Monday 12 January 2004

Laing & Esterson: 4. The Danzigs. Inner Circle Seminar 83 (5 December 2004)


R. D. Laing
Aaron Esterson

 














Aaron Esterson
The Leaves of Spring:
A Study in the Dialectics of Madness (1970)

R.D. Laing and A. Esterson
Sanity, Madness and the Family:
Families of Schizophrenics (1964)
Family 4: The Danzigs

Anthony Stadlen
conducts
(12-hour) Inner Circle Seminar No. 83
Sunday 5 December 2004
10 a.m. to 10 p.m.

 

We believe that the shift of point of view that these descriptions both embody and demand has an historical significance no less radical than the shift from a demonological to a clinical viewpoint three hundred years ago.

Thus, in 1964, R. D. Laing and Aaron Esterson introduced their great phenomenological descriptions of eleven families of ‘schizophrenics’. But forty years on, the ‘clinical viewpoint’ still reigns supreme. Is current work on families and ‘schizophrenia’ an existential retrogression? Eleven seminars, studying each family in depth, offer an unprecedented opportunity to explore this question.

Esterson developed his investigation of the fourth family, the Danzigs, into an extraordinary book-length case study, The Leaves of Spring (1970). Anthony Stadlen was a colleague of Aaron Esterson for many years, and has continued Esterson’s method of social phenomenology in his own research and practice. Today’s 12-hour seminar is, therefore, of special importance in the series.

Venue: Room A, Acland Building, Regent’s College, London NW1 4NS
Subscription: Students £65, others £85, some bursaries, in advance
Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, 64 Dartmouth Park Road, London NW5 1SN
Tel: +44 (0)20 7485 3896 E-mail: stadlen@aol.com

Sunday 11 January 2004

The Mystery of the Hare. Inner Circle Seminar 82 (7 November 2004)




The three hares motif on a mediaeval fragment
of stained glass in Long Melford church, Suffolk

Photograph copyright Chris Chapman

The Mystery of the Hare
Dream – Archetype – Numen

Tom Greeves   David Harsent
David Singmaster   Anthony Stadlen

conduct

Inner Circle Seminar No. 82
Sunday 7 November 2004
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

TOM GREEVES is a landscape archeologist from Tavistock, Devon. He has just returned from a research trip to China with his colleagues in the Three Hares Project. He will report on his 15-year research on the motif of three hares chasing each other in a circle, each ear shared by two hares, found in Buddhist cave paintings in China, on an Islamic tray, in a German synagogue, in Dartmoor churches...

DAVID HARSENT is a poet. He will read from Lepus, his cycle of poems influenced by JOHN LAYARD’s The Lady of the Hare – being a study in the healing power of dreams (1944), the first detailed account of a Jungian analysis. We shall also hear a recording of HARRISON BIRTWISTLE’s The Woman and the Hare, for which HARSENT has written the libretto, sung by his wife JULIA ROBERTS

DAVID SINGMASTER is a metagrobologist – a specialist in mathematical puzzles such as the Rubik cube. He has researched the three-hares and similar motifs from around the world. He will show how they arise naturally from formal, mathematical considerations.

ANTHONY STADLEN is an existential psychotherapist. He reports on his 15-year research on The Lady of the Hare. He examines LAYARD’s claims: that the dream of killing a hare was a spiritual-sacrificial turning-point; and that mythology reveals a hare ‘archetype’.

Venue: Regent’s College Conference Centre, Inner Circle, London NW1 4NS
Subscription: Students £68, others £85, some bursaries, in advance
Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, 64 Dartmouth Park Road, London NW5 1SN
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7485 3896 E-mail: stadlen@aol.com

Saturday 10 January 2004

Into That Darkness: Psychology of Extermination. Inner Circle Seminar 81 (10 October 2004)




Franz Stangl in prison in Düsseldorf in 1970
in conversation with Gitta Sereny
(photograph by Don Honeyman)

Into That Darkness
30 Years On 
The Psychology of Extermination

Gitta Sereny 
Michael Tregenza
Anthony Stadlen
conduct
Inner Circle Seminar No. 81
Sunday 10 October 2004
10 a.m. to 5 p.m. 

GITTA SERENY is an author who has devoted her life to talking in depth with, and trying to understand, human beings who are perpetrators of extraordinary evil. Today, she discusses her book, Into That Darkness (1974), based on her prison interviews with Franz Stangl, commandant of Treblinka death camp.

MICHAEL TREGENZA, an English historian living in Poland, discusses his decades of research on the Nazi ‘euthanasia’ of the ‘mentally ill’; on Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka extermination camps; and on Stangl’s colleague, Christian Wirth.

ANTHONY STADLEN, an existential psychotherapist, convenor of the Inner Circle Seminars since 1996, reports on his search for the psychologists who masterminded the deception, mystification and demoralisation of the victims in the Holocaust.

No special knowledge is needed, but please read Into That Darkness in advance.

Venue: Hurlingham Hall, Regent’s College, London NW1 4NS
Subscription: Students £68, others £85, some bursaries, by 10 September
Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, 64 Dartmouth Park Road, London NW5 1SN
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7485 3896 E-mail: stadlen@aol.com

Wednesday 7 January 2004

Laing & Esterson: 3. The Churches. Inner Circle Seminar 80 (18 July 2004)

R. D. Laing

R. D. Laing and A. Esterson

Sanity, Madness and the Family
40 Years On
Family 3: The Churches

Anthony Stadlen
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 80
Sunday 18 July 2004
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
‘We believe that the shift of point of view that these descriptions both embody and demand has an historical significance no less radical than the shift from a demonological to a clinical viewpoint three hundred years ago.’
Aaron Esterson
Thus, in 1964, Laing and Esterson introduced their great phenomenological descriptions of eleven families of ‘schizophrenics’. But forty years on, the ‘clinical viewpoint’ still reigns supreme. Have Laing and Esterson been proved wrong? Or have they not yet been understood? Is chronologically later work an existential retrogression?

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

Venue: Room A, Acland Building, Regent’s College, London NW1 4NS
Cost: Students £64, others £80, some bursaries, in advance
Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, 64 Dartmouth Park Road, London NW5 1SN
Tel: +44 (0)20 7485 3896 E-mail: stadlen@aol.com

Tuesday 6 January 2004

Susannah Heschel conducts: Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s A Passion for Truth. Inner Circle Seminar 79 (20 June 2004)

Susannah Heschel

A Passion for Truth

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel


Susannah Heschel
conducts

Inner Circle Seminar No. 79
introduced by
Anthony Stadlen

Sunday 20 June 2004
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Professor Susannah Heschel, author and editor of On Being a Jewish Feminist and other works, honours us by discussing the life and work of her father Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, existential philosopher, theologian, political activist. Her starting-point is his last book, A Passion for Truth (1973), a profound comparison of the nineteenth-century thinkers, Søren Kierkegaard and Rabbi Mendel of Kotsk.

The seminar is suitable for beginners as well as for advanced students, teachers and practitioners.

Venue: Tuke Common Room, Tuke Building, Regent’s College, London NW1 4NS
Cost: Students £64, others £80, some bursaries, in advance
Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, 64 Dartmouth Park Road, London NW5 1SN
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7485 3896 E-mail: stadlen@aol.com

Monday 5 January 2004

Claudia Koonz conducts: The Nazi Conscience. Inner Circle Seminar 78 (16 May 2004)

Claudia Koonz

The Nazi Conscience

Normalising Racial Phobias

Claudia Koonz
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 78
introduced by
Anthony Stadlen
at the Victoria and Albert Museum
Sunday 16 May 2004
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

 
Professor Claudia Koonz, of the Department of History, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, showed in her groundbreaking book, Mothers in the Fatherland (1986), how Nazi psychiatrists ensured that wives and mothers played an essential part in the ‘psychotherapeutic’ tranquillisation of the perpetrators of the ‘Final Solution’. In this seminar, Professor Koonz discusses her book, The Nazi Conscience (2003), and presents her new findings on psychology in the service of racial ideology in the Third Reich.

Venue: Seminar Room 1, Victoria and Albert Museum, London SW7 2RL

Cost: Students £64, others £80, some bursaries, by 9 May
Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, 64 Dartmouth Park Road, London NW5 1SN
Tel: +44 (0)20 7485 3896 E-mail: stadlen@aol.com

Sunday 4 January 2004

Naomi Stadlen conducts: Listening to Mothers. Inner Circle Seminar 77 (25 April 2004)

Naomi Stadlen

Listening to Mothers

Naomi Stadlen
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 77
introduced by
Anthony Stadlen

Sunday 25 April 2004
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Naomi Stadlen has facilitated groups for mothers for fourteen years. Her book, What Mothers Do – Especially When It Looks Like Nothing (2004), shows that mothers, talking about their children, can be more phenomenological and scientific than the ‘experts’, who dismiss or patronise mothers’ accounts. Even the best existential writing on childhood, such as Sartre’s on Genet and Flaubert, is speculative; and psychoanalysis imposes its own preconceptions. Naomi Stadlen’s findings throw doubt on, among other things, the theory of universal maternal ‘ambivalence’. She seeks, using mothers’ own words, to do justice to motherly love. Psychotherapists, and mothers with babies, are welcome to discuss her discoveries.

Venue: Room C, Acland Building, Regent’s College, London NW1 4NS

Cost: Students £64, others £80, some bursaries, in advance
Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, 64 Dartmouth Park Road, London NW5 1SN
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7485 3896 E-mail: stadlen@aol.com

Saturday 3 January 2004

Laing & Esterson: 2. The Blairs. Inner Circle Seminar 76 (28 March 2004)

R. D. Laing
R. D. Laing and A. Esterson
Sanity, Madness and the Family
40 Years On

Family 2: The Blairs

Anthony Stadlen
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 76
Sunday 28 March 2004
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.


‘We believe that the shift of point of view that these descriptions both embody and demand has an historical significance no less radical than the shift from a demonological to a clinical viewpoint three hundred years ago.’

Aaron Esterson
Thus, in 1964, Laing and Esterson introduced their great phenomenological descriptions of eleven families of ‘schizophrenics’. But forty years on, the ‘clinical viewpoint’ still reigns supreme. Have Laing and Esterson been proved wrong? Or have they not yet been understood? Is chronologically later work an existential retrogression?
Eleven seminars, over two years, investigating each of the families in turn, offer psychotherapists an unprecedented opportunity to explore these questions in depth. You may attend any or all of the seminars.

Venue: Room A, Acland Building, Regent’s College, London NW1 4NS

Cost: Students £64, others £80, some bursaries, in advance
Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, 64 Dartmouth Park Road, London NW5 1SN
Tel: +44 (0)20 7485 3896 E-mail: stadlen@aol.com

Friday 2 January 2004

Sonu Shamdasani conducts: Jung in History. Inner Circle Seminar 75 (29 February 2004)


Sonu Shamdasani
Jung in History
The Formation of Modern Psychology and Psychotherapy

Sonu Shamdasani
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 75
introduced by
Anthony Stadlen
Sunday 29 February 2004
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Dr Sonu Shamdasani is the world’s leading Jung historian. His revelatory new book, Jung and the Making of Modern Psychology: The Dream of a Science (2003), shows that Jung’s work, original as it is, is part of a historical confluence of movements stemming from the efforts of a number of workers at the end of the nineteenth century to establish two new disciplines: a scientific psychology independent of metaphysics, theology, biology, anthropology, literature, medicine and neurology; and a rational psychotherapy developing out of hypnosis and suggestion. In this seminar, Dr Shamdasani examines the implications of his findings for psychotherapy today, and invites participants to discuss how their own work continues the interlacing traditions to which Jung contributed.

Venue: Room A, Acland Building, Regent’s College, London NW1 4NS

Cost: Students £64, others £80, some bursaries, in advance
Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, 64 Dartmouth Park Road, London NW5 1SN
Tel: +44 (0)20 7485 3896 E-mail: stadlen@aol.com

Thursday 1 January 2004

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

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

Aaron Esterson

Anthony Stadlen
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 74
Sunday 25 January 2004
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

‘We believe that the shift of point of view that these descriptions both embody and demand has an historical significance no less radical than the shift from a demonological to a clinical viewpoint three hundred years ago.’

Thus, in 1964, Laing and Esterson introduced their great phenomenological descriptions of eleven families of ‘schizophrenics’. But forty years on, the ‘clinical viewpoint’ still reigns supreme. Have Laing and Esterson been proved wrong? Or have they not yet been understood? Is chronologically later work an existential retrogression?

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

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