Saturday 2 January 2010

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


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/

The Inner Circle Seminars were founded by Anthony Stadlen in 1996 as an ethical, existential, phenomenological search for truth in psychotherapy. They have been kindly described by Thomas Szasz as ‘Institute for Advanced Studies in the Moral Foundations of Human Decency and Helpfulness’. But they are independent of all institutes, schools and colleges.

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