SYNOPSIS
In March 2013 I attended a seminar that was a ‘memorial seminar’ for Thomas Szasz, one of the luminaries of the movement against the medicalisation of ‘problems in living’ commonly perceived as ‘mental illnesses’. in this article I review the seminar with a summary of what the three co-facilitators, Jeffrey Schaler, Morton Schatzman and Anthony Stadlen, said about themselves and their intellectual positions; the conversations these positions in relation to Szasz's own provoked in the seminar's participants; and the recent developments of strong challenges to the dominant biomedical model by even such mainstream bodies as the Division of Clinical Psychology of the British Psychological Society.
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Jay Beichman
Jay Beichman MA (Couns) MBACP (SnrAccred) is a therapist/teacher/researcher currently researching a Ph.D. study at the University of Brighton in how dialogical positioning and narrative processes manifest in therapy. For many years Jay worked as a mental health project worker as well as training and then practising as a therapist. He has also, for better and/or worse, experienced being a ‘service user’. He works as an integrative therapist with a pluralistic outlook in private practice and also for EAPs. He also promotes and delivers courses and workshops on subjects such as the dialogical self, voice dialogue, confidence, assertiveness and narrative. [email protected]; www.counsellinginbrighton.co.uk