1967, the London Roundhouse was the scene of an unprecedented International Congress, The Dialectics of Liberation. R. D. Laing’s speech ‘The Obvious’ opened it. David Cooper’s ‘Beyond Words’ closed it. Speakers included Gregory Bateson, Julian Beck, Stokely Carmichael, John Gerassi, Allen Ginsberg, Lucien Goldmann, Paul Goodman, Jules Henry, Francis Huxley, Herbert Marcuse, Ross Speck, Paul Sweezy, and a large participating ‘audience’. The Daily Telegraph asked why these psychiatrists had organised such a subversive Congress. Cooper justified it in terms of ‘a subtle extension of awareness…which will, I think, become retrospectively evident in the history of these next decades or so’. Four decades on, has his prediction been fulfilled?

Venue: Room A, Acland Building, Regent’s College, Inner Circle, London NW1
Cost: Students £77, others £99, in advance; some bursaries
Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE
Tel: +44 (0) 20 8888 6857 E-mail: stadlen@aol.com