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| Martin Heidegger at home in Freiburg |
A 50th-anniversary revaluation
7. Seminar of 1 and 3 March 1966
‘Unburdening and burdening are possible only through the human being’s ecstatic being-outstretched’
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| Martin Heidegger and Medard Boss on the Feldweg south of Messkirch |
Anthony Stadlen
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 223
Sunday 6 March 2016
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Venue: ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra Avenue , London N22 7XE
Cost: Psychotherapy trainees £120, others £150, some bursaries; coffee, tea, biscuits, mineral water included; payable in advance; no refunds or transfers unless seminar cancelled
Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, ‘Oakleigh’, 2AAlexandra Avenue , London N22 7XE
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 223
Sunday 6 March 2016
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Between 1959 and 1969 the German
philosopher Martin Heidegger conducted seminars for psychiatrists in the Swiss
psychiatrist Medard Boss’s
house in Zollikon near Zürich.
Fifty years later almost to the day, in the seventh of our subseries of Inner
Circle Seminars recapitulating Heidegger’s Zollikon seminars, we focus on his seminar of 1 and 3 March 1966, after which
there is a gap of three years until the last recorded seminar, on 18 and 21
March 1969.
Heidegger’s seminars in Zollikon fifty years ago were contemporary with the epochmaking work of Szasz in The Myth of Mental Illness inSyracuse NY
and of Laing and Esterson in Sanity, Madness and the Family and Esterson in The Leaves of Spring in
London
Our seminars are about the same length as Heidegger’s. Like his, they are in four parts; though in his case these are spread over two weekday evenings and in ours over one Sunday.
On 1 March 1966, Boss compares the seminars to a kind of group therapy intended to enable a more adequate view of the nature of being human. As in Freudian analysis, ‘resistance’ has arisen, in the form of the objection that Daseinsanalysis is anti-scientific: first, because Heidegger’s discussion of natural science is (allegedly) valid only for classical, not nuclear, physics; second, because psychotherapy is in any case not a procedure like physics.
Heidegger questions whether the seminars are a ‘cure’. He recalls that ‘semen’ means a seed, and hopes these evenings may succeed in strewing a seed that will come up here and there. He says a philosophical seminar is always in the situation of Socrates, who said that what is most difficult is always to say the same thing about the same thing.
He now repeats his explanation that physics objectifies nature, and argues that this is even more so for nuclear than for classical physics. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle does not change this.
Heidegger demonstrates how a discussion of ‘stress’ in a journal of psychosomatic medicine is couched in the objectifying language of physics. He discusses how this negative critique can become a positive one by showing how the language of his own Being and Time can open up the discourse on ‘stress’ in a way appropriate to human science. He quotes Hölderlin: ‘... we are a conversation.’ ‘Stress’, he stresses, makes sense only as part of this ‘conversation’, whether as a burdening’ or an ‘unburdening’.
On 3 March, Heidegger reiterates that ‘stress’ belongs to ‘the constitution of human existence determined by thrownness, understanding, and language’. He discusses Plügge’s account in the psychosomatic journal of being ‘stressed’ by the sound of his neighbour’s children but not his own. Heidegger summarises his paradigmatic daseinsanalytic opening up of the concept of ‘stress’ in the sentence: ‘Unburdening and burdening are possible only through the human being’s ecstatic being-outstretched.’ In our own seminar we shall try to do justice to what he means.
Psychotherapists who have attended have declared these seminars revelatory for their practice and thinking. Most of us – even if we call ourselves existential therapists and phenomenologists – have been corrupted and confused by the ideology of scientism. In these seminars we strive, through dialogue, to do justice to Heidegger’s clarifying vision. If we cannot, then our ‘therapy’ remains technological tinkering and our righteousness is as filthy rags.
Heidegger’s seminars in Zollikon fifty years ago were contemporary with the epochmaking work of Szasz in The Myth of Mental Illness in
Our seminars are about the same length as Heidegger’s. Like his, they are in four parts; though in his case these are spread over two weekday evenings and in ours over one Sunday.
On 1 March 1966, Boss compares the seminars to a kind of group therapy intended to enable a more adequate view of the nature of being human. As in Freudian analysis, ‘resistance’ has arisen, in the form of the objection that Daseinsanalysis is anti-scientific: first, because Heidegger’s discussion of natural science is (allegedly) valid only for classical, not nuclear, physics; second, because psychotherapy is in any case not a procedure like physics.
Heidegger questions whether the seminars are a ‘cure’. He recalls that ‘semen’ means a seed, and hopes these evenings may succeed in strewing a seed that will come up here and there. He says a philosophical seminar is always in the situation of Socrates, who said that what is most difficult is always to say the same thing about the same thing.
He now repeats his explanation that physics objectifies nature, and argues that this is even more so for nuclear than for classical physics. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle does not change this.
Heidegger demonstrates how a discussion of ‘stress’ in a journal of psychosomatic medicine is couched in the objectifying language of physics. He discusses how this negative critique can become a positive one by showing how the language of his own Being and Time can open up the discourse on ‘stress’ in a way appropriate to human science. He quotes Hölderlin: ‘... we are a conversation.’ ‘Stress’, he stresses, makes sense only as part of this ‘conversation’, whether as a burdening’ or an ‘unburdening’.
On 3 March, Heidegger reiterates that ‘stress’ belongs to ‘the constitution of human existence determined by thrownness, understanding, and language’. He discusses Plügge’s account in the psychosomatic journal of being ‘stressed’ by the sound of his neighbour’s children but not his own. Heidegger summarises his paradigmatic daseinsanalytic opening up of the concept of ‘stress’ in the sentence: ‘Unburdening and burdening are possible only through the human being’s ecstatic being-outstretched.’ In our own seminar we shall try to do justice to what he means.
Psychotherapists who have attended have declared these seminars revelatory for their practice and thinking. Most of us – even if we call ourselves existential therapists and phenomenologists – have been corrupted and confused by the ideology of scientism. In these seminars we strive, through dialogue, to do justice to Heidegger’s clarifying vision. If we cannot, then our ‘therapy’ remains technological tinkering and our righteousness is as filthy rags.
Cost: Psychotherapy trainees £120, others £150, some bursaries; coffee, tea, biscuits, mineral water included; payable in advance; no refunds or transfers unless seminar cancelled
Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, ‘Oakleigh’, 2A
Tel: +44 (0) 20 8888 6857 E-mail: stadlen@aol.com
The Inner Circle Seminars were founded by Anthony Stadlen in 1996 as an ethical, existential, phenomenological search for truth in psychotherapy. They have been kindly described by Thomas Szasz as ‘Institute for Advanced Studies in the Moral Foundations of Human Decency and Helpfulness’. But they are independent of all institutes, schools and colleges.
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