Laing & Esterson: 5. The Edens. Inner Circle Seminar 84 (23 January 2005)

Aaron Esterson

R. D. Laing and A. Esterson

Sanity, Madness and the Family
40 Years On

Family 5: The Edens

Anthony Stadlen
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 84
Sunday 23 January 2005
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

‘We believe that the shift of point of view that these descriptions both embody and demand has an historical significance no less radical than the shift from a demonological to a clinical viewpoint three hundred years ago.’

Thus, in 1964, R. D. Laing and Aaron Esterson introduced their great phenomenological descriptions of eleven families of ‘schizophrenics’. But forty years on, the ‘clinical viewpoint’ still reigns supreme. Is current work on families and ‘schizophrenia’ an existential retrogression? Eleven seminars, studying each family in depth, offer an unprecedented opportunity to explore this question. You are welcome to attend any or all of the seminars.

The research was carried out by Aaron Esterson, who invented the method of phenomenological investigation of all subsets of a family.

Anthony Stadlen, existential psychotherapist and convenor of the Inner Circle Seminars, was a colleague of Aaron Esterson for many years, and continues Esterson’s method of social phenomenology in his own research and practice.

Venue: Room E, Acland Building, Regent’s College, London NW1 4NS
Subscription: Students £65, others £85, some bursaries, in advance
Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, 64 Dartmouth Park Road, London NW5 1SN
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7485 3896 E-mail: stadlen@aol.com