Freud and Freedom: Freud’s 150th Birthday. Inner Circle Seminar 100 (23 April 2006)




Photograph courtesy of the

Freud Museum, London

Freud and Freedom

Celebrating Freud’s 150th Birthday*

Anthony Stadlen
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 100
Sunday 23 April 2006
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

In the first of two seminars to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Freud’s birth (6 May 1856), we explore his thinking on freedom. At the heart of his practice is what he called ‘freier Einfall’, literally ‘free in-fall’, or ‘free occurrence’, misleadingly translated as ‘free association’, which prejudges what ‘falls in’ as ‘associated’ with what came before. Even Freud thought the freedom of ‘free in-fall’ was only apparent. He explained it by what he called ‘psychic determinism’, and thought this proved free will was an illusion. But is psychoanalysis not designed to help people discover their freedom? We examine this seeming contradiction. Do psychoanalysis and existential psychotherapy contradict each other? Or could it be that Freud was, despite his theory, a great existential psychotherapist?

*Today’s 100th seminar also marks the 10th anniversary of the first Inner Circle Seminar, ‘The stones speak!’, on 21 April 1996, the exact 100th anniversary of Freud’s double announcement, in a lecture in Vienna on 21 April 1896, of the name ‘psychoanalysis’ and of the so-called seduction theory.

Venue: Room F, Acland Building, Regent’s College, Inner Circle, London NW1 4NS
Cost: Students £72, others £90, in advance; some bursaries
Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE
Telephone: +44 (0) 20 8888 6857 E-mail: stadlen@aol.com