PROGRESS SEMINAR: Who was R.D. Laing? with Peter Mezan, Ph.D. NYPSI
Wed., April 5, 2017 at 8 pm 247 East 82nd Street, NYC
FREE. All are welcome. Register HERE, visit nypsi.org or call 212.879.6900
Works in Progress Seminar: Who was R.D. Laing?
During the countercultural revolution of the 1960s and 70s, R.D. Laing was the most famous psychiatrist in the world — and arguably the most controversial psychoanalytic thinker since Freud. Regarded as the father of the antipsychiatry movement, Laing challenged the basis of conventional psychiatric treatment, particularly with regard to schizophrenics. His ideas enraged the psychiatric establishment but caught the imagination of the public at large. Laing’s books – The Divided Self, Sanity, Madness, and the Family, and The Politics of Experience – sold millions of copies and cemented his status as a culture hero. But by the time Laing died in 1989, his influence had all but vanished. Dr. Mezan will give a portrait of the man and his ideas, based on his encounters and friendship with Laing and the world surrounding him.
Peter Mezan is a psychoanalyst in private practice, treating individuals and couples. Before he became an analyst, he was living and working in London as an editor at Nature, the British science journal, and teaching Renaissance English literature and modern American poetry at Christ’s College, Cambridge. It was during that time that he met R.D. Laing. He introduced Laing to the American public in a cover article in Esquire magazine and over the years became a close friend and observer of Laing and the remarkable circle of people around him. Dr. Mezan was educated at Harvard College, Harvard Medical School, Harvard Graduate School, Christ’s College, Cambridge University, and The City University of New York, where he got his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology. Earlier in his career Dr. Mezan was Senior Psychologist and Psychotherapy Supervisor at North Central Bronx Hospital, Albert Einstein College of Medicine. In collaboration with Dr. Graciela Abelin-Sas Rose, he has given numerous papers at psychoanalytic conferences around the world on the psychoanalytic treatment of couples.
No CME or CE credits will be offered.
Francis Baudry, M.D., Chair
Works in Progress Seminar
NEW YORK PSYCHOANALYTIC SOCIETY & INSTITUTE
247 East 82nd Street, NY, NY 10028
212.879.6900
www.nypsi.org