Thomas Szasz
(15 April 1920 – 8 September 2012)
The second of two Inner Circle Seminars
marking the 10th anniversary of Thomas Szasz’s death
The Insanity Defence – And Competency To Stand Trial
Jeffrey Schaler Richard Vatz
conduct by Zoom
Inner Circle Seminar No. 276
introduced by Anthony Stadlen
Sunday 30 October 2022
2 p.m. to 5 p.m. 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. London time – GMT
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| Jeffrey Schaler |
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| Richard Vatz |
Today’s seminar is the second of two Inner Circle Seminars this month marking the tenth anniversary of Thomas Szasz’s death.
In this seminar, Professors Jeffrey Schaler and Richard Vatz will answer
questions, lead discussion, and address a myriad of clinical, legal, and social
policy concerns in relation to the insanity defence and related issues, including
competency to stand trial and irresistible impulse. Their discussion will be illuminated by the writings of their
close friend and colleague, the late psychiatrist and professor Thomas Szasz.
Schaler and Vatz are widely respected experts on and exponents of Szasz’s
thinking on disease and behaviour, liberty and responsibility, psychiatry,
psychology, and psychiatric rhetoric and jargon. They have taught and debated Szasz’s
ideas since the 1980s. Their latest edited book is Thomas Szasz: The
Man and His Ideas (2017). They are both responsible for teaching Szasz’s ideas to thousands of university students around the world.
Thomas Szasz explained to the world for over fifty-five years how involuntary commitment to mental hospitals and the insanity defence are two sides of the same coin.
In a similar way, Schaler and Vatz will explain how responsibility and freedom are two sides of the same metaphorical coin, positively correlated to one another. The therapeutic state, that union of medicine and state that has come to replace the theocratic state, is the primary architect of the myth of mental illness and its function as the greatest threat to freedom today.
Vatz and Schaler have collaborated as authors and teachers for many years now.
Professor Vatz was one of the very first people to receive the esteemed Szasz Award. Professor Schaler is the only person in the world to receive two Szasz awards.
Strictly speaking, ‘insanity’ is a legal, not a medical term. It is used in the United States, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere to exculpate or remove responsibility for criminal behaviour. Its origins were in the M’Naghten case of the 1800s. Daniel M’Naghten in 1843 shot the secretary of England’s prime minister Sir Robert Peel, whom he had mistaken for Peel. Medical experts testified that M’Naghten was insane, and the jury found him not guilty by reason of insanity. The M’Naghten Rule (pronounced, and sometimes spelled, McNaughton) was established by the House
of Lords on the basis of this verdict. It states:
‘Every man is to be presumed to be sane and, to establish a defence on the ground of insanity, it must be clearly proved that, at the time of the committing of the act, the party accused was labouring under such a defect of reason, from disease of mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing; or if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong.’
(Queen v. M'Naghten, 8 Eng. Rep. 718 [1843])
Thus the issue is whether
a criminal defendant (1) knew the nature of the crime or (2) understood right from
wrong at the time it was committed. To be declared legally insane under this test, a
defendant must meet one of these two distinct criteria.
Professors Schaler and Vatz will identify variations on the insanity defence in claims
relating to addiction, competency to stand trial, and involuntary mental
hospitalization procedures. These will include the Durham Rule and
the American Law Institute (ALI) Model Penal Code Rule. The ALI Rule broadened the M'Naghten Rule to a question of whether
a defendant had ‘substantial capacity to appreciate the criminality of [his] conduct’ and added a volitional component as to
whether he was lacking in ‘substantial capacity to conform his conduct
to the law’.
Professor Schaler will
also discuss the thinking on addiction and
insanity, including three highly influential United States
Supreme Court rulings on addiction as a form of insanity: Robinson v. California, 1962; Powell v. Texas, 1968; and Traynor v. Turnage,
1988.
Participants will learn how to deconstruct claims regarding insanity and mental illness.
Professors Schaler and Vatz’s work develops and updates the ideas of Thomas Szasz’s astonishing and refreshing books and papers written over a period of sixty years.
Jeffrey A. Schaler is an existential psychoanalyst in private practice since 1975; former Professor of Justice, Law, and Society at American University; author of Addiction is a Choice (2000); editor of Szasz under Fire: The Psychiatric Abolitionist Faces his Critics (2004), and co-editor of Thomas S. Szasz: The Man and His Ideas (2017). He produced and owns www.szasz.com. His website is www.schaler.net. He received the Thomas S. Szasz Award in 1999 and the Thomas Szasz Award of the Citizens’ Commission on Human Rights in 2002. Professor Schaler conducted Inner Circle Seminar No. 132, Addiction is a Choice, on 12 October 2008, one of the best attended of all the Inner Circle Seminars so far. He co-conducted Inner Circle Seminar No. 188, Thomas Szasz: In Memoriam, on 3 March 2013; Inner Circle Seminar No. 234, Thomas Szasz: 65 Years of Writing: 1947-2012, on 12 March 2017; and Inner Circle Seminar No. 258, The Myth of ‘Thomas Szasz’, on 14 June 2020. Richard Vatz is tenured full Professor of Rhetoric and Communication at Towson University wherein he has served for 45 years. He received the Thomas S. Szasz Award in 1993. He received many awards from Towson University. He is co-author of Thomas Szasz: Primary Values and Major Contentions (1983), co-editor of Thomas S. Szasz: The Man and His Ideas (2017), and author of The Only Authentic Book of Persuasion: the Agenda-Spin Model (new edition, 2019). He has published hundreds of articles, reviews and blogs. Professor Vatz co-conducted Inner Circle Seminar No. 258, The Myth of ‘Thomas Szasz’, on 14 June 2020.
Today’s seminar is the second of two this month marking the tenth anniversary of Thomas Szasz’s death. The first, Inner Circle Seminar No. 275, on 9 October 2022, Addressing Your Questions, will be conducted by Keith Hoeller and Anthony Stadlen, both also colleagues and friends of Thomas Szasz’s, who co-conducted with Jeffrey Schaler and Richard Vatz Inner Circle Seminar No. 258 on 14 June 2020, The Myth of ‘Thomas Szasz’, celebrating the centenary of Szasz’s birth.
These will both be online seminars, using Zoom.
There will be a reduction for those attending both of this month’s Szasz-related seminars.
Cost: Psychotherapy trainees £140, or £210 for both this month’s Szasz-related seminars; others £175, or £262 for both seminars; some bursaries; payable in advance; no refunds or transfers unless seminar cancelled
Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE
Tel: +44 (0) 7809 433250
E-mail: stadlenanthony@gmail.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 universities.
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