Sunday 1 January 2017

Locked Up: ‘Patients’ and their Gaolers 14. Deirdre McCloskey (1942– ). Deirdre McCloskey conducts Inner Circle Seminar 232 (5 February 2017)


Deirdre McCloskey

Locked Up: ‘Patients’ and their Gaolers

14. Deirdre McCloskey
(1942– )

Deirdre McCloskey
conducts Inner Circle Seminar No. 232
introduced by Anthony Stadlen
Sunday 5 February 2017
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Deirdre N. McCloskey (born 11 September 1942) is Distinguished Professor of Economics, History, English, and Communication at the University of Illinois, Chicago. She is a highly original libertarian economist and historian, author of seventeen books and hundreds of papers on the origins of the modern world, the misuse of statistical significance in economics and other sciences, and the study of capitalism.

In her book Crossing: A Memoir (1999), she tells how, as Donald McCloskey, a 52-year-old husband and father, he announced his intention of becoming a woman. A colleague was momentarily stunned. Then: ‘Thank God. ... I thought for a moment you were going to confess to converting to socialism!’ But Donald/Deirdre’s family were less accepting. They arranged that this world-renowned professor should be handcuffed by police and incarcerated for compulsory ‘treatment’ by leading psychiatrists still practising today.

Deirdre McCloskey survived to write such works of fundamental economic-historical-philosophical reorientation and rethinking as her trilogy The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce (2006)Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Cant Explain the Modern World (2010), and Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World (2016). She also supplied Thomas Szasz with important information for his retelling of the story of her psychiatric abuse and imprisonment in his book Faith in Freedom: Libertarian Principles and Psychiatric Practices (2004).

In today’s seminar she will recount these events and discuss with us their psychiatric and political implications. This seminar will be replete with insights for anyone concerned with the existential aspirations of transgender people, the proper practice of psychiatry and psychotherapy, and civil liberties in a democracy. Your contribution will be warmly welcomed.

See also: http://www.deirdremccloskey.com/gender/index.php


Venue:   ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra AvenueLondon N22 7XE
Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra AvenueLondon N22 7XE
Tel: +44 (0) 20 8888 6857   +44 (0) 7809 433 250
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 universities.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I came expecting to be fascinated by Deirdre’s sex change, which I was, but the most important thing I took away was the concept of Choice and Change: in oneself, in personal relationships, and in economics and politics. Last Sunday was a day very well spent. It has helped me with my own writing. Overall, I loved Deirdre’s warmth and sense of humour, as well as her openness.