Thanks for your report on the seminar with Thomas Szasz in London on Sunday.
Did you ask a question yourself? There were, I believe, 50 or so people present
and we were all given an opportunity to speak if we wished. Not everybody did
but some contributed more than one question.
For those who were not there - here is the flyer for the seminar
http://www.szasz.com/stadlensept162007.pdf
Flyer for seminar 16 September in London

As you can see, this would have cost between £98 - £110 far too expensive for a
lot of people who have an interest in what Szasz has to say. Not to mention the
expenditure and effort of a whole day. As you mention in your report, most of
the people there would have been mh professionals of one kind or another and I
was very probably one of the few non-professionals.

I have been going to Anthony Stadlen's seminars for a few years now but attend
far fewer than I did and the Szasz seminar is one of only two that I have been
to this year. It enabled me to listen to the other question/answers and to ask
some of my own and to talk to Thomas Szasz after the seminar and will be writing
to him with more comments. What I asked was why he had not written anything
about Rodney Yoder (google his name if you want to know the connection) and to
tell him that he should be on platforms with those he was criticising - such as
the Critical Psychiatry people - Pat Bracken and Phil Thomas - and the
follow-ons from Laing. He is consistently critical of these people but does not
confront them personally.

Thomas Szasz has also spoken in Dublin this month -
http://www.dcu.ie/health4life/conferences/2007/Thomas_Szasz.shtml
Dublin conference 11 September

And will be speaking at 4pm today in Birmingham -
http://www.ceimh.bham.ac.uk/newsandevents/Szasz.shtml
Birmingham 19 September


Rosemary
Surrey UK

----- Original Message -----
From: netochka_nezvanova
To: thomasszaszdiscussion@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, September 18, 2007 5:43 PM
Subject: [ThomasSzaszDiscussion] Inner Circle Seminar


Thomas Szasz's Inner Circle Seminar
Sunday, September 16th 2007

Located in the delightful Regent's College, existential-
phenomenological psychotherapist Anthony Stadlen's long-running Inner
Circle Seminar this month played host to Dr Thomas Szasz. The event
itself was "deliberately designed to be a true seminar, not a
virtuoso performance which leaves people puzzled". Despite unswerving
consistency over the past five decades, still some cannot or will not
understand what his message is. Referral to the opening page of his
new book Coercion as Cure will suffice: Szasz regards psychiatry
as "the theory and practice of coercion, rationalized as the
diagnosis of mental illness and justified as medical treatment aimed
at protecting the patient from himself and society from the patient".
Simple enough, it would seem.

A good proportion of the participants were mental health
professionals in one form or another. One of the first questions came
from a practicing psychotherapist, confessing her shame at her
difficulty reconciling ethical professionalism with the need to earn
a living. These kinds of questions do not usually represent polite
discussion inside our state mental health system, so it was great to
hear some interested voices. But were they really interested? At one
point, Szasz asserted that "freedom is not free, it is expensive."
Indeed, one painfully obvious solution to a dissatisfactory situation
is to leave it, and this applies to mental health professionals as
much as anyone. There might well be strong incentives to remain, but
this does not mean the choice is no longer a choice. The general feel
of the questions suggested, to me at least, that leaving the
profession wasn't an option to be taken seriously. Instead, many
(though not all) appeared to want some advice on how to reform
(and/or feel good about) what they do for a living.

One issue raised was that of licensing, and the relative freedom UK-
based practitioners enjoy compared to those in the US. But it was not
clear what import, if any, such differences have on Szasz's argument.
Szasz noted the huge demand on the part of psychotherapists for
recognition by the state, which limits the ability of those who
reject any association with the state to earn a living. But whatever
we think about the merits of talking to people for money, we must
keep in mind the threat of civil litigation against "negligence",
which despite a general unwillingness to talk about it, does not seem
to go away.

In response to a question from the director of a drugs and alcohol
unit asking which theory he should follow, Szasz suggested the
question made little sense, since the services provided are by
definition not wanted by anyone. Without looking at who pays for the
interventions and having some idea of the nature of state
bureaucracy, the falsehoods are continually reaffirmed.

One particularly instructive feature of the seminar was the
discussion of drugs. At least one of the participants did not seem to
understand that the fundamental issues concern who gets to define
what a drug is, and that it is immoral to criminalise possession or
trade of certain harmless substances. Obviously, ingesting such
substances may or may not harm our bodies, but this is quite a
separate question. In any case, the levels of trust placed in
government today are truly frightening for both individual liberty
and the possibility of voluntary psychiatry and psychotherapy. The
unwillingness or inability of mental health professionals to discuss
and understand coercion was confirmed during the lunch hour, when I
overheard one attendee ask another "It's all very well abolishing
psychiatry, but what are we going to put in its place?" The question
was decidedly not rhetorical.

The main thing I took away from the day was the significance of the
widespread failure to admit that Szasz's message is not really about
medicine, nor indeed about how to talk to people (though of course,
he has much of note to say on these matters). Rather, the problem is
coercion.





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