Wednesday 12 January 2005

Heidegger on ‘Why?’ Inner Circle Seminar 96 (18 December 2005)

Martin Heidegger

Heidegger on ‘Why?’

The Principle of Reason
(1955-6)

Anthony Stadlen
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 96
Sunday 18 December 2005
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
 
50 years ago, during 1955–6, Martin Heidegger lectured at Freiburg University on the principle of reason: ‘Nothing is without reason’, ‘Nothing is without why’. In 1971, the 81-year-old philosopher, too frail to resume his seminars in Boss’s Zollikon home, recommended participants to start with his book of these lectures, The Principle of Reason (1957), and with What is Called Thinking? (1954). This seminar asks: ‘Why did Heidegger think The Principle of Reason was so important for psychotherapists?’ Many existential therapists think its critique of ‘the causality of natural-scientific thinking’ implies they should not ask clients ‘Why?’ We ask: ‘Why do they think this? Why should they not ask “Why?”?’

Venue: Room C, Regent’s College, Inner Circle, Regent’s Park, London NW1
Cost: Students £72, others £90, 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

Kierkegaard: Works of Love. Inner Circle Seminar 95 (4 December 2005)

Søren Kierkegaard

Søren Kierkegaard

Works of Love

Anthony Stadlen
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 95
Sunday 4 December 2005
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

This seminar celebrates the 150th anniversary of the death (on 11 November 1855) of the existential thinker Søren Kierkegaard. We focus on one of his greatest books, Works of Love (1847). Many of Kierkegaard’s books were part of what he called his ‘indirect communication’, and attributed by him to various pseudonymous ‘authors’. But he published Works of Love under his own name. It could hardly be more direct. This seminar is one of a series in which we ask whether psychotherapists have understood the nature of love. Kierkegaard’s deep and subtle ‘deliberation’ on love is a good starting-point.

Venue: Room F (Acland), Regent’s College, Inner Circle, London NW1 4NS

Subscription: Students £72, others £90, in advance; some bursaries
Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE
Telephone: +44 (0) 20 8888 6857 E-mail: stadlen@aol.com

Tuesday 11 January 2005

Nigel Reeves & Anthony Stadlen conduct: Friedrich Schiller as Psychotherapist. Inner Circle Seminar 94 (6 November 2005)

Friedrich Schiller

Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805)
Psychotherapist

Nigel Reeves
Anthony Stadlen

conduct

Inner Circle Seminar No. 94
Sunday 6 November 2005
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Not many people know that Germany’s great poet, dramatist, and philosopher of freedom, Friedrich Schiller, practised psychotherapy. Freud and Jung were both inspired by his psychological writings. He influenced Freud’s theory of drives and Jung’s theory of types. He anticipated Binswanger on existential Gestalt and Winnicott on play. Today, we honour the bicentenary year of Schiller’s death.

Professor Nigel Reeves OBE, Professor of German and Pro-Vice Chancellor of Aston University, is co-author of Friedrich Schiller: Medicine, Psychology and Literature (1978). Professor Reeves will discuss Schiller’s psychotherapy case study, ‘On Grammont’s Melancholy’. He will show how Schiller wrote his plays as a psychotherapy for his audience. This seminar is important for Freudian, Jungian and existential psychotherapists, and for anyone who wants to discover Schiller as a profound thinker of the existential foundations of psychotherapy.

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

Cost: Students £72, others £90, in advance; some bursaries
Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE
Telephone: +44 (0) 20 8888 6857 E-mail: stadlen@aol.com

Monday 10 January 2005

Heidegger's ‘Gelassenheit’ 1955–2005. Inner Circle Seminar 93 (30 October 2005)

Martin Heidegger

Heidegger's ‘Gelassenheit

1955–2005

‘The Dreadful has Already Happened’

Anthony Stadlen
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 93
Sunday 30 October 2005
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.


50 years ago today, on 30 October 1955, the philosopher MARTIN HEIDEGGER spoke in his birthplace, Meßkirch. He made what he called the ‘strange assertion’ that, precisely if hydrogen bombs do not destroy life on earth, we face a far greater danger. As he said in another lecture (‘The Thing’): ‘The Dreadful has already happened’. At Meßkirch, he advocated, for humanity in the atomic age, ‘Gelassenheit [serenity, releasedness] towards things’. For Heidegger’s Daseinsanalyst disciples, Boss and Condrau, Gelassenheit became the goal of psychotherapy. Today, we examine the aspiration to Gelassenheit.

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

Cost: Students £72, others £90, 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

Freud’s ‘Dora’ (1905) – Nabokov’s Lolita (1955). Inner Circle Seminar 92 (16 October 2005)


Ida (‘Dora’) and Otto Bauer
Poster for Stanley Kubrick’s
1962 film Lolita























Freud’s ‘Dora’ (1905)
Nabokov’s Lolita (1955)

Anthony Stadlen
conducts
(12-hour) Inner Circle Seminar No. 92

Sunday 16 October 2005
10 a.m. to 10 p.m.

This 12-hour seminar celebrates the 100th anniversary of the publication (October–November 1905) of Sigmund Freud’s case study ‘Dora’ and the 50th anniversary of the publication (15 September 1955) of Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita. We compare and contrast these seminal works. Herr K. and Dora were almost the same ages as Humbert Humbert and Lolita when these older men sexually molested these girl-children. Ernest Jones, psychoanalyst and biographer of Freud, described Dora as ‘a disagreeable creature who preferred revenge to love’. Lionel Trilling, psychoanalytically informed literary critic and abridger of Jones’s biography, described Lolita as a novel about love. We explore what these descriptions imply about the psychoanalytic conception, or misconception, of ‘love’. Anthony Stadlen presents findings from his research over three decades on the history of Dora’s family. Discussion continues over dinner in an excellent, inexpensive Egyptian restaurant and resumes back in the seminar room with wine and amaretti on the house.
Venue: Room F (Acland), Regent’s College, Inner Circle, London NW1 4NS
Subscription: Students £72, others £90, in advance; some bursaries
Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE
Telephone: +44 (0) 20 8888 6857 E-mail: stadlen@aol.com

Sunday 9 January 2005

Coleridge’s Existential Psychoanalysis. Inner Circle Seminar 91 (11 September 2005)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Coleridge’s Existential Psychoanalysis (1805)

A Bicentenary Celebration

Anthony Stadlen
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 91
Sunday 11 September 2005
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Coleridge used the term ‘psycho-analytical’ in his notebook on 15 September 1805:

‘...it requires...an accurate psycho-analytical understanding to be able to conceive the possibility & to picture out the reality, of the passion of those Times…’

Freud did not know this when he coined the term ‘psychoanalysis’, ninety years later, in 1896. Coleridge also anticipated Sartre’s existential principle, ‘existence precedes essence’. Sartre did not know Coleridge had preceded him. Today, two hundred years on, we ask what psychotherapists and other workers can learn from Coleridge’s profound ‘psycho-analytical’ and existential meditations.

Venue:
Regent’s College Conference Centre, Inner Circle, London NW1 4NS
Subscription: Students £72, others £90, some bursaries, in advance
Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE
Telephone: +44 (0) 20 8888 6857 E-mail: stadlen@aol.com

Thursday 6 January 2005

Sartre Centenary. Inner Circle Seminar 90 (26 June 2005)

Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Sartre

A Centenary Celebration

Existential Psychoanalysis’
The Utter Translucidity of Experience

Anthony Stadlen
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 90
Sunday 26 June 2005
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

We celebrate the 100th anniversary of Sartre’s birth (21 June 1905) and the 25th of his death (15 April 1980). We discuss how his work clarifies psychotherapy theory and practice: his deconstruction of the ‘ego’ in The Transcendence of the Ego; his phenomenological analysis of modalities of experience in The Psychology of Imagination; his ‘Existential Psychoanalysis’ in Being and Nothingness; his search for the individual’s ‘original project’ in Saint Genet, The Freud Scenario and The Family Idiot; his conception of praxis and process in Critique of Dialectical Reason; and his dialectical view of psychoanalysis in The Question of Method. Your participation, whether as beginner or expert, is cordially invited.

Venue: Regent’s College Conference Centre, Inner Circle, London NW1 4NS

Cost: 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

‘Emma Gold’ conducts: Freud on Sex. Inner Circle Seminar 89 (12 June 2005)


‘Emma Gold

Freud on Sex (1905)

A Centenary Investigation

‘Emma Gold’
Anthony Stadlen
conduct
Inner Circle Seminar No. 89
Sunday 12 June 2005
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Freud said his Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905) was one of his greatest works. Ideas from it have entered everyday language, although Freud said he had merely stated what every nursemaid knew. But his writing on sexuality has been used to justify the ‘sexual revolution’, the ‘permissive society’, and the activities of paedophiles. Has Freud been misunderstood? ‘Emma Gold’, author of novels Easy and Hard and of the column ‘Sexploits’ in The Independent on Sunday, discusses this question with Anthony Stadlen, existential analyst and convenor of the Inner Circle Seminars. ‘Beginners’ and ‘experts’ are welcome.

Venue: Room B, Acland Building, Regent’s College, Inner Circle, London NW1 4NS

Cost: 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

Wednesday 5 January 2005

Rabbi Rodney Mariner conducts: Freud on Jokes. Inner Circle Seminar 88 (8 May 2005)

Rabbi Rodney Mariner

Freud on Jokes (1905)

A Centenary Celebration

Rabbi Rodney Mariner
Anthony Stadlen

conduct

Inner Circle Seminar No. 88
Sunday 8 May 2005
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Lacan thought Freud’s book Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious (1905) more important than his epoch-making Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality published the same month. Should psychotherapists tell their clients jokes, as Freud did? Was Freud ‘acting out’? Does his theory do justice to the existential and spiritual meaning of jokes? Rabbi Rodney Mariner, renowned for his use of jokes to hint at the serious and profound, steeped in the Talmudic and mystical tradition from which Freud sprang, contributes his centenary reflections.

Venue: Room C, Regent’s College, Inner Circle, London NW1 4NS

Subscription: Students £65, others £85, 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 4 January 2005

Thomas Szasz’s 85th Birthday: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis and Psychiatric Justice. Inner Circle Seminar 87 (10 April 2005):



Thomas S. Szasz
Photograph courtesy of www.szasz.com

Thomas Szasz

The Ethics of Psychoanalysis
and
Psychiatric Justice
40 years on

Celebrating
Thomas Szasz’s 85th Birthday

Anthony Stadlen
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 87
Sunday 10 April 2005
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

For beginners and ‘experts’ wondering how to ground their practice authentically from an ethical and existential point of view, Thomas Szasz’s books The Ethics of Psychoanalysis: The Theory and Method of Autonomous Psychotherapy and Psychiatric Justice (both published 1965), are as fresh, profound and revelatory today as 40 years ago. We celebrate Professor Szasz’s 85th birthday (15 April 2005) by reexamining these books, and exploring his writings to clarify how his position differs from those of Laing, Boss, Frankl, Foucault, Derrida, Masson, et al.

Venue: Regent’s College Conference Centre, London NW1 4NS
Subscription: Students £68 (some bursaries), others £85, 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 3 January 2005

Laing & Esterson: 7. The Golds. Inner Circle Seminar 86 (13 March 2005)

Aaron Esterson

R. D. Laing and A. Esterson

Sanity, Madness and the Family
40 Years On

Family 7: The Golds

Anthony Stadlen
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 86
Sunday 13 March 2005
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, 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.
You are welcome to attend any or all of the seminars.

The research was carried out by Aaron Esterson, who invented the method of phenomenological investigation of all subsets of a family.

Anthony Stadlen, existential psychotherapist and convenor of the Inner Circle Seminars, was a colleague of Aaron Esterson for many years, and continues Esterson’s method of social phenomenology in his own research and practice.

Venue: Room E, 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 1S
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7485 3896 E-mail: stadlen@aol.com

Sunday 2 January 2005

Laing & Esterson: 6. The Fields. Inner Circle Seminar 85 (13 February 2005)

Aaron Esterson

R. D. Laing and A. Esterson

Sanity, Madness and the Family
40 Years On

Family 6: The Fields

Anthony Stadlen
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 85
Sunday 13 February 2005
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, 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. You are welcome to attend any or all of the seminars.
The research was carried out by Aaron Esterson, who invented the method of phenomenological investigation of all subsets of a family.
Anthony Stadlen, existential psychotherapist and convenor of the Inner Circle Seminars, was a colleague of Aaron Esterson for many years, and continues Esterson’s method of social phenomenology in his own research and practice.
 
Venue: Room E, Acland Building, Regent’s College, London NW1 4NS
Cost: 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 1 January 2005

Laing & Esterson: 5. The Edens. Inner Circle Seminar 84 (23 January 2005)

Aaron Esterson

R. D. Laing and A. Esterson

Sanity, Madness and the Family
40 Years On

Family 5: The Edens

Anthony Stadlen
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 84
Sunday 23 January 2005
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, 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. You are welcome to attend any or all of the seminars.
The research was carried out by Aaron Esterson, who invented the method of phenomenological investigation of all subsets of a family.
Anthony Stadlen, existential psychotherapist and convenor of the Inner Circle Seminars, was a colleague of Aaron Esterson for many years, and continues Esterson’s method of social phenomenology in his own research and practice.

Venue: Room E, 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