Laing & Esterson: 1. The Abbotts. Inner Circle Seminar 74 (25 January 2004)

R. D. Laing

R. D. Laing and A. Esterson
Sanity, Madness and the Family
40 Years On
Family 1: The Abbotts


Aaron Esterson

Anthony Stadlen
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 74
Sunday 25 January 2004
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, Laing and Esterson introduced their great phenomenological descriptions of eleven families of ‘schizophrenics’. But forty years on, the ‘clinical viewpoint’ still reigns supreme. Have Laing and Esterson been proved wrong? Or have they not yet been understood? Is chronologically later work an existential retrogression?

Eleven seminars, over two years, investigating each of the families in turn, offer psychotherapists an unprecedented opportunity to explore these questions in depth. You may attend any or all of the seminars.

Venue: Room A, Acland Building, Regent’s College, London NW1 4NS
Cost: Students £64, others £80, some bursaries, in advance
Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, 64 Dartmouth Park Road, London NW5 !SN
Tel: +44 (0)20 7485 3896 E-mail: stadlen@aol.com