Existential Psychotherapy & Inner Circle Seminars

Frank Cioffi. Inner Circle Seminar No. 196 (20 October 2013)

2012-01-04T01:10:00.067Z

Frank Cioffi

Frank Cioffi
(1928–2012)
‘Was Freud a Liar?’
(October 1973)
A re-reading on the 40th anniversary

Anthony Stadlen
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 196
Sunday 20 October 2013
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

40 years ago today, on Saturday 20 October 1973, Radio Times announced a short talk on BBC Radio 3 at 7.05 p.m. followed by an interlude before the concert at 7.30 p.m.

‘Was Freud a Liar?

‘Frank Cioffi, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Kent at Canterbury, examines Freud’s account of how he arrived at his theory of infantile seduction, and finds grounds for much disquiet. Did Freud deliberately distort the story, or did he merely forget certain parts of it? He argues that whatever the answer, the scientific claims of psychoanalysis must be affected by it.’

This 20-minute talk was barely noticed at the time even though it was subsequently published in The Listener. But serious scholars recognise it as an epochmaking event for the history, philosophy, theory, and practice of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. Today, on its 40th anniversary, we explore the subtle logical analysis and existential thinking of Professor Frank Cioffi (11 January 1928 – 1 January 2012).

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk./

Cost: Psychotherapy trainees £116, others £145, some bursaries; mineral water and liquorice allsorts included; payable in advance; no refunds 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./

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.

Existential Pioneers. 13. Søren Kierkegaard. Inner Circle Seminar 190 (Sunday 5 May 2013)

2012-01-02T01:05:00.009Z

Existential Pioneers

13. Søren Kierkegaard
(5 May 1813 – 11 November 1855)

Søren Kierkegaard

A 200th-Birthday Enquiry
into his Concepts of
Dread (Angest) and
Despair (Fortvivlelse)

Anthony Stadlen
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 190
Sunday 5 May 2013
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk/)

Cost: Psychotherapy trainees and students £116, others £145, some bursaries; mineral water and liquorice allsorts included; payable in advance; no refunds 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/

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.

Locked Up: ‘Patients’ and their Gaolers. 10. Alexander Cruden. Inner Circle Seminar 187 (10 February 2013)

2012-01-02T01:02:00.010Z

William Hogarth: A Rake’s Progress (1733)
Scene 8: The Madhouse (Tom Rakewell in Bedlam)

Locked Up: ‘Patients’ and their Gaolers

10. Alexander Cruden
(1701–1770)

Allan Ingram
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 187
introduced by
Anthony Stadlen
Sunday 10 February 2013
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk/)

Cost: Psychotherapy trainees £116, others £145, some bursaries; mineral water and liquorice allsorts included; payable in advance; no refunds 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/

Existential Pioneers. 12. ‘Anonymous’. Inner Circle Seminar 186 (13 January 2013)

2012-01-01T01:02:00.003Z

‘Anonymous’*

Existential Pioneers
12. ‘Anonymous’*
(1913–1990)
A 100th-Birthday Revaluation of
‘Toward the Differentiation of a Self in One’s Own Family’ (1972)

Anthony Stadlen
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 186
Sunday 13 January 2013
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

‘Anonymous’* (born 100 years ago today) was one of the seminal figures in 20th-century family research and ‘family therapy’. His approach was existential in all but name. He startled his colleagues at a 1967 conference on family interaction by departing from his prepared text, ‘A Method of Categorizing Some Meaningful Clinical Variables’, to give a lengthy autobiographical account of his return to his small home town, in a quest to ‘differentiate’ his ‘self’ in relation to his extended family. He later said his account was, simultaneously, his attempt to differentiate himself from other ‘family therapists’. In the conference proceedings his account was entitled ‘Toward the Differentiation of a Self in One’s Own Family’ (1972), but on legal advice its author was credited as ‘Anonymous’*. Today, we explore this remarkable document; its unrecognised parallels with the philosophy of Kierkegaard, Scheler and Heidegger; and its implications for psychotherapy.

[*‘Anonymous’ was Murray Bowen (13 January 1913 – 9 October 1990).]

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk/)
Cost: Students £116, others £145, some bursaries; mineral water and liquorice allsorts included'; payable in advance; no refunds 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/

‘The rest is silence.’ The Break between Freud and Jung. Inner Circle Seminar 185 (6 January 2013)

2012-01-01T01:01:00.008Z

Sigmund Freud, 1906:
the photograph he sent to Jung

‘The rest is silence’
(Jung to Freud, 6 January 1913)
A Centenary Investigation of the
Break Between Freud and Jung

Anthony Stadlen
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 185
Sunday 6 January 2013
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

On 3 January 1913, Freud wrote to Jung:

‘It is understood among us analysts that no one need feel ashamed of his bit of neurosis. But one who while behaving abnormally unceasingly shouts that he is normal arouses the suspicion that he lacks insight into his illness. I therefore propose to you that we give up our private relations altogether. I shall lose nothing by it…’

C. G. Jung, 1912, in New York

On 6 January 1913, a hundred years ago today, Jung replied to Freud:

‘I shall comply with your wish that we give up the personal relationship, since I never impose my friendship… “The rest is silence.”’

‘He lacks insight into his illness’ was a ‘sign’ not of ‘neurosis’ but of ‘schizophrenia’. And ‘The rest is silence’ were Hamlet’s dying words. This was high drama. What led to it? What did it mean for Freud and Jung, and for the history of psychoanalysis and analytical psychology? Your contribution to the discussion will be welcome.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk/)

Cost: Psychotherapy trainees £116, others £145, some bursaries; mineral water and liquorice allsorts included; payable in advance; no refunds 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/

Raymond Tallis conducts: The Intellectual Plague of Biologism. Inner Circle Seminar 184 (2 December 2012)

2012-01-01T00:12:00.001Z

Raymond Tallis
Photograph by Terry Tallis

The Intellectual Plague of Biologism

Raymond Tallis
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 184

introduced by
Anthony Stadlen
Sunday 2 December 2012
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

In the Inner Circle Seminars we have seen how other disciplines can throw light on psychotherapy. But, in two seminars, we study how a reductive, inauthentically ‘interdisciplinary’ approach throws darkness rather than light. Last month, Rachel Blass explored how ‘neuropsychoanalysis’ perverts psychoanalysis. Today, Raymond Tallis discusses how biologism aspires to turn the ‘humanities’, including psychotherapy, into ‘animalities’.

Raymond Tallis writes:

Increasingly, it is assumed that human beings are best understood in biological terms; that, notwithstanding the apparent differences between humans and their nearest animal kin, people are, at bottom, organisms. This has had numerous consequences but among the most prominent is the encroachment of biology on the humanities. Neuro-evolutionary approaches to art (neuro-aesthetics, evolutionary literary criticism), to the law (neuro-law), to ethics (evolutionary ethics), to the social sciences (as in evolutionary economics and neuro-politics) are symptoms of the ascent of biologism. Biologism has two main pillars.

The first is Neuromania. This is based on the incorrect notion that human consciousness is identical with activity in the brain, that people are their brains, and that societies are best understood as collections of brains. I will argue that, while the brain is a necessary condition of every aspect of human consciousness, it is not a sufficient condition – which is why neuroscience, and the materialist philosophy upon which is it based, fails totally to explain any aspect of the human person. Since the brain is an evolved organism, its function can be understood in terms of its role in maximising our chances of survival. Neuromania therefore leads to Darwinitis, the second pillar of contemporary biologism. This is the assumption that, since Darwin demonstrated the biological origins of the organism H sapiens, we should look to evolutionary theory to understand what we are now; that our biological roots explain our cultural leaves.

Against biologism, I will emphasise the extent to which we are not identical with our brains, and that we are part of a community of minds that has grown up over the hundreds of thousands of years since we parted company from the other primates. The gap between our nearest animal kin and ourselves is too wide to read across from the one to the other. The aspiration of the humanities to become ‘animalities’ is a major obstacle to serious thinking about our own nature. This has obvious implications for psychotherapy.

Raymond Tallis BM BCh MA FRCP LittD (Hon Causa) DLitt (Hon Causa) F Med Sci FRSA was Professor of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Manchester and a consultant physician in Health Care of the Elderly in Salford until 2006. He also advised the government on health care of older people and in particular on the development of stroke services. He has published 200 research articles in the neurology of old age (epilepsy and stroke) and neurological rehabilitation, and original articles in Nature, Medicine, Lancet and other leading journals. In 2000 he was elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. He received the Dhole Eddlestone Prize; the Founders Medal of the British Geriatrics Society; the Lord Cohen Gold Medal for Research into Ageing. He is Chair of Healthcare Professionals for Assisted Dying.

He has published a novel, short stories, three volumes of poetry, and 22 books on the philosophy of mind, philosophical anthropology, literary theory, the nature of art, and cultural criticism. These offer a critique of current predominant intellectual trends and an alternative understanding of human consciousness, the nature of language and of what it is to be a human being. For this he has been awarded two honorary degrees: DLitt (Hon Causa) University of Hull, 1997; and LittD (Hon Causa) University of Manchester 2002.

In 2008 he was appointed Honorary Visiting Professor in the Department of English at the University of Liverpool. He writes op-eds for The Times and has a column in Philosophy Now. He is a regular at the leading literary and science festivals. He is a frequent broadcaster, with recent appearances on Start the Week, Nightwaves, Inside the Ethics Committee and The Moral Maze. His latest book is Aping Mankind. Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity (2011).

In 2009, the Economist Intelligent Life Magazine listed him as one of the world’s 20 leading polymaths.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk/)

Cost: Psychotherapy trainees £116, others £145, some bursaries; mineral water and liquorice allsorts included; payable in advance; no refunds 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/

Rachel Blass conducts: ‘Neuropsychoanalysis’ – and how it perverts the essence of psychoanalysis. Inner Circle Seminar 183 (4 November 2012)

2012-01-01T00:11:00.002Z

‘Neuropsychoanalysis’ –
and how it perverts
the essence of psychoanalysis

Rachel Blass
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 183
introduced by Anthony Stadlen
Sunday 4 November 2012
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

In the Inner Circle Seminars we have seen how other disciplines can throw light on psychotherapy. But, in two seminars, we study how a reductive, inauthentically ‘interdisciplinary’ approach can throw darkness rather than light. Next month, Raymond Tallis will discuss how biologism in general aspires to turn the ‘humanities’, including psychotherapy, into ‘animalities’. Today, the distinguished psychoanalyst Rachel Blass will focus on the special case of ‘neuropsychoanalysis’.

In their controversial 2007 paper ‘The Case Against Neuropsychoanalysis: On Fallacies Underlying Psychoanalysis’ Latest Scientific Trend and its Negative Impact on Psychoanalytic Discourse’ (Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 88:19-40), Rachel Blass and Zvi Carmeli describe how ‘neuropsychoanalysis’ has become a kind of idolatry:

‘...the tone is at times prophetic, its source authoritative, and its appeal widespread. As over 1,000 analysts applauded the flashing images of colorful positron emission tomography (PET) scans presented by keynote speaker and renowned cognitive scientist Prof. Antonio Damasio at the opening session of the 44th IPA Congress in 2004, the dominance of the current neuroscientific trend in psychoanalysis was never more evident.’

Blass and Carmeli argue:

‘Neuropsychoanalysis over the past decade has been leading psychoanalysis towards an appreciation of the sensory, the physical, the visual, at the expense of psychological meaning, truth, and ideas that cannot be captured in the images of a PET scan, no matter how technologically advanced.’

In today’s seminar, Professor Rachel Blass will give evidence for her argument that ‘neuropsychoanalysis’ perverts the essence of psychoanalysis. You are cordially invited to join the discussion.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk/)

Cost: Psychotherapy trainees £116, others £145, some bursaries; mineral water and liquorice allsorts included; payable in advance; no refunds 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/

Locked Up: ‘Patients’ & their Gaolers. 9. Gladys, Duchess of Marlborough. Inner Circle Seminar 182 (14 October 2012)

2012-01-01T00:10:00.012Z

Gladys, Duchess of Marlborough

Locked Up: ‘Patients’ and their Gaolers

9. Gladys, Duchess of Marlborough
(1881 –1977)

Hugo Vickers
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 182
introduced by Anthony Stadlen
Sunday 14 October 2012
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Sartre insisted that there is no ‘psychology’ but that ‘one can improve the biography of a person’. Hugo Vickers exemplifies this, as we saw in his seminar on the incarceration of Princess Alice (the Duke of Edinburgh’s mother). His fascination (when 16) with Gladys, Duchess of Marlborough (7 February 1881 – 13 October 1977), whose beauty and intelligence had dazzled Rodin and Proust among others, led him to trace her and visit her for hours on end in St Andrew’s Hospital, formerly Northampton General Lunatic Asylum, where she, like John Clare before her and Lucia Joyce still, was imprisoned.

‘She invited me to have a cup of tea and we began the slow process of making friends. She was all but stone deaf, but with good eyesight. Every question I asked her was written on a piece of paper in large black capital letters. These she read and when it suited her, she answered. I visited her 65 times over a period of over two years. I loved going to talk to her and she changed the course of my life.’

So began his lifelong biographical quest. Hugo Vickers will help us make socially intelligible how Gladys ended her days as a psychiatric prisoner. He will draw parallels with the incarceration in her own home of the similarly American-born Duchess of Windsor, the subject of his latest, masterly biography, Behind Closed Doors.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk/)

Cost: Psychotherapy trainees £116, others £145, some bursaries; mineral water and liquorice allsorts included; payable in advance; no refunds 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/

Dr. Freud’s Process. Memory-Extirpation. Inner Circle 181 (23 September 2012)

2012-01-01T00:09:00.005Z

Dr. Freud’s Process

Edward Bellamy, ca. 1889

Memory-Extirpation:
A Stage on Freud’s Way to ‘Psychoanalysis’

Baronin Anna von Todesco
later Anna Lieben
(Freud’s ‘Frau Cäcilie M.’)

Anthony Stadlen
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 181
Sunday 23 September 2012
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Fanny Moser
(Freud’s ‘Frau Emmy von N.’)

120 years ago, in December 1892, Breuer and Freud wrote: ‘The hysteric suffers mainly from reminiscences.’ Their ‘method of psychotherapy’, they claimed, ‘allows the strangulated affect’ of an ‘originally not abreacted idea’ an ‘outlet through speech’ and ‘brings it [the idea] to associative correction, in that it draws it into normal consciousness… or abolishes [aufhebt] it through medical suggestion…’ [emphasis added]. Thus one of their methods of dealing with ‘reminiscences’ was, they claimed, to ‘abolish’ them. On 20 July 1891, Freud wrote to his wife’s sister that Edward Bellamy’s novel Dr. Heidenhoff’s Process (1880) described ‘in phantastic form’ what Freud himself was doing with his patient Anna Lieben (‘Frau Cäcilie M.’ in the 1895 Studies on Hysteria). Dr. Heidenhoff extirpated his patient’s troubling memories with electroshock to the head, claiming that such extirpation was superior to catharsis or repentance as a ‘cure’ for the distress caused by these memories. In this seminar we shall examine the evidence that Freud attempted memory-extirpation with both Anna Lieben and Fanny Moser (‘Frau Emmy von N.’ in the Studies). We shall explore the idea in 19th-century psychiatry (Bernheim, Janet, Delboeuf,...) and literature (Dickens, Bellamy,…) that one can, or might be able to, as Shakespeare’s Macbeth put it, ‘pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, raze out the written trouble of the brain’. And we shall investigate to what extent ‘memory-extirpation’ is practised, or attempted, today.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk/)

Cost: Psychotherapy trainees £116, others £145, some bursaries; mineral water and liquorice allsorts included; payable in advance; no refunds 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/

The Göring Institute. Psychotherapy in the Third Reich. Inner Circle Seminar 180 (8 July 2012).

2012-01-01T00:08:00.001Z

Dr. Matthias Heinrich Göring

The Göring Institute
Psychotherapy in the Third Reich
Implications for psychotherapy today

Geoffrey Cocks
conducts Inner Circle Seminar No. 180
introduced by Anthony Stadlen
Sunday 8 July 2012
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

This is the second of two seminars devoted to psychiatry and psychotherapy in the Third Reich. Today we focus on psychotherapy. Psychiatry and psychotherapy are generally supposed to be companionate, compassionate sister-professions. This blurs the distinction between psychiatry as a coercive agency of the state and the possibility of psychotherapy as a consensual activity between consenting adults. To understand psychotherapy in the Third Reich one has to understand how it complemented psychiatry. In Inner Circle Seminar No. 175 (22 April 2012), we saw that German psychiatrists persuaded the National Socialist government to legalise the ‘progressive’ method, practised by their United States colleagues, of compulsory sterilisation of ‘degenerate’ persons with supposedly hereditary ‘mental illnesses’. The National Socialists did not grant the doctors’ further request to legalise the actual ‘annihilation of life unworthy of life’, as it was called, but Hitler gave a written undertaking that the law against such ‘mercy deaths’ would not be enforced. Thus began the mass extermination – the so-called ‘euthanasia’ – of the ‘mentally ill’. This made it crucial to differentiate the supposedly contingent psychological problems of hereditarily sound ‘Aryans’, including SS men troubled by their work, from the supposedly hereditary ‘mental illnesses’ of the ‘degenerate’. The theory and practice of psychotherapy, purged of its ‘Jewish’ elements including psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts, served this purpose among others. The leading institute of psychotherapy, led by Hermann Göring’s cousin, Dr. Matthias Heinrich Göring, took on a key role. It became, in due course, the Reich Institute for Psychological Research and Psychotherapy. In this way the National Socialists pioneered the state regulation of psychotherapy sought by many psychotherapists today.

Professor Geoffrey Cocks, of Albion College, Michigan, broke new ground with his book Psychotherapy in the Third Reich: The Göring Institute (1985, 1997). Today he will discuss the findings of his fundamental research. Your contribution to the discussion will be welcome.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk/)
Cost: Psychotherapy trainees £50, others £135, some bursaries; mineral water and liquorice allsorts included; payable in advance; no refunds 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/

Conway conducts: The Free Will Theorem. Inner Circle Seminar 179 (1 July 2012 – provisional date)

2012-01-01T00:07:00.001Z

Professor John Horton Conway FRS

The Free Will Theorem

Implications for Psychotherapy

Professor John Horton Conway FRS
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 179
introduced by Anthony Stadlen
Sunday 1 July 2012
(provisional date)
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Professor John Horton Conway FRS (born 26 December 1937), the John Von Neumann Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University, is a great mathematician and teacher. He has contributed to number theory, knot theory, and many other branches of mathematics. He is the inventor of the Game of Life. In 2006 he and his colleague Simon B. Kochen published what they called the Free Will Theorem: If human beings have free will, in the sense of not being wholly determined by their past, then so do some elementary particles.

But do human beings have free will? Freud claimed that, in The Psychotherapy of Everyday Life and other works, he had proved ‘psychical determinism’. He claimed that the ‘feeling’ of free will was an illusion. And today psychotherapists appeal to ‘neuropsychoanalysis’ as ‘scientific’ evidence for the supposed determinism of human activity.

In today’s seminar Profesor Conway will explain the Free Will Theorem and invite discussion of the question of free will. It is difficult to think of anything more important for psychotherapists. If their activity and that of their ‘patients’ is governed by determinism and not free will, why should we pay attention to it? But can we choose whether to pay attention or not? Your contribution to the dialogue will be welcome, including your view of whether you were free to make it or not.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk)/
Cost: Psychotherapy trainees and mathematics students £50, others £135, some bursaries; mineral water and liquorice allsorts included; payable in advance; no refunds 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/

Locked Up: ‘Patients’ and their Gaolers. 8. Camille Claudel. Inner Circle Seminar 178 (17 June 2012)

2012-01-01T00:06:00.001Z

Camille Claudel

Locked Up: ‘Patients’ and their Gaolers
8. Camille Claudel
(1864–1943)

Susannah Wilson
conducts Inner Circle Seminar No. 178
introduced by Anthony Stadlen
Sunday 17 June 2012
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Camille Claudel (8 December 1864 – 19 October 1943) is now recognised as a sculptor of genius. She was the older sister of the French poet, playwright and diplomat Paul Claudel (1868 – 1955), and a colleague and lover of the sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840 – 1917). However, while these men were internationally acclaimed, she was incarcerated in a psychiatric institution for the last thirty years of her life, diagnosed as ‘suffering’ from ‘paranoia’. One of her ‘symptoms’ was her allegation that Rodin had stolen her work. But Susannah Wilson, a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Warwick, in her important book, Voices from the Asylum: Four French Women Writers, 1850 – 1920 (2010), gives evidence that Rodin had signed his own name to some of Claudel’s sculptures. What was going on? In today’s seminar, Susannah Wilson examines Claudel’s writings – her ‘voice from the asylum’ – to reveal the truth in her ‘delusions’, and to help us explore the social interactions that led to her being locked up.

Locked Up: ‘Patients’ and their Gaolers. 7. Christiane Hegel. Inner Circle Seminar 177 (20 May 2012)

2012-01-01T00:05:00.003Z

Irrenanstalt (madhouse), Zwiefalt, 1813

Locked Up
‘Patients’ and their Gaolers
7. Christiane Hegel
(1773–1832)
Sister of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Alexandra Birkert

Salomé Hangartner
conduct
Inner Circle Seminar No. 177
introduced by Anthony Stadlen
20 May 2012
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Christiane Luise Hegel, born 7 April 1773 in Stuttgart, died 2 February 1832 in Bad Teinach, was the three-years-younger sister of the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831). She worked as a private teacher and governess. She wrote poems, now lost, some (according to Hegel’s first biographer, Rosenkranz) ‘truly beautiful’. She was incarcerated from May 1820 to August 1821 in the madhouse at Zwiefalt, Württemberg. She drowned herself three months after her philosopher brother died.

Alexandra Birkert (Stuttgart) is a historian and specialist in German literature. Her groundbreaking book, Hegel’s Sister: On the Track of an Unusual Woman Around 1800 (2008), is not yet translated into English.

Salomé Hangartner (Forch, near Zurich) is a German–English translator and interpreter who has specialised in the philosophical language of Heidegger and Daseinsanalysis.

In today’s seminar, Alexandra Birkert and Salomé Hangartner will report Dr Birkert’s research findings on Christiane Hegel’s life, family and social milieu, and help us to try to make intelligible the interactions that led to her being locked up in a madhouse.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk/)

Cost: Psychotherapy trainees £50, others £135, some bursaries; mineral water,and liquorice allsorts included; payable in advance; no refunds 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/

Rudnytsky conducts: Source of the Nile for Psychoanalysis? Inner Circle Seminar 175 (1 April 2012)

2012-01-01T00:04:00.030Z

Minna Bernays Martha Bernays Freud Sigmund Freud
1929

A Source of the Nile for Psychoanalysis?

Freud’s Abuser,
Sibling Incest,
and the Affair with
Minna Bernays

Peter Rudnytsky
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 175
introduced by
Anthony Stadlen

Sunday 1 April 2012
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk/)

Cost: Psychotherapy trainees £50, others £135, some bursaries; mineral water and liquorice allsorts included; payable in advance; no refunds 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/

‘Life Unworthy of Life’: ‘Euthanasia’ in the Third Reich. Inner Circle Seminar 176 (22 April 2012)

2012-01-01T00:04:00.028Z

Karl Binding (1841–1920)

‘Life Unworthy of Life’

‘Euthanasia’ in the Third Reich

Paul Weindling
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No.176
introduced by Anthony Stadlen
Sunday 22 April 2012
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Alfred Hoche (1865–1943)

This is the first of two seminars devoted to psychiatry and psychotherapy in the Third Reich. In today’s seminar, we focus on psychiatry, and on its approach to those it regarded as ‘ballast existences’. (In the second seminar, Inner Circle Seminar No. 179 on 8 July 2012, we shall discuss psychotherapy, which was for persons regarded as going concerns.) During the second world war, the Nazis exterminated some 200,000 ‘mentally ill’ and physically disabled adults and children whom they categorised as ‘life unworthy of life’. The book Allowing the Extermination of Life Unworthy of Life (1920), by lawyer Karl Binding and psychiatrist Alfred Hoche, had called for such so-called ‘euthanasia’ to be legalised. The National Socialists never did legalise it, but in 1939 Hitler in a secret memorandum decreed that the law against such ‘mercy deaths’ would not be enforced. Officially, in 1941, the programme was stopped. But doctors (such as the psychiatrist Irmfried Eberl), who had become expert in medical killing by gas, injection and starvation, were transferred from the ‘euthanasia’ programme to apply their skills in the death camps where Jews, Gypsies and others were exterminated (Eberl became commandant of Treblinka death camp). And ‘euthanasia’ continued until the end of the war, both as a ‘eugenic’ measure and to provide body parts for research.

Irmfried Eberl (1910–1948)

Paul Weindling, Wellcome Trust Research Professor in the History of Medicine at Oxford Brookes University, is a world expert on Nazi eugenics, ‘euthanasia’ and human experiments, and on the medical nature of the Nazi exterminations. He is author of Health, Race and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism 1870–1945 (1989) and many other books. Today, he will guide us through the history of the Nazi ‘euthanasia’ and discuss his latest findings.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ

Cost: Psychotherapy trainees £50, others £135, some bursaries; mineral water and liquorice allsorts included; payable in advance; no refunds 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/

Existential Pioneers. 11. Freud as Existential Analyst. Inner Circle Seminar 174 (25 March 2012)

2012-01-01T00:03:00.000Z

Sigmund Freud

Existential Pioneers
11. Sigmund Freud
(1856–1939)
Freud as Existential Analyst

Anthony Stadlen
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 174
Sunday 25 March 2012
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Existential analysis and psychoanalysis are taught nowadays as if they were diametrically opposed disciplines. But this is a tragic misunderstanding: an ill-informed and destructive split. The pioneering existential analysts were all psychoanalysts. For example, the Daseinsanalysts Medard Boss and Alice Holzhey-Kunz wrote that Daseinsanalysis ‘wants only to be a purified psychoanalysis’ – purified, that is, of the scientistic ‘metapsychology’ in which Freud framed his findings. It is true that Freud took, or affected to take, as a compliment Binswanger’s criticism that he saw man as homo natura, an object for natural science; but there is more to Freud than this. Today’s seminar will reveal how, despite his scientistic and psychiatric aspirations, Freud – at his best – was an existential pioneer. We aim, as in previous Inner Circle Seminars on Freud from 1996 on, to renew the existential and phenomenological heart of his quest. Your contribution will be welcome.

Locked Up: ‘Patients’ & their Gaolers. 6. Vivienne Eliot. Inner Circle Seminar 173 (19 February 2012)

2012-01-01T00:02:00.004Z

T. S. Eliot Virginia Woolf Vivienne Eliot

Locked Up:
‘Patients’ and their Gaolers
6. Vivienne Eliot
(1888–1947)
First wife of T. S. Eliot

Carole Seymour-Jones
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 173
introduced by Anthony Stadlen

Sunday 19 February 2012
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Vivienne Eliot

Today’s seminar is devoted to the events that led to the incarceration as a ‘mental patient’ of the poet T. S. Eliot’s first wife, the governess and writer Vivienne née Haigh-Wood (28 May 1888 – 22 January 1947).

Her mother deplored Vivienne’s ‘moral insanity’. And Virginia Woolf wrote: ‘Oh – Vivienne! [...] This bag of ferrets is what Tom [Eliot] wears round his neck.’

Vivienne Eliot was imprisoned in an asylum from 1938 until her death in 1947.

Carole Seymour-Jones is a qualified existential psychotherapist and author of Painted Shadow: The Life of Vivienne Eliot, first wife of T.S. Eliot (2001). In today’s seminar she will discuss Vivienne’s contribution to Eliot’s work. She will show how his poem The Waste Land (1922) was born from the turmoil of his marriage with Vivienne, but that she has been effectively airbrushed out of history. Adducing evidence from sources denied to other biographers, such as Vivienne’s diary which Carole Seymour-Jones finally won the right to quote, she will help us make socially intelligible how Vivienne’s family came to see her as ‘ill’ and to commit her to a madhouse.

Carole Seymour-Jones is also author of A Dangerous Liaison: Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre (2008); coeditor of Another Sky: Voices of Conscience from Around the World (2007) by imprisoned and tortured writers; and chair of the Writers in Prison Committee of English PEN. She is an ideal guide to help us make sense of the social and interpersonal events that led to Vivienne Eliot’s being locked up.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk/)

Cost: Psychotherapy trainees £50, others £135, some bursaries; mineral water and liquorice allsorts included; payable in advance; no refunds 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

Szasz in the 21st Century. 11. Suicide Prohibition (2011). Inner Circle Seminar 172 (22 January 2012)

2012-01-01T00:01:00.060Z

Photograph by Andrew Thomas Peters
August 2008

Thomas Szasz
in the 21st Century
11. Suicide Prohibition:
The Shame of Medicine (2011)

Anthony Stadlen
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 172
Sunday 22 January 2012
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

This seminar will examine what Zvi Lothane has called ‘another masterpiece’ by Thomas Szasz – his first book of his tenth decade, his eleventh since the millennium: Suicide Prohibition: The Shame of Medicine (Syracuse University Press, October 2011).

Szasz’s book focusses on the medicalizing of suicide – particularly ‘suicide prevention’, but also ‘physician-assisted suicide’.

Here is an extract from the second page of this book of just over 100 pages:

‘Let us not forget Robert Servatius's defense of his client Adolf Eichmann in his trial in Jerusalem: “It [killing by gas] was indeed a medical matter, since it was prepared by physicians; it was a matter of killing, and killing, too, is a medical matter.” ... Self-killing proved to be even better suited for medicalization. After the Second World War, medical control of the suicidal person – called “suicide prevention” – became an important part of the profession of psychiatry.’

Some of those who have followed Szasz this far may nevertheless find it disconcerting when he continues:

‘The formal medicalization of physician-permitted or physician-provided voluntary death – called “physician-assisted suicide” [PAS] – soon followed. Typically, PAS is simply the semilegal bootlegging of barbiturates by doctors. Medical ethicists and civil libertarians view it as progress in patient autonomy. I see it as just the opposite.’

And here is Szasz’s summing up on the penultimate page:

‘In The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), Albert Camus famously declares, “There is but one serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.” Seventy years later, everyone knows that suicide is a psychiatric emergency, not a philosophical problem.’

The book includes an analysis of ‘suicidal ideation’ as a pseudo-medical concept; a critique of the ‘suicide prevention’ practised by Viktor Frankl, who is often regarded as an exemplary existential psychotherapist; and examinations of many other aspects of the medicalization of suicide.

It is common for people to praise or denounce Professor Szasz’s position without being clear what it is. This seminar will try to do justice to the logic and ethics of his uncompromising argument. If one thing approaches certainty it is that in this seven-hour seminar we shall not reach a unanimous verdict. You are cordially invited to join the discussion, which will be, as always, the heart of the seminar.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk/)

Cost: Psychotherapy trainees £50, others £135; some bursaries; mineral water and liquorice allsorts included; payable in advance; no refunds 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/

Existential Pioneers 10. Emmanuel Lévinas. Totality and Infinity 50 Years On. Inner Circle Seminar 171 (11 December 2011)

2011-01-12T00:01:00.064Z

Emmanuel Lévinas

Existential Pioneers
10. Emmanuel Lévinas

Totality and Infinity (1961)

50 Years On

Inner Circle Seminar No. 171

conducted by

Anthony Stadlen

Sunday 11 December 2011

10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Emmanuel Lévinas (30 December 1905 – 25 December 1995) was a highly original 20th-century philosopher. He introduced Husserl and Heidegger to France, and revered Heidegger’s Being and Time (1927), but asked how Heidegger’s philosophy had in 1933 allowed him to embrace National Socialism. Lévinas’s extraordinary book Totality and Infinity (1961) was his answer. He urged that more primordial than ‘Being’ was the Face of the Other. The Face means: ‘Love your neighbour’, ‘Love the stranger’, ‘Care for the widow and the orphan’, ‘Do not murder’. Philosophy, said Lévinas, should tremble before the infinity of the Other, not subsume him or her in the totality of the Same. How does Lévinas’s thinking differ from that of Freud, Buber, Heidegger, von Hildebrand, Stein, Sartre and others? What is its relevance to the everyday practice of psychotherapy? We devoted Inner Circle Seminar No. 97 (22 January 2006) to Lévinas’s work as a whole, but today we shall focus on Totality and Infinity, 50 years on. Your contribution to the discussion will be welcome.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk/)

Cost: Psychotherapy trainees £50, others £135; some bursaries; mineral water and liquorice allsorts included; payable in advance; no refunds 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/

Locked Up: ‘Patients’ and their Gaolers. 5. Linda Sibelius. Inner Circle 170 (27 November 2011)

2011-01-11T08:02:00.015Z

Linda Sibelius

Locked Up: ‘Patients’ and their Gaolers
5. Linda Sibelius
(1863-1932)
Sister of Jean Sibelius

Gitta Henning
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 170
introduced by Anthony Stadlen
27 November 2011
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

This seminar is the fifth in the subseries Locked Up: ‘Patients’ and their Gaolers. Those who have attended the first four seminars in the subseries have heard astonishing and shocking accounts, by Vladimir Bukovsky and Kate Millett in person, and by world experts on Judge Daniel Paul Schreber and Princess Alice (the Duke of Edinburgh’s mother), of how these four outstanding and spirited people who had committed no crimes were incarcerated for years in psychiatric ‘hospitals’ in the twentieth century. This Locked Up subseries will continue as long as the Inner Circle Seminars continue and innocent people are still being locked up in such ‘hospitals’ around the world in the twenty-first century. There is no lack of prominent subjects for such seminars...

Today’s seminar is devoted, on her 148th birthday, to Linda Sibelius (27 November 1863 – 15 May 1932), the older sister of the great Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) and of Finland’s leading professor of psychiatry Christian Sibelius (1869–1922). Sibelius’s biographer Robert Layton writes that she was ‘committed to an asylum’. Engaged in some kind of religious quest, she spent her last thirty years in psychiatric hospitals. Her brothers continued to have apparently warm relationships with her, but Jean Sibelius wrote in one diary entry that it was depressing to see ‘the madwoman’. We are now in the centenary year of Sibelius’s profoundly searching work, the Fourth Symphony (1911), which he called a ‘psychological’ symphony. He wrote in his diary: ‘It calls for much courage to look life straight in the eyes!’ He later said to Walter Legge that to have continued composing in that direction would have led to ‘madness’. What was the relationship between his quest and his sister’s? Gitta Henning, at the prompting of Anthony Stadlen, and encouraged by the Sibelius family, has conducted extensive research on Linda Sibelius in Finnish archives especially for today’s Inner Circle Seminar. There is little about Linda Sibelius in the Sibelius biographies. They do not even give the date of her death, which was discovered by Mrs Henning. Why was the sister of one of the greatest twentieth-century composers a ‘mental patient’ for the last three decades of her life? We shall, as in all the seminars of the subseries Locked Up: ‘Patients’ and their Gaolers, examine the interpersonal and social events that led to her decades-long ‘confinement’.

Gitta Henning is, in the view of Sibelius experts, the best possible guide to these questions. She worked as assistant to Erik Tawaststjerna on his monumental five-volume biography of Sibelius in the 1960s, and worked for thirty years on bringing out the Swedish and Finnish editions. She has deep knowledge of the Sibelius archives, and is often called upon by Finnish and foreign scholars to help with their research. We are honoured that she has undertaken this research on Linda Sibelius and will reveal her findings for the first time at our Inner Circle Seminar today.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk/)
Cost: Psychotherapy trainees, music students, and members of the UK Sibelius Society £50, others £135, some bursaries; mineral water and liquorice allsorts included; payable in advance; no refunds 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/

Zeeman conducts: Mathematics & Human Action. Inner Circle Seminar 169 (6 November 2011)

2011-01-11T08:01:00.010Z

Professor Sir Christopher Zeeman FRS
Portrait by Peter Edwards 2007

Mathematics and Human Action

‘Reducing the arbitrariness of the metaphor’ in the human sciences

Professor Sir Christopher Zeeman FRS
conducts Inner Circle Seminar No. 169
introduced by Anthony Stadlen
Sunday 6 November 2011
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Professor Sir Christopher Zeeman FRS is one of the world’s greatest mathematicians. He spun knots in 4 dimensions, unknotted spheres in 5 dimensions, proved the Poincaré Conjecture in 5 dimensions, and derived special relativity from causality. He also applied René Thom’s catastrophe theory to human activities: ideologies, committee behaviour, economics, drama, and psychotherapy of ‘anorexia nervosa’. Today, he will show how this creative use of mathematics to clarify the ‘human sciences’, including psychotherapy, ‘reduces the arbitrariness of the metaphor’ (Thom), while the pseudo-scientific use of mathematics obscures, mystifies, and compounds arbitrariness. Sir Christopher is renowned as a great teacher, who explains deep mathematical concepts simply to those who thought they would never understand them. Your contribution to the dialogue will be welcome.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk/)
Cost: Psychotherapy trainees and mathematics students £50, others £135, some bursaries; mineral water and liquorice allsorts included; payable in advance; no refunds 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/

Existential Pioneers. 9. Salvador Minuchin. 90th-birthday seminar: Family Kaleidoscope. Inner Circle Seminar 168 (16 October 2011)

2011-01-10T08:02:00.015Z

Salvador Minuchin 2011

Existential Pioneers
9. Salvador Minuchin
90th-Birthday Seminar
Family Kaleidoscope

Anthony Stadlen
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 168
Sunday 16 October 2011
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Salvador Minuchin was born 90 years ago, on 13 October 1921. He is one of the most respected practitioners and teachers of family research and family therapy. He is author or co-author of the books Families of the Slums (1967), Families and Family Therapy (1974), Family Therapy Techniques (1981), Family Kaleidoscope (1984), and Mastering Family Therapy (1996). Minuchin writes of the family as an ‘organism’, of ‘family pathology’, and of ‘pathologically enmeshed’ families. But his use of these terms is existential: metaphorical, not pseudo-medical. His practice with, and thinking on, families is highly original, and existential to the core. In today’s seminar we shall study some of his writings and watch his work with families in the films Inviting the Family Dance and Beyond Technique. (Unfortunately, although he is still teaching, his health does not permit him to fly from Florida to conduct the seminar himself). Your contribution to the discussion will be welcome.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk/)
Cost: Psychotherapy and family therapy trainees £50, others £135, some bursaries; mineral water and liquorice allsorts included; payable in advance; no refunds 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/

Existential Pioneers. 8. Edith Stein. Mette Lebech on ‘The Problem of Empathy’. Inner Circle Seminar 167 (9 October 2011)

2011-01-10T08:01:00.018Z

Edith Stein

Existential Pioneers
(‘May you live to 120!’)
8. Edith Stein
(Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross)
(1891-1942)
On the Problem of Empathy (1917)

Mette Lebech
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 167
introduced by Anthony Stadlen
Sunday 9 October 2011
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Edith Stein, phenomenological philosopher, was born 120 years ago this week on 12 October 1891. In today’s seminar, we discuss her thesis, On the Problem of Empathy (1917). There are few more important problems for those who dare to call themselves psychotherapists. Our work purports to be ‘attending’ (therapy) to the ‘soul’ (psyche), but how can we do this? How can we help anyone reflect on his or her relationships if we have no idea how one person relates to another? The basis of a personal relationship, and in particular of a so-called ‘therapeutic’ relationship, is often said to be ‘empathy’. But what is ‘empathy’? Heidegger denounced it as a degenerate form of ‘being-with’ in which one isolated encapsulated ‘subject’ tries to ‘feel into’ and work out what is going on ‘in’ another isolated encapsulated ‘subject’: one black box decoding and making inferences about signals emitted by another. Heidegger and Stein were both brilliant assistants of Husserl. Heidegger’s critique of ‘empathy’ was surely aimed at Stein’s thesis. Was he right? Is she merely a footnote in the history of twentieth-century philosophy? Is she interesting primarily because it is unusual for a philosopher to be a woman, not to mention a Jew who became a Christian and a Discalced Carmelite nun, who was murdered in Auschwitz, and canonised by Pope John Paul II as Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross? Or is she one of the great phenomenologists, whose thinking differs subtly from that of Buber, Scheler, von Hildebrand, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, and whose thesis on ‘empathy’ presents a serious challenge to Heidegger’s, of which psychotherapists, and all concerned with how human beings relate to one another, should be aware?

Dr Mette Lebech, Lecturer in Philosophy at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, and President of the Edith Stein Circle (the International Association for the Study of the Philosophy of Edith Stein), is an ideal guide for our discussion of these questions.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk/)

Cost: Psychotherapy trainees and philosophy students £50, others £135, some bursaries; mineral water and liquorice allsorts included; morning and afternoon coffee, tea, biscuits (optional) £9
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/

Existential Pioneers. 7. Fred Sander. Inner Circle Seminar 166 (7 August 2011)

2011-01-08T08:01:00.003Z

Fred Sander

Existential Pioneers
7. Fred Sander
Created in Our Own Images.com

Fred Sander
conducts Inner Circle Seminar No. 166
introduced by Anthony Stadlen
Sunday 7 August 2011
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Fred Sander (born 6 January 1937) is a psychoanalyst and family therapist practising in New York. In his book Individual and Family Therapy: Towards an Integration (1979), he gave an existential analysis of plays by T. S. Eliot and Edward Albee, drawing on insights from research on family interaction and family therapy. In his new book, Created in Our Own Images.com (2010), starting from the Pygmalion myth, as retold in W. S. Gilbert’s play Pygmalion and Galatea (1871), Fred Sander and other authors explore how human beings seek to clone others, literally and metaphorically, biologically and existentially, in their own images. The authors warn that this aspiration, of individuals rather than governments, may well bring about a ‘Brave New World’ more chilling than even Aldous Huxley imagined. Today, Fred Sander illustrates this thesis with examples from his long experience as family therapist and psychoanalyst and invites you to participate in a discussion of the ethical and existential implications.

Venue: 'Oakleigh', 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE

Cost: Students £108, others £135, some bursaries; mineral water, coffee, tea, biscuits included

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/

Locked Up: ‘Patients’ & their Gaolers. 4. Alice, Princess Andrew of Greece. Inner Circle Seminar 165 (3 July 2011)

2011-01-07T08:01:00.009Z

Alice, Princess Andrew of Greece

Locked Up: ‘Patients’ and their Gaolers
4. Alice, Princess Andrew
(1885–1969)
Mother-in-law of The Queen

Hugo Vickers
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 165
introduced by Anthony Stadlen
Sunday 3 July 2011
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Alice, Princess Andrew of Greece (25 February 1885 – 5 December 1969) was mother of The Duke of Edinburgh and mother-in-law of The Queen.

Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, in 1930 advised the ‘treatment’ of Alice’s ‘schizophrenic paranoia’ and ‘neurotic pre-psychotic libidinous condition’ in a psychoanalytic ‘sanatorium’ at Tegel, Germany, by ‘an exposure of the gonads to X-rays in order to accelerate the menopause’. This was done.

Ludwig Binswanger, the founder of existential psychiatry, then took over Alice’s ‘treatment’, in his own ‘sanatorium’ at Kreuzlingen, Switzerland, where she had been taken by force and deception. His ‘treatment’ included confiscating her letters to the press, which were an embarrassment to her family. Her attempts to escape were unsuccessful.

Hugo Vickers, distinguished author of Alice, Princess Andrew of Greece (2000) and of many other books, was granted by The Duke of Edinburgh unrestricted access to archival data on his mother. Hugo Vickers examines the intelligibility of the familial and social interactions by which The Queen’s mother-in-law came to be ‘treated’, with force and fraud, as a ‘schizophrenic’. Your contribution to the discussion will be welcome.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk/)

Cost: Students £108, others £135, some bursaries; mineral water, coffee, tea, biscuits, liquorice allsorts included

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/

Israels, Lothane, Schatzman conduct: Locked Up. 3. Schreber/Freud Centenary Symposium. Inner Circle Seminar 164 (5 June 2011)

2011-01-06T08:01:00.003Z

Locked Up: ‘Patients’ and their Gaolers

Daniel Paul Schreber

3. Schreber and Freud:
A Hundred Years of a Double Legacy

A Symposium for the Centenary of
Freud’s 1911 Case Study of
Daniel Paul Schreber’s
Memoirs of my Nervous Illness (1903)

Han Israëls
Zvi Lothane
Morton Schatzman
conduct Inner Circle Seminar No. 164
introduced by Anthony Stadlen
Sunday 5 June 2011
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Judge Daniel Paul Schreber (25 July 1842 – 14 April 1911) is the most famous of all locked-up ‘psychotics’ and ‘mental patients’. This seminar marks the centenary of both Schreber’s death and Sigmund Freud’s 1911 case study of Schreber, the first of many reinterpretations of Schreber’s Memoirs of my Nervous Illness (1903). Schreber’s Memoirs, Freud’s case study, and other writings on Schreber, are said to be ‘paradigms’. But of what are they paradigms? Is the very concept of ‘paradigm’ in the ‘human sciences’ misleading? In today’s seminar, the world’s three leading Schreber experts discuss these questions, as well as why Schreber was locked up.

Han Israëls is author of Schreber: Father and Son (1989 [1980]).
Zvi Lothane is author of In Defence of Schreber: Soul Murder and Psychiatry (1992).
Morton Schatzman is author of Soul Murder: Persecution in the Family (1973).

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk)

Cost: Students £108, others £135, some bursaries; mineral water, coffee, tea, biscuits, liquorice allsorts included

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/

The Inner Circle Seminars were founded by Anthony Stadlen in 1996 as an ethical, existential, phenomenological search for truth in psychotherapy. They have been 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.

Locked Up: ‘Patients’ and their Gaolers. 2. Kate Millett conducts Inner Circle Seminar 163 (8 May 2011)

2011-01-05T08:01:00.000Z

Locked Up
‘Patients’ and their Gaolers
2. Kate Millett

Kate Millett
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 163
introduced by Anthony Stadlen
Sunday 8 May 2011
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Photographs of Kate Millett by Cynthia MacAdams

Kate Millett (born 14 September 1934) is one of the world’s leading feminists. She is a social historian, author and sculptor. Her books, on a wide range of subjects, include Sexual Politics (1970), The Prostitution Papers (1973), Flying (1974), Sita (1977), The Basement (1979), Going to Iran (1979), Believe me, you don't want a picture of that! (1991), The Politics of Cruelty (1994), A.D.: A Memoir (1995), and Mother Millett (2002). In The Loony Bin Trip (1990) she describes her psychiatric incarceration as a ‘mental patient’ in the USA and Ireland. She went to court to obtain her release in the USA, and succeeded in changing the State of Minnesota’s commitment law. She has continued to expose and oppose psychiatric coercion and torture. In today’s seminar Kate Millett will describe her experiences of psychiatry, and will help us make intelligible the interpersonal and social interactions which led to her being locked up. Your contribution to the discussion will be welcome.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ(http://www.durrantshotel.com/)
Cost: Students £108, others £135, some bursaries; mineral water, coffee, tea, biscuits and liquorice allsorts included
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

Existential Pioneers. 6. Binswanger. Holzhey-Kunz & Stadlen conduct: Ellen West. Inner Circle Seminar 162 (3 April 2011)

2011-01-04T08:01:00.002Z

‘Ellen West’

Existential Pioneers
6. Ludwig Binswanger
The Case of Ellen West
A Daseinsanalytic-Historical Symposium
90 Years after her Death

Alice Holzhey-Kunz
Anthony Stadlen
conduct
Inner Circle Seminar No. 162
Sunday 3 April 2011
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Ludwig Binswanger (1881—1966) said ‘Ellen West’ (1944) was his ‘paradigm’ case. He claimed that his daseinsanalytic method, based on ‘love’, revealed that he was right to dismiss her as a hopeless case in 1921, and that her suicide a few days later was both an inevitable consequence of her ‘schizophrenia’ and the most ‘authentic’ act of her life.

Alice Holzhey-Kunz is a leading Swiss Daseinsanalyst, who studied and collaborated with Medard Boss, but whose thinking diverges from that of both Binswanger and Boss. She has edited, and written extensively on, Binswanger’s works, including the case of ‘Ellen West’.

Anthony Stadlen is an existential psychotherapist and the convenor of the Inner Circle Seminars. He has researched many of the canonical case studies of psychoanalysis, analytical psychology, Daseinsanalysis and existential analysis, including ‘Ellen West’.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk/)
Cost: Students £108, others £135, some bursaries; mineral water, coffee, tea, biscuits, liquorice allsorts included
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/

Locked Up: ‘Patients’ and their Gaolers. 1. Vladimir Bukovsky conducts Inner Circle Seminar 161 (13 March 2011)

2011-01-03T08:01:00.001Z

Vladimir Bukovsky

Locked Up: ‘Patients’ and their Gaolers
1. Vladimir Bukovsky

Vladimir Bukovsky
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 161
introduced by Anthony Stadlen
Sunday 13 March 2011
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Vladimir Bukovsky

Vladimir Bukovsky (born 30 December 1942) honours us by conducting the first in a new subseries of Inner Circle Seminars, Locked Up: ‘Patients’ and their Gaolers. We shall interweave this subseries with other seminars as long as the Inner Circle Seminars continue and innocent ‘mental patients’ continue to be incarcerated and forcibly ‘treated’.

Vladimir Bukovsky spent 12 years in Soviet prisons, labour camps and forced-treatment psychiatric prison-‘hospitals’. A man of transcendent courage, integrity and intelligence, he exposed and denounced the brutal system of psychiatric-political imprisonment in the USSR. Bukovsky is careful to call it psychiatric abuse – not ‘abuse of psychiatry’, as it is termed by Western psychiatrists and journalists. In today’s seminar, he will explain how ‘sincere’ Marxist philosophers and ‘correct’ psychiatrists logically concluded – as they now do in China – that a dissident within a ‘perfect’ social system must be ‘insane’. He will discuss the social intelligibility of the interactions which led to his being locked up, as well as of those which lead to people being locked up as ‘mad’ in our society. Nothing could be more urgent than to hear Vladimir Bukovsky speak.

Existential Pioneers. 5. Peter Lomas (1923–2010). Inner Circle Seminar 160 (13 February 2011)

2011-01-02T08:01:00.001Z

Peter Lomas

Existential Pioneers
5. Peter Lomas
(1923–2010)

Anthony Stadlen
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 160
Sunday 13 February 2011
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Peter Lomas was born on 27 February 1923 and died on 12 January 2010 aged nearly 87. His central thought, that psychotherapy is ‘ordinary’, made him, paradoxically, an extraordinary figure in the history of psychotherapy. By ‘ordinary’, he meant that psychotherapy deals with decency, love, kindness, creativity, courage and truth; and that it is best described in ordinary language. This he did, with great sensitivity, in ordinary, but very good, English. Well versed in psychoanalytic and existential literature, he valued their authentic findings but disliked their pretentious jargon. A respected member of the British Psychoanalytical Society and founder of the Guild of Psychotherapists, he resigned from both because of what he thought they had become. He then founded a training scheme known as the ‘Outfit’ (officially, the Cambridge Society for Psychotherapy). Today we shall discuss some of Peter Lomas’s books and papers. Your contribution will be most welcome, especially if you were his client, supervisee, colleague or friend.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk/)
Cost: Students £108, others £135; some bursaries; mineral water, coffee, tea, biscuits, liquorice allsorts included
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/

Existential Pioneers. 4. Martti Siirala (1922–2008). Inner Circle Seminar 159 (23 January 2011)

2011-01-01T08:01:00.002Z

Martti Siirala

Existential Pioneers
4. Martti Siirala
(1922–2008)
An exploration of his life and work

Anthony Stadlen
(with Ann-Helen Siirala and Marja-Liisa Siirala)
conducts Inner Circle Seminar No. 159
Sunday 23 January 201110 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Martti Siirala of Helsinki (born 24 November 1922, died 18 August 2008 aged 85) was one of the world’s great original, best-loved, existential psychotherapists. He and his wife Ann-Helen Siirala spent his 80th birthday with us in London, conducting a well-remembered Inner Circle Seminar. Today, Ann-Helen Siirala and Martti Siirala’s daughter Marja-Liisa Siirala honour us by coming from Helsinki to take part in a seminar on his case studies, his thinking on ‘schizophrenia’, and his theory of ‘social pathology’ – a metaphor for a terrible literal truth. We ask: what are the implications for psychotherapy, and beyond?

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk/

Cost: Students £108, others £135; some bursaries; mineral water, coffee, tea, biscuits, liquorice allsorts included

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/

Existential Pioneers. 3. Laing: The Divided Self (1960) 50 Years On. Inner Circle Seminar 158 (5 December 2010)

2010-01-12T08:01:00.007Z

R. D. Laing
Hampstead Heath, 1960

Existential Pioneers

3. R. D. Laing

(1927–1989)

Anthony Stadlen
conducts Inner Circle Seminar No. 158
Sunday 5 December 2010
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The Divided Self (1960)
50 Years On

Fifty years ago this month, in December 1960, R. D. Laing’s first and best known book, The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness, was published. It attracted little attention at first, but by the end of the 1960s it had become a bestseller.

Laing stated his purposes as: (1) ‘to make madness, and the process of going mad, comprehensible’; and (2) ‘to give in plain English an account, in existential terms, of some forms of madness’. In today’s seminar we explore the book in some detail, and ask how far it fulfils these stated purposes. This will necessarily entail our asking what Laing meant by ‘madness’, in the light of his statement that ‘the critical test of whether a patient is psychotic is a lack of congruity, an incongruity, a clash, between him and me’. We shall pay particular attention to some of Laing’s memorable case studies, and also to the differences between the arguments of Laing’s book and of Thomas Szasz’s book The Myth of Mental Illness published a few months later. Much has been written about The Divided Self, most of it based on very inadequate reading of it. Today’s seminar will try to do justice to this brilliant book’s strengths and weaknesses.

For further information on seminars, visit: http://anthonystadlen.blogspot.com/

Existential Pioneers. 2. Erna Hoch (1919–2003). Inner Circle Seminar 157 (7 November 2010)

2010-01-11T08:01:00.001Z

Erna Hoch with Gobind Kaul, Kashmir

Existential Pioneers
2. Erna Hoch
(1919–2003)
An exploration of her life and work

Anthony Stadlen
conducts Inner Circle Seminar No. 157
Sunday 7 November 2010
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Erna Hoch was born on 18 March 1919 and died on 29 August 2003 aged 84. She was a highly original Swiss Daseinsanalyst and psychiatrist, who worked for many years in India and Kashmir. She transcribed some of Heidegger’s Zollikon seminars for Medard Boss in vivid detail, wrote many articles and books on Daseinsanalysis and Indian thought, and worked as what she called a ‘messenger between East and West’, helping Boss and Heidegger to compare Heidegger’s concepts with those of traditional Indian philosophy.

Erna Hoch was a woman of great intelligence and integrity, who knew the value of, but was level-headed and clear-sighted about, philosophers, gurus, and Daseinsanalysts. In today’s seminar, Anthony Stadlen will report his discussions with her on the history of Daseinsanalysis, and on her and Boss’s independent experiences as disciples of the guru Gobind Kaul in Kashmir. We shall also study extracts from some of her articles and from her books Indian Children on a Psychiatrist’s Playground, Sources And Resources: A Western Psychiatrist’s Search For Meaning In The Ancient Indian Scriptures, Hypocrite or Heretic: To Pretend or to Protest, and The Madhouse on the Lotus-Lake.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk/)

Cost: Students £108, others £135; some bursaries; mineral water, coffee, tea, biscuits, liquorice allsorts included

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/

Existential Pioneers. 1. Gion Condrau (1919–2006). Inner Circle Seminar 156 (10 October 2010)

2010-01-10T08:01:00.004Z

Gion Condrau

Existential Pioneers

1. Gion Condrau
(1919–2006)
An exploration of his life and work

Anthony Stadlen
conducts Inner Circle Seminar No. 156
Sunday 10 October 2010
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Gion Condrau was born on 9 January 1919 in Disentis, in the Romansh-speaking canton of Graubünden, Switzerland. He died, aged nearly 88, on 21 November 2006 in Zürich. He was, after Binswanger and Boss, the world’s leading Daseinsanalyst. He was Medard Boss’s comrade-in-arms, analysand, pupil, colleague, friend – and, after Boss’s death in 1990, his successor. Until 1979, he was a Christian-Democratic People’s Party politician, first in the Herrliberg local council and then in the Zürich cantonal and Swiss national parliaments. He attended Heidegger’s Zollikon seminars; published many books on daseinsanalysis; and founded many societies and clubs, from the Bob Club of his home town Herrliberg to the central institutions of Daseinsanalysis, but without losing his anarchic mischievousness and irreverence.

In today’s seminar we shall explore some of his writings, including his case studies in his book Martin Heidegger’s Impact on Psychotherapy (1998). We shall discuss his differences with Boss. And Anthony Stadlen will report on his own work with Gion Condrau to demystify and demythologize the historiography of Daseinsanalysis.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk/)
Cost: Students £108, others £135; some bursaries; mineral water, coffee, tea, biscuits, liquorice allsorts included
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/

Melanie Klein: Narrative of a Child Analysis. Inner Circle Seminar 155 (19 September 2010)

2010-01-09T08:01:00.003Z

Melanie Klein

Melanie Klein
Narrative of a Child Analysis (1961)
An examination of Mrs Klein’s most comprehensive case study
for the 50th anniversary of her death

Anthony Stadlen
conducts

Inner Circle Seminar No. 155
Sunday 19 September 2010
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

‘Richard’

Melanie Klein (30 March 1882 – 22 September 1960) is renowned as a pioneer of the psychoanalysis of both adults and children. Her theories of unconscious phantasy as a fundamental modality of experience from birth onwards radically transformed psychoanalytic thinking, though not without controversy. She died fifty years ago. Today, we examine her monumental case study, Narrative of a Child Analysis, published the year after her death. It gives a session-by-session account of her psychoanalytic work with a ten-year-old boy, ‘Richard’, during the second world war. We shall study critically Mrs Klein’s way of making interpretations: how she derives their content from the available data, and how she imparts them to the little boy. But we shall also ask what is involved existentially and ethically in the psychotherapy of children, which is a flourishing industry today. Can children below the age of consent enter into such a contract? Is child psychotherapy a form of child exploitation, even if the child enjoys it or benefits from it? Does the new information which this seminar will (without disclosing his identity) reveal about the later life and relationships of the boy throw light on this question? Your contribution to the discussion will be most welcome.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk/)

Cost: Students £108, others £135; some bursaries; mineral water, coffee, tea, biscuits, liquorice allsorts included

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/

Freud and Schoenberg: Metapsychology and Serialism. Inner Circle Seminar 154 (18 July 2010)

2010-01-07T08:01:00.010Z

Arnold Schoenberg

Peter Stadlen

Sigmund Freud

Freud and Schoenberg
Metapsychology and Serialism

The ‘unconscious’ in psychoanalysis and music

For the centenary of the pianist and musicologist Peter Stadlen

Anthony Stadlen
conducts Inner Circle Seminar No. 154
Sunday 18 July 2010
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Marie Pappenheim
Portrait by Kokoschka

This seminar will compare the work of two great Viennese-Jewish early-20th-century innovators, the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and the composer Arnold Schoenberg. Freud’s books on dreams and ‘hysteria’, and such works as Schoenberg’s 1909 opera Erwartung, were linked by their revolutionary phenomenological explorations of delirium and the ‘unconscious’ – as well as by that opera’s librettist Marie Pappenheim, whose portrait by Schoenberg is shown above, and who was a cousin of Breuer and Freud’s ‘hysterical’ patient ‘Anna O.’ (Bertha Pappenheim). However, after these initial ventures into the unknown, Freud and Schoenberg attempted to ‘organise the delirium’ (as Pierre Boulez would put it several decades later) by giving a structure – Freud's ‘metapsychology’ and Schoenberg's ‘serialism’ – to what they claimed lay ‘behind’ experience. This seminar celebrates the centenary of Peter Stadlen (born 14 July 1910), pianist and musicologist, who gave the first performance of Anton Webern’s Piano Variations and continued to insist on the authentic articulation of extremes of phenomenological emotional expression and meaning in this music as imparted to him by Webern, but questioned both the audibility and the logic of its ‘metapsychological’ serial structure. We shall explore the implications for psychotherapy.

This seminar should be of interest to psychotherapists and musicians, and to anyone with an interest in either of these fields. No previous knowledge will be assumed.

Venue: ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE
Cost: Students £108, others £135; some bursaries; mineral water, coffee, tea, biscuits included
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/

Szasz conducts 90th-birthday seminar: The Myth of Mental Illness 50 Years On. Inner Circle Seminar 153 (13 June 2010)

2010-01-06T08:01:00.002Z

Photograph by Andrew Thomas Peters
August 2008

Thomas Szasz
conducts his 90th-birthday seminar

The Myth of Mental Illness
50 Years On

Inner Circle Seminar No. 153
conducted by Thomas Szasz
introduced by Anthony Stadlen
Sunday 13 June 2010
10 a.m. – 12 noon 2 p.m. – 4 p.m.

Thomas Szasz celebrates his 90th birthday (15 April 2010) by conducting his third Inner Circle Seminar, 50 years after his epochmaking paper ‘The Myth of Mental Illness’ (1960) and book The Myth of Mental Illness (1961). HarperCollins has just released a 50th-anniversary, expanded edition of the book, which those attending his seminar are asked to read in advance. The book has been enormously influential, but most readers do not appreciate how fundamental and radical is the change in thinking and practice it embodies and calls for. Many courses ‘teach’ this book, but few teachers understand it. It is perhaps too simple, too revolutionary. In today’s seminar Professor Szasz will explain his thesis on ‘mental illness’, and how it has been misunderstood. Then he will address your questions, perplexities, and challenges. His lecture will open out into an Inner Circle Seminar, which means, as participants know, an intense search for understanding through dialogue, in which beginners as well as international experts and scholars share their perplexities in a respectful atmosphere, even though there will be a larger attendance than at the usual seminars. Those who attended Professor Szasz’s previous Inner Circle Seminars, in 2003 and 2007, know how electrifying this dialogue can be.

Venue: Portman Hotel, 22 Portman Square, London W1H 7BG (http://www.radissonblu.co.uk/hotel-london/contact)

Subscription: Students £108, others £135; some bursaries; no refunds 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/

Laura Barnett, Havi Hannah Carel, Lawrence Goldie conduct: Illness, Life, Death. Inner Circle Seminar 152 (16 May 2010)

2010-01-05T09:01:00.003Z

Illness, Life, Death

Existential and Psychoanalytic Approaches

Laura Barnett

Laura Barnett
Havi Hannah Carel

Lawrence Goldie

conduct

Inner Circle Seminar No. 152

introduced by Anthony Stadlen

Sunday 16 May 2010

10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Laura Barnett is an existential psychotherapist and supervisor in the NHS and in private practice. She manages the Cancer Counselling Service and the Psychological Aftercare Service for Intensive Care Patients, which she set up at Mayday University Hospital, Croydon. She is editor of *When Death Enters the Therapeutic Space: Existential Perspectives in Psychotherapy and Counselling (2009).

Havi Hannah Carel

Havi Hannah Carel is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of the West of England. In her writing she has movingly interwoven her own experience of rare, life-threatening illness with her philosophical reflections on life and death. She is author of What Philosophy Is (with David Gamez, 2004), Life and Death in Freud and Heidegger (2006) and *Illness: The Cry of the Flesh (2008).

Lawrence Goldie

Lawrence Goldie is a consultant psychiatrist and psychoanalytic psychotherapist who has published widely. For decades he was a lone pioneer practising psychoanalytic psychotherapy for cancer patients at the Royal Marsden and other hospitals. He also devised and ran a course, ‘Caring for the Bereaved and Dying’, for doctors, nurses, and other medical auxiliaries. He is author of *Psychotherapy with Cancer Patients: Bearing Cancer in Mind (with Jane Desmarais, 2005).

*Participants are asked to prepare for the seminar by reading, if possible, the books marked with an asterisk above.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk/)

Cost: Students £108, others £135, in advance; some bursaries; mineral water, coffee, tea, biscuits, liquorice allsorts included

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/

Dr Jack Newman conducts: The Medicalizing of Motherhood. Inner Circle Seminar 151 (9 May 2010)

2010-01-05T08:01:00.005Z

Dr Jack Newman

The Medicalizing of Motherhood

Implications for Psychotherapy

Dr Jack Newman
conducts

Inner Circle Seminar No. 151

introduced by Naomi and Anthony Stadlen

Sunday 9 May 2010

10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Dr Jack Newman of Toronto is the doctor that mothers trust. As a paediatrician he passionately denounces the medicalization, based on medical ignorance, of ordinary healthy mothers, breastfeeding babies, and the mother-baby relationship. This seminar will explore the implications for psychotherapy. Many theories of mother-baby relationships can be traced back to certain confident assertions on breastfeeding, separation, and so on by psychoanalysts such as Freud, Klein and Winnicott. What is the evidence for these assertions? Are they grounded in sound observation – or on unproven assumptions? Naomi and Anthony Stadlen will invite Dr Newman to comment on some of these assertions from the psychoanalytic literature in the light of his profound practical knowledge and experience of mothers, babies and breastfeeding. This seminar will be attended by mothers with their babies, as well as by psychotherapists and other professionals. Everybody’s contribution will be warmly valued.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk/)

Cost: Students £108, others £135, in advance; some bursaries; mineral water, coffee, tea, biscuits, liquorice allsorts included; mothers with babies £15, mineral water and liquorice allsorts included, plus optional £9 for morning and afternoon coffee, tea, biscuits

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/

Szasz in the 21st Century. 10. Antipsychiatry: Quackery Squared (2009). Inner Circle Seminar 150 (14 March 2010)

2010-01-03T08:01:00.004Z

Thomas Szasz

Thomas Szasz
in the 21st Century
10. Antipsychiatry:
Quackery Squared (2009)

Anthony Stadlen
conducts Inner Circle Seminar No. 150
Sunday 14 March 2010
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

R. D. Laing

Today we discuss Thomas Szasz’s tenth 21st-century book, Antipsychiatry: Quackery Squared (2009), a detailed critique of R. D. Laing, with whom Szasz is often, erroneously, coupled. For more than half a century, Szasz has consistently opposed what he identifies as the two paradigmatic practices of psychiatry: compulsory treatment (coercing the innocent) and the insanity defence (excusing the guilty). In Antipsychiatry, Szasz shows that, despite what many suppose, Laing did not object to either of these activities in theory, and in fact practised both. Szasz also criticises Laing for equivocating about the concept of ‘mental illness’ which is used to justify these two practices.

The aim of this seminar is a balanced evaluation. The Inner Circle Seminars have offered, in recent years, a subseries of eleven seminars devoted to each of Szasz’s ten 21st-century books, culminating in the 90th-birthday seminar which Thomas Szasz will himself conduct on 13 June, discussing 50 years of his book The Myth of Mental Illness. But we have also offered, in recent years, another, well attended, subseries of eleven seminars, devoted to each of the eleven families in Laing and Esterson’s book Sanity, Madness and the Family: Families of Schizophrenics (1964).

Today’s seminar will move in the tension between the seriousness of Szasz’s well-founded criticisms of Laing and the seriousness of some of Laing’s work, such as his research with Aaron Esterson on families, and his existential-phenomenological clarification of personal responsibility and praxis (in Sartre’s sense) in the theoretical foundations of psychoanalysis and interpersonal analysis. This seminar will be a unique opportunity for an informed clarification of the differences between Szasz and Laing. It will also serve to prepare for Thomas Szasz’s eagerly awaited 90th-birthday seminar on 13 June 2010, when he will discuss his epochmaking book The Myth of Mental Illness 50 years on (a new edition is released by HarperCollins this month). Each Inner Circle Seminar is self-contained. You may attend any or all.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk/)

Cost: Students £108, others £135; some bursaries; mineral water, coffee, tea, biscuits, liquorice allsorts included

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/

Szasz in the 21st Century. 9. Psychiatry: The Science of Lies (2008). Inner Circle Seminar 149 (21 February 2010)

2010-01-02T08:01:00.002Z

Thomas Szasz
Photograph by Andrew Thomas Peters
August 2008

Thomas Szasz
in the 21st Century

9. Psychiatry:
The Science of Lies (2008)

Anthony Stadlen
conducts Inner Circle Seminar No. 149
Sunday 21 February 2010
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Reflection on the philosophy of psychotherapy is an urgent necessity. The survival of true psychotherapy is threatened by state regulation. Too few psychotherapists have insisted, with Thomas Szasz, that ‘mental health’ is a metaphor. It is therefore not surprising that the Government plans to regulate psychotherapy as a ‘health profession’. The Inner Circle Seminars, however, seek to clarify psychotherapy as a moral, not a medical, practice.

Thomas Szasz remains the world’s foremost moral and existential philosopher of psychiatry and psychotherapy. He has already conducted two Inner Circle Seminars. He will conduct another on 13 June 2010 for his 90th birthday (15 April 2010), 50 years after his paper ‘The Myth of Mental Illness’ (1960) and book The Myth of Mental Illness (1961), a new edition of which will be released by HarperCollins in March). In preparation for his 90th-birthday seminar, we are studying in turn his ten books published since the millennium. Today we discuss his ninth 21st–century book, Psychiatry: The Science of Lies (2008). Each seminar is self-contained.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk/)

Cost: Students £108, others £135; some bursaries; mineral water, coffee, tea, biscuits, liquorice allsorts included

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/

Szasz in the 21st Century. 8. The Medicalization of Everyday Life (2007). Inner Circle Seminar 148 (24 January 2010)

2010-01-01T08:01:00.008Z

Thomas Szasz
Photograph by Andrew Thomas Peters
August 2008

Thomas Szasz
in the 21st Century

8. The Medicalization of Everyday Life:
Selected Essays (2007)

Anthony Stadlen
conducts Inner Circle Seminar No. 148
Sunday 24 January 2010

[NOTE CHANGED DATE!]
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Reflection on the philosophy of psychotherapy is an urgent necessity. The survival of true psychotherapy is threatened by state regulation. Too few psychotherapists have insisted, with Thomas Szasz, that ‘mental health’ is a metaphor. It is therefore not surprising that the Government plans to regulate psychotherapy as a ‘health profession’. The Inner Circle Seminars, however, seek to clarify psychotherapy as a moral, not a medical, practice.

Thomas Szasz remains the world’s foremost moral and existential philosopher of psychiatry and psychotherapy. He has already conducted two Inner Circle Seminars. He will conduct another on 13 June 2010 for his 90th birthday (15 April 2010), 50 years after his paper ‘The Myth of Mental Illness’ (1960) and book The Myth of Mental Illness (1961), a new edition of which will be released by HarperCollins in March. In preparation for his birthday seminar, we are studying in turn his ten books published since the millennium. Today we discuss his eighth 21st–century book, The Medicalization of Everyday Life: Selected Essays (2007). Each seminar is self-contained. You may attend any or all. Your contribution to the discussion will be welcome.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ
(http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk/)
Cost: Students £108, others £135; some bursaries; mineral water, coffee, tea, biscuits, liquorice allsorts included
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/

‘May you live to 120!’ 6. von Hildebrand. 7. Marcel. Inner Circle Seminar 147 (6 December 2009)

2009-01-12T08:01:00.009Z

Dietrich von Hildebrand

‘May you live to 120!’
Seven thinkers born in 1889 and their relevance to psychotherapy

6. Dietrich von Hildebrand
(12 October 1889 – 26 January 1977 )

7. Gabriel Marcel
(7 December 1889 – 8 October 1973)

Anthony Stadlen
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 147
Sunday 6 December 2009
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Gabriel Marcel

Reflection on the philosophy of psychotherapy is an urgent necessity. The survival of true psychotherapy is threatened by state regulation. Too few psychotherapists have insisted that ‘mental health’ is a metaphor. It is therefore not surprising that the Government plans to regulate psychotherapy as a ‘health profession’. The Inner Circle Seminars, however, seek to clarify psychotherapy as a moral, not a medical, practice.

In the annus mirabilis 1889 seven of the greatest 20th-century philosophers were born: R. G. Collingwood, Watsuji Tetsuro, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Oskar Becker, Martin Heidegger, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Gabriel Marcel. In four seminars, we explore their contributions. All seven throw light on the nature of human relationships and, explicitly or implicitly, on the foundations of psychotherapy. Today we discuss the implications for psychotherapy of the thinking of two Christian existential phenomenologists: Dietrich von Hildebrand on love and Gabriel Marcel on dialogue. Each seminar is self-contained. You may attend any or all. Your contribution to the discussion is welcome.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ
Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE
Tel: +44 (0) 20 8888 6857 E-mail: stadlen@aol.com
Cost: Students £108, others £135; some bursaries; mineral water, coffee, tea, biscuits, liquorice allsorts included

For further information on seminars, visit: http://anthonystadlen.blogspot.com/

Shibboleth: 100 Years of the ‘Oedipus Complex’. Inner Circle Seminar 146 (22 November 2009)

2009-01-11T09:01:00.008Z

Sándor Ferenczi

Shibboleth

Oedipus and Hamlet
100 Years of the ‘Oedipus Complex’

Anthony Stadlen
conducts Inner Circle Seminar No. 146
Sunday 22 November 2009
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

In an 1897 letter to Wilhelm Fließ, Sigmund Freud proposed his interpretation of Sophocles’s Oedipus the King and extended it to Shakespeare’s Hamlet. He developed these ideas in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900). In November 1910, he first published the term ‘Oedipus complex’. And, in a 1920 footnote to Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), he wrote:

Ernest Jones

‘Every new human being is set the task of mastering the Oedipus complex; anyone who fails to do so falls prey to neurosis. The advance of psychoanalytic work has delineated this meaning of the Oedipus complex ever more sharply; its recognition has become the shibboleth* that separates the devotees of psycho-analysis from its opponents.’

(*In the Bible, those who could not say ‘shibboleth’ were killed.)

But the first to use the term ‘Oedipus complex’ in print were Sándor Ferenczi in ‘Introjection and Transference’ (November 1909) and Ernest Jones in ‘The Oedipus-Complex as an Explanation of Hamlet’s Mystery’ (January 1910).

100 years on, we examine the hypothesis of the ‘Oedipus complex’ and its use to ‘explain’ Hamlet. We repeat the question the philosopher Sidney Hook asked 50 years ago:

What kind of evidence are psychoanalysts prepared to accept which would lead them to declare in any specific case that a child did not have an Oedipus complex?

And we ask:

Is it possible to be neither a ‘devotee’ nor an ‘opponent’ of psychoanalysis?

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ

Cost: Students £108, others £135; some bursaries; mineral water, coffee, tea, biscuits, liquorice allsorts included

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/

Dr Johnson on ‘Madness’. Inner Circle Seminar 145 (8 November 2009)

2009-01-11T08:01:00.000Z

Dr Johnson on ‘Madness’

An Inner Circle Seminar in Dr Samuel Johnson’s London house to celebrate the 300th anniversary of his birth and to develop his existential thinking on ‘madness’

Anthony Stadlen
conducts Inner Circle Seminar No. 145
Sunday 8 November 2009
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Dr Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 – 13 December 1784) feared going mad, and was often thought by others to be mad. But his profound existential thinking on what is called ‘madness’ is of great relevance to psychotherapists and others today. For this seminar we have the exclusive use for the day of Dr Johnson’s wonderful house in Gough Square, London, including his Withdrawing Room and Dictionary Garret, where he worked on his great dictionary and other writings and conversed with a motley array of London characters, including his ‘very fine cat’, Hodge. Here, where one can still feel his presence, we shall sit in the rooms where he conversed and pick up the threads of his conversation where he left off. For lunch we shall, as he often did, repair to the neighbouring inn, Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, where Johnson’s favourite seat is marked, as is Dickens’s.

Venue: Dr Johnson’s House, 17 Gough Square, London EC4A 3DE
Cost: Students £108, others £135, in advance; some bursaries; including morning coffee and afternoon tea and cakes; excluding lunch
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/

Szasz in the 21st Century. 7. Coercion as Cure (2007). Inner Circle Seminar 144 (25 October 2009)

2009-01-10T08:01:00.000Z

Thomas Szasz
in the 21st Century

7. Coercion as Cure:
A Critical History of Psychiatry (2007)

Anthony Stadlen
conducts Inner Circle Seminar No. 144
Sunday 25 October 2009
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Photograph by Steve Peters, Syracuse NY, April 2008

Reflection on the philosophy of psychotherapy is an urgent necessity. Too few psychotherapists have insisted, with Thomas Szasz, that ‘mental health’ is a metaphor. It is therefore not surprising that the Government plans to regulate psychotherapy as a ‘health profession’. The Inner Circle Seminars, however, seek to clarify psychotherapy as a moral, not a medical, practice.

Thomas Szasz remains the world’s foremost moral and existential philosopher of psychiatry and psychotherapy. He has already conducted two Inner Circle Seminars. He will conduct another on 13 June 2010 for his 90th birthday (15 April 2010), in preparation for which we are studying his ten books published since the millennium. Today we discuss the seventh, Coercion as Cure: A Critical History of Psychiatry (2007). This dark and terrifying book is perhaps Szasz’s most important since The Myth of Mental Illness (1961), an expanded, 50th-anniversary edition of which will be released by HarperCollins in March.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ
Cost: Students £108, others £135; some bursaries; mineral water, coffee, tea, biscuits, liquorice allsorts included
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/

‘Bringing them the Plague’: Freud in USA (1909). Inner Circle Seminar 142 (6 September 2009 )

2009-01-09T08:01:00.006Z

A. A. Brill Ernest Jones Sándor Ferenczi
Sigmund Freud Stanley Hall C. G. Jung

Clark University, Worcester MA, September 1909

‘Bringing them the Plague’
A Centenary Revaluation of Freud’s
‘Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis’
Clark University, Worcester MA
7–11 September 1909

Anthony Stadlen

conducts

Inner Circle Seminar No. 142
Sunday 6 September 2009
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Lacan used to say that Jung told him in 1954 that Freud had said in 1909, when they glimpsed the Statue of Liberty on reaching the United States, ‘They don’t realise we’re bringing them the plague.’ What did Freud mean by this joke? Does psychoanalysis detract from human freedom? Why did Freud say America was a ‘gigantic mistake’? Today, we examine Freud’s five improvised lectures at Clark University. We focus on the interface of maximum conflict: between the American assumption that psychoanalysis was part of psychiatry and medicine, and Freud’s insistence on its autonomy as ‘secular care of the soul’.

‘May you live to 120!’ 4. Becker. 5. Heidegger. Inner Circle Seminar 143 (13 September 2009 )

2009-01-09T08:01:00.001Z

‘May you live to 120!’

Seven thinkers born in 1889
and their relevance to psychotherapy

Anthony Stadlen

conducts

Inner Circle Seminar No. 143

Sunday 13 September 2009

10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Reflection on the philosophy of psychotherapy is an urgent necessity. The survival of true psychotherapy is threatened by state regulation. Too few psychotherapists have insisted that ‘mental health’ is a metaphor. It is therefore not surprising that the Government plans to regulate psychotherapy as a ‘health profession’. The Inner Circle Seminars, however, seek to clarify psychotherapy as a moral, not a medical, practice.

In the annus mirabilis 1889 seven of the greatest 20th-century philosophers were born: R. G. Collingwood, Watsuji Tetsuro, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Oskar Becker, Martin Heidegger, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Gabriel Marcel. In four seminars, we explore their contributions. All seven throw light on the nature of human relationships and, explicitly or implicitly, on psychotherapy. Today we briefly look at Oskar Becker’s little-known thinking on ‘para-existence’ and ‘mantic divination’, but our main focus is Martin Heidegger’s work with Medard Boss on the daseinsanalytic foundations of psychotherapy, in the 1959-1969 Zollikon Seminars whose 50th anniversary falls this autumn. Your contribution to the discussion is welcome. Each seminar is self-contained. You may attend any or all.

For further information on seminars, visit: http://anthonystadlen.blogspot.com/

Szasz in the 21st Century. 6. ‘My Madness Saved Me’: The Madness and Marriage of Virginia Woolf (2006). Inner Circle Seminar 141 (14 June 2009)

2009-01-06T08:01:00.000Z

Thomas Szasz
in the 21st Century

6. ‘My Madness Saved Me’:
The Madness and Marriage of Virginia Woolf (2006)

Anthony Stadlen
conducts

Inner Circle Seminar No. 141

Sunday 14 June 2009
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Photograph by Steve Peters, Syracuse NY, April 2008

Reflection on the philosophy of psychotherapy is an urgent necessity. The survival of true psychotherapy is threatened by state regulation. Too few psychotherapists have insisted, with Thomas Szasz, that ‘mental health’ is a metaphor. It is therefore not surprising that the Government plans to regulate psychotherapy as a ‘health profession’. The Inner Circle Seminars, however, seek to clarify psychotherapy as a moral, not a medical, practice.

Thomas Szasz remains the world’s foremost moral and existential philosopher of psychiatry and psychotherapy. He has already conducted two Inner Circle Seminars, and will conduct another for his 90th birthday (15 April 2010), 50 years after ‘The Myth of Mental Illness’ (1960). By then he will have published at least ten books since the millennium. We are studying each in turn, and aim to catch him up in time for his own 90th birthday seminar. Today we discuss his sixth 21st–century book, ‘My Madness Saved Me’: The Madness and Marriage of Virginia Woolf (2006). Each seminar is self-contained.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ
Cost: Students £96, others £120; some bursaries; mineral water, coffee, tea, biscuits, liquorice allsorts included
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/

Szasz in the 21st Century. 5. Szasz Under Fire (2004). Inner Circle Seminar 140 (17 May 2009)

2009-01-05T08:01:00.000Z

Thomas Szasz
in the 21st Century

5. Szasz Under Fire:
The Psychiatric Abolitionist Faces His Critics (2004)

Anthony Stadlen
conducts

Inner Circle Seminar No. 140

Sunday 17 May 2009
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Photograph by Steve Peters, Syracuse NY, April 2008

Reflection on the philosophy of psychotherapy is an urgent necessity. The survival of true psychotherapy is threatened by state regulation. Too few psychotherapists have insisted, with Thomas Szasz, that ‘mental health’ is a metaphor. It is therefore not surprising that the Government plans to regulate psychotherapy as a ‘health profession’. The Inner Circle Seminars, however, seek to clarify psychotherapy as a moral, not a medical, practice.

Thomas Szasz remains the world’s foremost moral and existential philosopher of psychiatry and psychotherapy. He has already conducted two Inner Circle Seminars, and will conduct another for his 90th birthday (15 April 2010), 50 years after ‘The Myth of Mental Illness’ (1960). By then he will have published at least ten books since the millennium. We are studying each in turn, and aim to catch him up in time for his own 90th birthday seminar. Today we discuss his fifth 21st–century book, edited by Jeffrey Schaler: Szasz Under Fire: The Psychiatric Abolitionist Faces His Critics (2004). Your contribution to the discussion is welcome. Each seminar is self-contained. You may attend any or all.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ
Cost: Students £96, others £120, in advance; bursaries; mineral water, coffee, tea, biscuits, liquorice allsorts included
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/

‘May you live to 120!’ 3. Wittgenstein. Inner Circle Seminar 139 (26 April 2009)

2009-01-04T08:01:00.000Z

‘May you live to 120!’

Seven thinkers born in 1889
and their relevance to psychotherapy

3. Ludwig Wittgenstein
(26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951)

Anthony Stadlen
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 139
Sunday 26 April 2009
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Reflection on the philosophy of what is called psychotherapy is an urgent necessity, not an academic pastime. The survival of true psychotherapy is threatened by state regulation. The psychotherapy organisations have failed to insist that ‘mental health’ is a metaphor. It is therefore unsurprising that psychotherapy is to be regulated as a ‘health profession’. The Inner Circle Seminars clarify psychotherapy as a moral, not a medical, practice.

In the annus mirabilis 1889 seven of the greatest 20th-century philosophers were born: R. G. Collingwood, Watsuji Tetsuro, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Oskar Becker, Martin Heidegger, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Gabriel Marcel. In four seminars, we explore their contributions. All seven throw light on the nature of human relationships and, explicitly or implicitly, on the foundations of psychotherapy. Today we discuss Wittgenstein’s contribution. Each seminar is self-contained. You may attend any or all.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ
Cost: Students £96, others £120, in advance; bursaries; mineral water, coffee, tea, biscuits, liquorice allsorts included
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/

Szasz in the 21st Century. 4. Faith in Freedom (2004). Inner Circle Seminar 138 (22 March 2009)

2009-01-03T08:01:00.000Z

Thomas Szasz
in the 21st Century

4. Faith in Freedom:
Libertarian Principles and Psychiatric Practices (2004)

Anthony Stadlen
conducts

Inner Circle Seminar No. 138

Sunday 22 March 2009
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Photograph by Steve Peters, Syracuse NY, April 2008

Reflection on the philosophy of what is called psychotherapy is an urgent necessity, not an academic pastime. The survival of true psychotherapy is threatened by state regulation. The psychotherapy organisations have failed to insist that ‘mental health’ is a metaphor. It is therefore unsurprising that psychotherapy is to be regulated as a ‘health profession’. The Inner Circle Seminars clarify psychotherapy as a moral, not a medical, practice.

Thomas Szasz remains the world’s foremost moral and existential philosopher of psychiatry and psychotherapy. He has already conducted two Inner Circle Seminars, and will conduct another for his 90th birthday (15 April 2010), 50 years after ‘The Myth of Mental Illness’ (1960). By then he will have published at least ten books since the millennium. We are studying each in turn, and aim to catch him up in time for his own 90th birthday seminar. Today we discuss his fourth 21st–century book, Faith in Freedom: Libertarian Principles and Pyschiatric Practices (2004). Each seminar is self-contained. You may attend any or all.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ
Cost: Students £96, others £120, in advance; bursaries; mineral water, coffee, tea, biscuits, liquorice allsorts included
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/

‘May you live to 120!’ 1. Collingwood. 2. Watsuji. Inner Circle Seminar 137 (22 February 2009)

2009-01-02T08:01:00.000Z

‘May you live to 120!’

Seven thinkers born in 1889
and their relevance to psychotherapy

1. R. G. Collingwood

(22 February 1889 – 9 January 1943)

2. Watsuji Tetsuro

(1 March 1889 – 26 December 1960)

Anthony Stadlen
conducts

Inner Circle Seminar No. 137

Sunday 22 February 2009
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Reflection on the philosophy of what is called psychotherapy is an urgent necessity, not an academic pastime. The survival of true psychotherapy is threatened by state regulation. The psychotherapy organisations have failed to insist that ‘mental health’ is a metaphor. It is therefore unsurprising that psychotherapy is to be regulated as a ‘health profession’. The Inner Circle Seminars clarify psychotherapy as a moral, not a medical, practice.

In the annus mirabilis 1889 seven of the greatest 20th-century philosophers were born: R. G. Collingwood, Watsuji Tetsuro, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Oskar Becker, Martin Heidegger, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Gabriel Marcel. In four seminars, we explore their contributions. All seven throw light on the nature of human relationships and, explicitly or implicitly, on the foundations of psychotherapy. Today we study R. G. Collingwood’s Autobiography and An Essay on Metaphysics and Watsuji Tetsuro’s A Climate and Rinrigaku: Ethics in Japan.

Szasz in the 21st Century. 3. Words to the Wise (2004). Inner Circle Seminar 136 (25 January 2009)

2009-01-01T08:01:00.003Z

Thomas Szasz
Phorograph by Steve Peters
Syracuse NY, April 2008

Thomas Szasz
in the 21st Century

3. Words to the Wise:
A Medical-Philosophical Dictionary (2004)

Anthony Stadlen
conducts

Inner Circle Seminar No. 136

Sunday 25 January 2009
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Thomas Szasz remains the world’s foremost moral and existential philosopher of psychiatry and psychotherapy. He has already conducted two Inner Circle Seminars, and will conduct another for his 90th birthday (15 April 2010), 50 years after his paper ‘The Myth of Mental Illness’ (1960) which led to his book The Myth of Mental Illness (1961). By then he will have published at least ten books since the millennium. We are studying each in turn, and aim to catch him up in time for his own 90th birthday seminar. Today we discuss his third 21st–century book, Words to the Wise: A Medical-Philosophical Dictionary (2004). Each seminar is self-contained. You may attend any or all.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ

Cost: Students £96, others £120; some bursaries; mineral water, coffee, tea, biscuits, liquorice allsorts included

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/

Dream and Da-sein Today: A Daseinsanalytic Symposium. Inner Circle Seminar 135 (7 December 2008)

2008-01-12T08:01:00.000Z

Dream and Da-sein Today

A Daseinsanalytic Symposium

Tamás Fazekas
Hans-Dieter Foerster
Marianne Jaccard
Uta Jaenicke
Hansjörg Reck
Anthony Stadlen

conduct

Inner Circle Seminar No. 135

Sunday 7 December 2008
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

This symposium of leading European Daseinsanalysts explores the 21st-century daseinsanalytic understanding of dreams and other phenomena. Tamás Fazekas (Budapest), Hans-Dieter Foerster (Vienna), Marianne Jaccard (Zurich), Uta Jaenicke (Zurich), Hansjörg Reck (Bottighofen) and Anthony Stadlen (London) invite you to bring your own dreams or those of your clients for discussion.

Venue: Regent’s College Conference Centre, Inner Circle, London NW1
Cost: Existential trainees £44, students £96, others £120, IN ADVANCE
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/

Szasz in the 21st Century. 2. Liberation by Oppression (2002). Inner Circle Seminar 134 (9 November 2008)

2008-01-11T08:01:00.000Z

Thomas Szasz
in the 21st Century

2. Liberation by Oppression:
A Comparative Study of Slavery and Psychiatry (2002)

Anthony Stadlen
conducts

Inner Circle Seminar No. 134

Sunday 9 November 2008
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Photograph by Steve Peters, Syracuse NY, April 2008

Thomas Szasz remains the world’s foremost moral and existential philosopher of psychiatry and psychotherapy. He has already conducted two Inner Circle Seminars, and will conduct another for his 90th birthday (15 April 2010), 50 years after ‘The Myth of Mental Illness’ (1960). By then he will have published at least ten books since the millennium. We are studying each in turn, and aim to catch him up in time for his own 90th birthday seminar. Today we discuss his second 21st–century book, Liberation by Oppression: A Comparative Study of Slavery and Psychiatry (2002). Each seminar is self-contained. You may attend any or all.

Venue: Regent’s College Conference Centre, Inner Circle, London NW1
Cost: Students £96, others £120, IN ADVANCE
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/

Peter Swales conducts: Who was Wilhelm Fliess? Inner Circle Seminar 133 (26 October 2008)

2008-01-10T09:01:00.000Z

Who was Wilhelm Fließ?

Demythologising the Psychoanalytic Myth
of Fließ as Freud’s ‘Other’

150th Anniversary Seminar

Peter J. Swales
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 133
introduced by Anthony Stadlen

Sunday 26 October 2008
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Wilhelm Fließ (24 October 1858 – 13 October 1928) was a Berlin physician, the founder of the notion of biorhythms, remembered today as a friend of Sigmund Freud, for whom psychoanalysts suppose he served as a transferential ‘Other’. Fließ’s ideas on biological periodicity are ridiculed, and Freud is said to have discovered his own, correct, ideas through overcoming his idealisation of Fließ.

Peter Swales is the only historian to have comprehensively researched the life and work of Fließ. His biography of Fließ is eagerly awaited. Today, 150 years after Fließ’s birth, and 80 years after his death, Swales gives an unprecedentedly rich and detailed account of Fließ’s origins, childhood and youth; character and personality; medico-scientific studies; journalism; social orbit; work as a physician; and research on the ‘nasal reflex neurosis’ and biorhythms. This reverses the usual picture, reveals Freud as a friend of Fließ, and throws surprising new light on the genesis of psychoanalysis. Your contribution to the discussion will be welcome.

Venue: Regent’s College Conference Centre, Inner Circle, London NW1
Cost: Students £96, others £120, IN ADVANCE
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/

Jeffrey Schaler conducts: Addiction is a Choice. Inner Circle Seminar 132 (12 October 2008)

2008-01-10T08:01:00.000Z

Addiction is a Choice

Jeffrey Schaler
conducts

Inner Circle Seminar No. 132
introduced by Anthony Stadlen

Sunday 12 October 2008
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Professor Jeffrey A. Schaler is the world’s leading disbeliever in ‘addiction’. He is an existential psychotherapist and full time professor in the Department of Justice, Law and Society at American University’s School of Public Affairs in Washington, D.C. His book Addiction is a Choice (2000) argues:

1. No drug (including alcohol and tobacco) is ‘addictive’.
2. Drugs are not intrinsically safe or dangerous, good or bad.
3. Disease refers to cellular pathology, not behaviour.
4. ‘Loss of control’ is an unfalsifiable, hence unscientific, hypothesis.
5. ‘Addiction’ is ethical, not medical.
6. Focussing on the existential reasons for ‘addiction’ can help drug users address and resolve the problems in living they try to solve with drugs.

Whether you agree, disagree, or are undecided, you are welcome to discuss Professor Schaler’s argument and evidence with him in this important seminar.

Venue: Regent’s College Conference Centre, Inner Circle, London NW1
Cost: Students £96, others £120, IN ADVANCE
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/

Alice Holzhey-Kunz conducts: Ontic and Ontological Aspects of Anxiety, Guilt, Shame. Inner Circle Seminar 131 (14 September 2008)

2008-01-09T08:01:00.004Z

The Twofold Meaning of Feelings:

Ontic and Ontological Aspects of Anxiety, Guilt and Shame

Alice Holzhey-Kunz
conducts Inner Circle Seminar No. 131
introduced by Anthony Stadlen
Sunday 14 September 2008
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Dr Alice Holzhey-Kunz is one of the world’s leading Daseinsanalysts. She was a pupil and colleague of Medard Boss. She is President of the Society for Hermeneutic Anthropology and Daseinsanalysis in Zürich, and author of many papers and books on Daseinsanalysis. Today she will use short texts, by Kierkegaard on anxiety, by Heidegger on guilt, and by Sartre on shame, to show that anxiety, guilt and shame have both ontic and ontological meaning. Dr Holzhey-Kunz is a superb, clear and humorous teacher who will give examples to enable psychotherapists, whether beginner or advanced, to understand the practical, down-to-earth nature of this twofold meaning, and so be better able to help clients who are struggling with these fundamental feelings. You are welcome to contribute to the discussion, and to bring examples from your practice.

Venue: Regent’s College Conference Centre, Inner Circle, London NW1 4NS
Cost: Existential trainees £44, students £96, others £120, IN ADVANCE
Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE
Tel: +44 (0) 20 8888 6857 E-mail: stadlen@aol.com

Szasz in the 21st Century. 1. Pharmacracy (2001). Inner Circle Seminar 130 (20 July 2008)

2008-01-07T08:01:00.000Z

Thomas Szasz
in the 21st Century

1. Pharmacracy:
Medicine and Politics in America (2001)

Anthony Stadlen
conducts

Inner Circle Seminar No. 130

Sunday 20 July 2008
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Photograph by Steve Peters, Syracuse NY, April 2008

Thomas Szasz remains the world’s foremost moral and existential philosopher of psychiatry and psychotherapy. He kindly calls the Inner Circle Seminars the ‘Institute for Advanced Studies in the Moral Foundations of Human Decency and Helpfulness’. He has himself conducted two, and will conduct another for his 90th birthday (15 April 2010), 50 years after his paper ‘The Myth of Mental Illness’ (1960), which was followed by the book The Myth of Mental Illness (1961). Before then, we shall study all his (at least ten) 21st–century books published so far. Today, we discuss the first, Pharmacracy (2001). We also mark the 150th anniversary of Rudolf Virchow’s Cellular Pathology (1858) and ask, with Szasz, how the ideas of ‘mental health’ and ‘mental illness’ stand up in the light of Virchow’s scientific definition of disease. Each seminar is self-contained.

Venue: Room C, Regent’s College, Inner Circle, Regent’s Park, London NW1

Cost: Students £88, others £110, some bursaries, IN ADVANCE

Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE
Tel: +44 (0) 20 8888 6857 E-mail: stadlen@aol.com

Richard Skues conducts: Freud and ‘Anna O.’. Inner Circle Seminar 129 (22 June 2008)

2008-01-06T08:01:00.000Z

Freud and ‘Anna O.’

Reopening a Closed Case

Richard Skues

conducts

Inner Circle Seminar No. 129

introduced by Anthony Stadlen

Sunday 22 June 2008

10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Bertha Pappenheim (‘Anna O.’)

For her work in the later part of her life Bertha Pappenheim became celebrated as a feminist writer and social worker. But from 1880 to 1882, as an unknown young Viennese Jewish woman, she had been treated for hysteria by Freud’s mentor Josef Breuer, and as ‘Anna O.’ she was the famous ‘first patient’ of psychoanalysis whose treatment paved the way for Freud’s subsequent work. In recent years many historians of psychoanalysis have come to view this case as a failure, casting doubt on the very foundations of psychoanalysis, and Breuer’s case study has been criticised and ‘corrected’ for more than half a century by leading advocates and adversaries of psychoanalysis, starting with Freud himself. But Dr Richard Skues, in his book Sigmund Freud and the History of Anna O., provides an unparalleled review of the available evidence on the case and reaches new conclusions about its outcome, which pose a radical challenge to existing historical scholarship. Today he presents his controversial findings for discussion.

Venue: Regent’s College, Inner Circle, Regent’s Park, London NW1

Cost: Students £88, others £110, some bursaries, IN ADVANCE

Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE
Tel: +44 (0) 20 8888 6857 E-mail: stadlen@aol.com

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