Sunday 11 January 2009

Dr Johnson on ‘Madness’. Inner Circle Seminar 145 (8 November 2009)


Samuel Johnson
Dr Johnson on ‘Madness’

An Inner Circle Seminar in Dr Samuel Johnson’s London house to celebrate the 300th anniversary of his birth and to develop his existential thinking on ‘madness’

Anthony Stadlen
conducts Inner Circle Seminar No. 145
Sunday 8 November 2009
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.


Dr Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 – 13 December 1784) feared going mad, and was often thought by others to be mad. But his profound existential thinking on what is called ‘madness’ is of great relevance to psychotherapists and others today. For this seminar we have the exclusive use for the day of Dr Johnson’s wonderful house in Gough Square, London, including his Withdrawing Room and Dictionary Garret, where he worked on his great dictionary and other writings and conversed with a motley array of London characters, including his ‘very fine cat’, Hodge. Here, where one can still feel his presence, we shall sit in the rooms where he conversed and pick up the threads of his conversation where he left off. For lunch we shall, as he often did, repair to the neighbouring inn, Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, where Johnson’s favourite seat is marked, as is Dickens’s.

Venue: Dr Johnson’s House, 17 Gough Square, London EC4A 3DE
Cost: Students £108, others £135, in advance; some bursaries; including morning coffee and afternoon tea and cakes; excluding lunch
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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