Anthony Stadlen writes:
Between 1959 and 1969 the German
philosopher Martin Heidegger conducted seminars for psychiatrists in the home
of the Swiss psychiatrist Medard Boss’s house in Zollikon near Zürich. (The first seminar was
in the Bürghölzli mental hospital in Zürich.)
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Martin Heidegger
at home in Freiburg
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Boss, with Heidegger’s
collaboration and consent, published a book containing reports of the seminars,
and of his own conversations and correspondence with Heidegger (Heidegger, M.,
1994 [1987], Zollikoner Seminare: Protokolle – Zwiegespräche – Briefe, herausgegeben
von M. Boss, second edition, Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann).
Fourteen years later an authorised
American translation was published (Heidegger, M., 2001 [1994], Zollikon Seminars:
Protocols – Conversations – Letters, edited by M. Boss, Evanston
IL: Northwestern University Press).
I showed in detail (Existential Analysis, 14.2, July 2003) that this American translation is not trustworthy. While some passages are reasonably translated, others give a highly distorted picture of what Heidegger is saying.
A simple but
telling example: Heidegger says the title of a congress of
psychologists is ‘reichlich komisch’. Even if you know no German
you might guess this means ‘richly comic’, and it does; but these rather
humourless (to put it mildly) translators render it as ‘rather humorous’, thereby misrepresenting
Heidegger’s biting humour and justified contempt as bland praise.
These Inner Circle Seminars on the
Zollikon seminars will go some way to remedy this.
In this first seminar on Sunday 30
November 2014 we shall look at the four reported
seminars of 1959 and 1964. In the seminar of 1959 in the lecture theatre at the
Bürghölzli, Heidegger produced his only
recorded ‘drawing’ of ‘Da-sein’, on the blackboard, and his written
elucidation of it; we shall study them both. Also, the seminar of 6 and 9
July 1964 in Boss’s house is remarkable as the only seminar where the awkward and
fascinating dialogue between Heidegger and the baffled participating
psychiatrists was reported in full verbatim
– by Dr Erna Hoch, a person of great honesty and integrity. Our first
seminar will thus take us to the heart of Heidegger’s amazing
seminars.
1965 was Heidegger’s most active
year in relation to the Zollikon seminars. He made no fewer than five visits.
In 2015, we shall devote one seminar to each of his five seminars of
1965, on their 50th anniversaries almost to the day. These five seminars
of ours will thus have the same structure and time-scale as his: two three-hour
sessions (with coffee and tea breaks) separated in our case by a lunch break
and in his by a day or two.
The seventh seminar, on 6
March 2016,
will examine the seminar of 1 and 3 1966.
Subsequent seminars, to be
announced in due course, will explore the important Boss-Heidegger
conversations and correspondence reported in the book.
Whatever bad things Heidegger did
in his long life, his Zollikon seminars were an act of decency and piety – even if he and Boss were naive in thinking that clinical psychiatrists, of all people, were likely to be receptive to his radical questioning of the foundations of psychotherapy. The seminars can be a force for great good in psychotherapy if we are prepared to take them
slowly and seriously, and open ourselves to their profound simplicity. They are
revolutionary in their return to beginnings, saying ‘the same thing in the same
way’ – which, as Heidegger points out,
Socrates said was the hardest of all.
You should bring a copy of the
American translation if you attend any of the seminars, and if you know a
little German it would be helpful to bring a copy of the original. I will provide photocopies if you are not able to bring a copy. But I will
provide my own corrected translations of numerous passages. In many instances,
these reveal an astonishingly
different meaning from that proposed by the American translation.
These seminars will, in such
cases, give English speakers for the first time an idea of what Heidegger is
really saying.
You can attend any or all of these
seminars. Each is self-contained, but it would be advantageous to attend all
seven (and you also pay a reduced fee for the seven: students £700, others £875).
1.
30 November
2014
(Inner Circle
Seminar No. 208)
Heidegger’s Zollikon Seminars of 1959-1964
‘How does Dr R. relate to this
table here?’
(Inner Circle Seminar No. 210)
Heidegger’s Zollikon Seminars of 18 and 21 January 1965
‘Can we disregard the human
being altogether?’
(Inner Circle Seminar No.
213)
Heidegger’s Zollikon Seminars of 10 and 12 March 1965
‘In making-present the Zürich
main railway station, we are directed not to a picture of it, not to a
representation ...’
(Inner Circle Seminar No. 216)
Heidegger’s Zollikon Seminars of 11 and 14
May 1965
‘We now make a leap to the body-problem.’
(Inner
Circle Seminar No. 219)
Heidegger’s
Zollikon Seminars of 6 and 8 July 1965
‘Is
the body and its bodying ... something somatic or something psychic or neither
of the two?’
(Inner
Circle Seminar No. 224)
Heidegger’s Zollikon Seminars of 23 and 26
November 1965
‘Whence comes the insight that ... the Sein of
the Da is ecstatic ... ?’
7. 6
March 2016
(Inner Circle Seminar No. 228)
Heidegger’s Zollikon Seminars of 1 and 3 March 1966
‘Unburdening and burdening are possible only
through the human being’s ecstatic being-outstretched.’
Venue: ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE
Cost: Psychotherapy trainees £120 per seminar or
£700 the subseries of seven, others £150 or £875 the subseries of seven); some
bursaries; coffee, tea, biscuits, mineral water included; payable in advance;
no refunds or transfers 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/
