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How the Stoics Became Citizens of the World

The Dream of Scipio
Scipio looks down upon the Earth from the Milky Way. From this far away, even Rome looks provincial.

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

At its height, the Roman Empire brought most of Europe, together with large parts of North Africa and the Near East, into a single political and economic space. Roads and sea lanes connected distant provinces, trade flourished, and the Pax Romana, or ‘Roman Peace’, brought long periods of peace, security, and prosperity to peoples more accustomed to being at one another’s throats.

Unlike the European Union, Rome created its union, in the main, by conquest, rather than by cooperation and the voluntary pooling of sovereignty. That’s two thousand years of progress for you. But the EU and the Roman Empire enlarged the political community beyond the borders of individual peoples, with profound consequences for how people lived—and, in time, for how they thought about themselves.

By the Late Roman Republic, the world had never been more cosmopolitan. Stoics such as Panaetius, who shuttled back and forth from Athens to Rome, Rutilius, who stood up for the inhabitants of Asia against his own countrymen, and the Syrian Posidonius, who moved from Athens to Rhodes to start a school that became the empire’s stopping place, were not Greeks or Romans so much as citizens of the world.

The First Citizens of the World

This broadening of horizons had begun well before Rome. In the fourth century BCE, Alexander the Great built an empire that took in the already multinational Persian Empire and stretched into India. 

As Alexander battled his way to the Hyphasis River, back home in Greece another boundary was being broken, not, this time, from some palace or military tent but from an empty jar. Upon being asked where he came from, Diogenes the Cynic declared, ‘I am a citizen of the world (Greek, cosmopolites)’. This is the first recorded use of the term that became our ‘cosmopolitan’. In many parts of Britain or America, to call yourself a citizen of the world would be asking for trouble. In a Greek world still organised around close-knit city-states, it was a truly radical and dangerous claim.

Diogenes inspired Crates of Thebes, a wealthy man who abandoned his fortune to follow in the Cynic path. Crates in turn taught Zeno of Citium, who went on to found Zenonism—better known as Stoicism. The Cynic ideals of living according to nature, freedom from external goods, and cosmopolitanism thus passed, in modified form, into one of the most influential movements of the ancient world.

‘The eagle,’ said the Stoic teacher Musonius, quoting Euripides, ‘can fly through all the air, and a noble man has all the earth as his fatherland.’ The wise, argued Musonius, can make themselves at home anywhere, so that exile, to them, is not the punishment that it may seem. Indeed, one of several advantages of exile is that we are not dragged into political service by a country that only seems to be ours, or bothered by people who only seem to be our friends, or waylaid by petty relatives. Musonius points out that the Stoic Rutilius flourished so fulsomely in exile that he refused Sulla’s invitation to return to Rome.

Musonius taught Epictetus. When he was young, the future emperor Marcus Aurelius had the greatest men of his age for tutors, but it was a dog-eared copy of Epictetus that made the greatest impression upon him. Still, today, it is difficult to read Marcus’ Meditations without hearing the echo of Epictetus… and, ultimately, Diogenes: ‘My city and state are Rome… But as a human being? The world. So for me, ‘good’ can only mean what’s good for both communities.’

The Philosophical Basis of Cosmopolitanism

Stoic cosmopolitanism is rooted in the belief that all human beings form part of the same organism and that this organism, like each of its parts, is shot through with God. It is true that some people behave like cancers, but even they, if only they knew it, are doing the work of God, or the universe. Just as our eyes, ears, and teeth each have a role to play in our body, so we, too, each have a role to play in society—even if it is only to serve as a warning to others.

‘Kindly remember,’ said Seneca, ‘that he whom you call your slave sprang from the same stock, is smiled upon by the same skies, and on equal terms with yourself breathes, lives, and dies.’

To live selfishly is fundamentally self-defeating. To feel alive and happy, we need to have a sense of working with others, for others—because, like ants and bees, that is the kind of creature that we are. If we do not contribute to our community, we will feel disconnected and depressed. In a word, we will feel dead—and, in truth, might as well be.

Whatever good we do, said Marcus Aurelius, we should do it quietly, without expecting anything in return, ‘as simply as a horse runs, or a bee makes honey, or a vine bears grapes season after season without thinking of the grapes it has borne.’ Our reward will be our own, and much greater than any wealth or honour that might or might not be bestowed upon us: to lead and to have led a good life, to do and to have done what we were born to do.

What brings no benefit to the hive brings none to the bee. —Marcus Aurelius

From Rome to Europe

In 212 CE, Rome extended citizenship to almost every free inhabitant of the empire. But for the Stoics, citizenship had no frontier: every human being belonged to the same community. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Europe divided and redivided into kingdoms, empires, and nation-states whose rivalries repeatedly ended in war. During the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), to take an example, the population of the Germanic lands fell from 21 million to 13 million.

After the Second World War, Europeans returned to an ancient problem: how to belong to something larger without ceasing to be themselves. The European Union offered a new answer. It brought together nations that had fought one another for centuries, contributing to an extraordinary period of peace, security, and prosperity. Unlike Rome, it did so not by conquest but by cooperation.

The importance of European unity becomes clearest when it begins to fracture. Brexit removed one of Europe’s largest powers from the Union. Six years after the referendum, Putin invaded Ukraine, apparently calculating, among other things, that a divided West would fail to respond decisively. Whether Brexit entered into that calculation is impossible to know, but the timing is at least worth noticing.

Perhaps the EU’s most interesting achievement is psychological. A Frenchman can be French and European, just as Marcus Aurelius could be Roman and a citizen of the world.

The Stoics would have gone further still, emphasising that, as well as French and European, the Frenchman was also, and above all, a citizen of the world.

The Stoics sometimes arrived at this insight by looking down upon human affairs as though from the heavens. Marcus Aurelius repeatedly adopts this ‘view from above’ in the Meditations. In Cicero’s Dream of Scipio, Scipio looks back upon the Earth from the Milky Way and is struck by how small the Roman Empire appears. From this far away, even Rome looks provincial.

What about the view from below? When we imagine an alien planet, we rarely imagine it to be divided into countries. We do not even stop to think: surely, the aliens would not be so backward.

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A laughing philosopher (Democritus)
Democritus laughed at human folly—not out of contempt, but because he saw the world more clearly.

Philosophers are not generally renowned for their sense of humour. They spend their days pondering free will, personal identity, and whether the external world really exists. Yet philosophy has always had a playful side. Socrates delighted in teasing his companions, Diogenes made a career out of puncturing pretension, and Zen masters often concealed profound truths inside what seemed to be little more than jokes. According to one tradition, Chrysippus the Stoic saw a donkey eating figs, gave it wine to wash them down, and laughed himself to death.

Despite all his outstanding achievements, the people of his native Miletus mocked Thales for his material poverty. So, one year, having predicted a bumper crop of olives, he took out a lease on all the olive presses on Miletus and made himself a fortune. “You see,” he said, “a philosopher could easily be rich if only he did not have better things to do with his time.”

Xanthippe, after berating Socrates at length, emptied a chamber pot over his head. Wiping himself dry, Socrates remarked, “After thunder comes rain.”

Aristippus was the first of the Socratics to take money for teaching. When he demanded five hundred drachmas to tutor a man’s son, the man protested, “For that much money, I could buy a slave!” “Go ahead,” replied Aristippus. “Then you’ll have two.”

When someone chided Aristippus for his extravagant catering, he replied, “Wouldn’t you have bought this yourself if you could have had it for three obols? … Very well then, it is not I who am a lover of pleasure, but you who are a lover of money.”

When Dionysus I, the tyrant of Syracuse, asked Aristippus why he had come to his court, he replied, “When I needed wisdom, I went to Socrates; but now that I am in need of money, I come to you.”

Although he prized reason, Diogenes despised the abstract philosophy practised at Plato’s Academy. When, to great acclaim, Plato defined a human being as ‘a featherless biped’, Diogenes plucked a chicken, carried it into the Academy, and declared, “Behold! Plato’s man.” Plato is said to have amended his definition by adding, ‘with broad nails.’

One day, Diogenes asked Plato for a handful of figs from his garden. When Plato had a whole bushel sent out, he muttered, “Typical Plato.”

Diogenes used to wander about Athens in broad daylight carrying a lit lamp. Whenever anyone asked what he was doing, he would reply, “I am looking for a human being.” 

Diogenes delighted in walking backwards through the streets or entering the theatre against the tide of people leaving. Once a crowd had gathered to laugh at him, he turned on his heel and said, “Why do you mock me, when you’ve spent your whole lives walking backwards? At least I can turn around.”

When a young man asked to study under him, Diogenes handed him a fish and told him to carry it around the city. Ashamed, the young man threw it away and fled. Some time later, Diogenes met him in the agora and remarked, “Fancy—our friendship was ended by a fish.”

Epictetus neither married nor had children, despite urging others to do so. When he reproached his friend and pupil Demonax for remaining unmarried, Demonax replied, “Very well, then. Will you give me one of your daughters for a wife?”

Descartes invites his date, Jeanne, to a fine restaurant for her birthday. The sommelier hands them the wine list, and Jeanne chooses the most expensive Burgundy. “I think not!” exclaims an indignant Descartes. Poof. He disappears.

Kant once joked: A man tried to arrange a solemn funeral for a wealthy relative, but failed. “The more I paid the mourners,” he complained, “the merrier they looked.”

On another occasion, Kant joked: A merchant returned from India with a great fortune, but, caught in a violent storm, was forced to throw all his cargo overboard. The shock was so great that his wig turned grey overnight.

A student lent his copy of Objects of Thought by A. N. Prior to his tutor. At their next meeting, the tutor said that he had browsed the book and left it in the student’s pigeonhole. Some time later, the student burst into his office crying, “Professor, Professor! Someone’s stolen my Prior!” The old man calmly replied, “You’d be lucky around here if they hadn’t taken your posterior as well.”

Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson are on a camping trip. In the middle of the night, Holmes nudges Watson awake and says, “Watson, look up at the sky and tell me what you see.” “I see millions of stars, my dear Holmes.” “And what do you infer from these stars?” “Well, a number of things,” he says, lighting his pipe. “Astronomically, I observe that there are millions of galaxies and billions of stars and planets. Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo. Horologically, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three. Meteorologically, I expect that the weather will be fine and clear. Theologically, I see that God is all-powerful, and man, his creation, small and insignificant. What about you, Holmes?” “Watson, you fool! Someone has stolen our tent!”

A renowned philosopher was held in high regard by his driver, who listened in awe as his boss lectured and answered difficult questions about the nature of things and the meaning of life. Then, one day, the driver approached the philosopher and asked if he would be willing to switch roles for just one evening. The philosopher agreed, and, for a while, the driver acquitted himself remarkably well. However, when the time came for questions, someone at the back of the room asked, “Is the epistemological meta-narrative that you seem to espouse compatible with a teleological account of the universe?” “That’s an extremely simple question,” replied the driver. “So simple, in fact, that even my driver could answer it.”

Two behaviourists meet in the street. “Hello,” says one. “How am I feeling today?”

 Some months later, the two behaviourists have sex. One turns to the other and says, “That was good for you. How was it for me?”

Upon waking, a woman said to her husband, “I dreamt that you gave me a necklace of pearls. What do you think it means?” The man smiled and kissed his wife. “You’ll know tonight,” he whispered. That evening, he came home with a small package. She eagerly unwrapped it. Inside was a book entitled The Meaning of Dreams.

Seeing the Zen master on the other side of a raging torrent, a student shouted, “Master! Master! How do I get to the other side?” The master smiled. “You are on the other side.”

A Zen student asked the master how long it would take to attain enlightenment. “Ten years.” “And if I work twice as hard?” “Twenty years.”

For his seventieth birthday, one of his students presented the Zen master with a beautifully wrapped box. Inside was nothing. “Aha,” exclaimed the master. “Just what I wanted!”

A novice was loading the larder with flour and oil. Seeing one of the monks sitting beneath a banyan tree, he asked if he might lend a hand. “Sorry,” said the monk. “I’m busy.” “But your eyes are shut!” “Yes. I’m busy doing nothing. It’s much harder than what you’re doing. It’s what the food is for, what the kitchen is for, and why we built the temple. Don’t interrupt me again with your lardering.” Hours later, the weary novice found the monk still sitting on the bench. “Can we talk now?” he asked. “No,” he snapped, “I haven’t finished yet.”

“After twelve years of therapy,” said a man, “my psychotherapist said something that brought tears to my eyes.” “What did he say?” “No hablo inglés.”

Humour and philosophy have more in common than might first appear. Both begin by challenging what we take for granted. A joke lures us into one way of thinking before pulling the rug from under our feet; philosophy often does the same. In both cases, we emerge seeing the world a little differently.

No wonder philosophers have always been drawn to wit, irony, paradox, and satire. A good joke can expose a bad argument, puncture pomposity, or illuminate an idea more effectively than pages of solemn analysis. As Nietzsche observed, ‘It is not by wrath but by laughter that one kills.’

Perhaps, after all, laughter is simply another way of thinking.

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If you enjoyed these philosophical jokes, you might also enjoy The Gang of Three: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, an engaging overview of the three thinkers who laid the foundations of Western philosophy. To discover how their ideas can sharpen your own reasoning and communication, see How to Think Like Plato and Speak Like Cicero.

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10 Unexpected Benefits of Voluntary Hardship

Bread and olive oil
More enjoyable than any great banquet?

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

Essay substantially revised on 26 July 2026.

We spend much of our lives trying to make ourselves marginally more comfortable. The Stoics, Cynics, and Spartans believed that this pursuit of comfort could pose a trap. Their remedy was occasional voluntary hardship.

In the deep winter, Diogenes the Cynic (d. 323 BCE) would strip naked and embrace bronze statues. One day, upon seeing this, a Spartan asked him whether he was cold. When he said that he was not, the Spartan replied, ‘Well, then, what’s so impressive about what you’re doing?’

Like their predecessors the Cynics, and like the Spartans, the Stoics greatly valued hardship, albeit on a more modest or moderate scale. They believed that we should occasionally practise poverty or put ourselves through mild hardship, and this for several reasons:

First, to discover what we can do without, and reduce our fear of losing those things. In his Letters, Seneca advises Lucilius: ‘Set yourself a period of some days in which you will be content with very small amounts of food, and the cheapest kinds, and with coarse clothing, and say to yourself, ‘Is this what I was afraid of?’’

Second, to be reminded that simple things, such as bread and olive oil, or a good night’s sleep, can be just as enjoyable and profitable as any great banquet (if not more so), and thus that pleasure is both readily available and highly transferable.

Third, to better reflect upon our true goals, or to work towards them. ‘If you want to have time for your mind,’ says Seneca, ‘you must either be poor or resemble the poor… One cannot study without frugality, and frugality is just voluntary poverty.’

Here are six more advantages of self-imposed hardship, according to the Stoics:

  • To increase our appreciation and enjoyment of the things that we normally enjoy.
  • To break from our normal routine, and reinvigorate our minds while exercising our freedom.
  • To be prepared for future hardship, which, unless we are suddenly struck dead, is all but a certainty.
  • To be convinced that the greater part of our suffering lies not in fact but in our attitude towards it.
  • To practise self-discipline, or test our fortitude.
  • To empathise with less fortunate people, and people from the past.

In addition, self-imposed poverty and hardship can also have more mundane benefits, such as losing weight, saving time or money, and making yourself popular by seeming like one of the people.

Finally, all these motives are in themselves a source of pride and pleasure of a different kind. ‘Do not,’ says Marcus Aurelius, ‘lament misfortune. Instead, rejoice that you are the sort of man who can undergo misfortune without letting it upset you.’

Seneca does us the favour of putting self-imposed hardship into radical perspective when he says: ‘Armies have endured being deprived of everything for another person’s domination, so who will hesitate to put up with poverty when the aim is to liberate the mind from fits of madness?’

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Diogenes, Free Speech, and the Freedom to Become

Diogenes the Cynic visited by Alexander the Great
Alexander the Great before Diogenes the Cynic: power to truth.

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

Essay substantially revised on 12 August 2026.

Free speech is not merely a political right, but a condition of freedom of thought—and of becoming fully human. Read what happens to the mind when it is denied.

Once, upon being asked to name the most beautiful of all things, Diogenes the Cynic (d. 323 BCE) replied parrhesia, which in Greek means something like ‘free speech’ or ‘full expression’. In his ethical treatise, the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle (d. 322 BCE) presents parrhesia as a trait of the ‘great-souled’ man, or megalopsychos.

The Greeks did not conceive of parrhesia as a right or privilege, but as a virtue or perfection, as well as a moral and social obligation. When Alexander the Great approached Diogenes in Athens and asked whether there was anything he might do for him, Diogenes replied, ‘Yes, stand out of my sunlight.’

Living in a much more oral society, and having but one word, logos, for both speech and reason, the Greeks understood the close connexion between freedom of speech and freedom of thought.

The connexion runs deeper than might first appear. Speech is not merely the expression of existing thoughts. It is also one of the principal means by which thoughts are formed in the first place. By putting an idea into words, we give it shape and solidity; by submitting it to public scrutiny, we expose it to verification and contradiction; and by defending, modifying, or abandoning it, we teach ourselves what we think. Rhetoric, at its best, is not merely the art of persuading other people, but part of the process by which we reason with them, and with ourselves—hence the tradition of sometimes writing two speeches, one in favour of a position, and the other against.

In Athens, parrhesia underpinned the democracy. For a democracy to flourish, or even merit the name, citizens must be free, able, and willing to speak their mind. Free speech not only enables democracy, but also legitimises its laws and protects it from aspiring tyrants. Undermine free speech, and you undermine democracy—which is why free speech is enshrined in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Undermine free speech, and you undermine human dignity, which is why free speech is enshrined in Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

‘Free speech’ is something of a misnomer. It includes not only speech but also forms of expression, such as writing a book, drawing a cartoon, or burning a flag. Taking inspiration from the French libre expression, we might more accurately and comprehensively refer to ‘free speech’ as ‘freedom of expression’.

Today, many people, especially younger people, believe that freedom of expression can conflict with minority rights, and ought to be curbed to promote a more inclusive society. Is this argument worth entertaining?

The Freedom to Think

Let’s begin by looking more closely at the benefits of free speech. Often, it is by articulating it to others that we work out our position on a particular issue. And in arriving at our opinion, it helps if we are being encouraged, assisted, and challenged—which is why tutorials and a common table are (or ought to be) an important part of university life.

The same principle operates on the scale of entire societies. Intellectual cultures become sophisticated not simply by accumulating information, but by permitting disagreement. An argument produces a counterargument, the counterargument exposes a weakness, and the original argument either collapses or becomes stronger and more subtle. Socrates made a method of this dialectical process, asking awkward questions in gymnasia and marketplaces until received but misguided ideas about courage, justice, and virtue began to unravel.

Even if an opinion is untrue, it may still serve to clarify or reinforce the truth. Moreover, many misguided opinions contain aspects of the truth. Plato himself doubted his Theory of Forms, which nonetheless remains of immense value. Rousseau, who pushed back against the Enlightenment, may have been wrong to idealise the state of nature, but was right to point out that progress also has downsides. Even when securely established, a living truth risks stultifying into a dead dogma if it is not regularly challenged.

This is one reason censorship can have consequences far beyond the particular opinions it suppresses. When certain things cannot safely be said, people learn to avoid not only certain statements, but also certain questions, associations, and lines of enquiry, corrupting the processes that make complex, sophisticated thought possible. That would be why Nazi ideology could take off without ever being grounded, and why Soviet art criticism under Stalin was seldom very enlightening.

Censorship, in other words, does not merely prevent us from saying what we think. In time, it can prevent us from thinking what we might otherwise have thought. We become, as it were, lame human beings, something less than fully human.

Censorship, No-Platforming, and Cancel Culture

So far, we have been talking about the kind of constructive, co-operative discourse that graces academia. But are resentful bigots also entitled to freedom of expression? Or to put it more neutrally, do the intolerant also warrant tolerance?

If bigots were unable to air their opinions, or simply denied a platform, these and they would go unchallenged. Feeling vindicated and persecuted, the bigots would recast themselves as tellers of uncomfortable truths, and, in time, recruit followers. Feeling unheard and unrepresented, this growing mass may resort to violence and destruction, including sabotage of the political system.

Censoring bigots also risks giving their opinions greater appeal and publicity. Prosecuting David Irving for Holocaust denial put him onto the front pages, and turned him from obscure and discredited historian into a free speech martyr. Banning The Satanic Verses and issuing a fatwa to kill the book’s author and publishers turned the book into a cultural icon.

Conversely, those who engage in ‘cancel culture’ are likely to invite resentment and, in so doing, undermine their cause—to say nothing of the extra-judicial and often disproportionate damage done to the reputations and careers of their targets. In such a climate of fear, self-censorship, even by well-meaning academics and liberals, makes it difficult to calmly and rationally discuss sensitive topics such as immigration and transgender rights.

And here the distinction between free speech and free thought begins to break down. If an academic has an idea but dare not voice it, the idea cannot be tested against the opinions and objections of colleagues. If a student has a doubt but dare not express it, the doubt remains inchoate. If an entire culture learns to avoid certain questions, it may eventually lose not only the answers but even the questions themselves. This is, of course, what some people would like. But to forbid a question is to forbid whatever truths might lie around and beyond it.

Policing Free Speech

Of course, we do already police free speech. In Schenck v. United States (1919), U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. famously argued that free speech does not extend to falsely shouting ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theatre. John Stuart Mill (d. 1873) drew the line at incitement to physical violence.

But beyond this (and a few other cases such as libel, threats, and false advertising), where might we redraw the line between the acceptable and the unacceptable? Socrates, Christ, and Giordano Bruno all lost their lives expressing what came to be regarded as seminal ideas.

Once we had redrawn the line, would the temptation not be to keep redrawing it? The Spanish Inquisition began as one thing and slid into quite another. And it mattered little if some of the inquisitors were well-intentioned.

There is a deeper difficulty. The people empowered to decide which opinions are too dangerous, offensive, or mistaken to be expressed must themselves hold opinions, and their opinions are no more guaranteed to be correct than anybody else’s. To censor an opinion is therefore not to remove judgement from public discourse, but to privilege one judgement over another—and, in many cases, to protect it from the very criticism that might correct it.

Today, the public square has moved online, and it is unaccountable tech giants, rather than the church and state, that are being expected to police free speech—when they might simply begin by ensuring that each individual user is genuine and accountable.

As they say, sunlight is the best disinfectant. The best response to a bad opinion is not censorship, but good argument and rhetoric. And yes, this might sometimes include mockery and derision and causing offence—although we should not go out of our way to cause offence, as with ‘hate speech’. Our focus ought to be on the facts, and not on the characteristics (although maybe the character) of our opponent.

This brings us back to parrhesia. To the Greeks, speaking freely required more than permission. It required courage: the willingness to say what one believed to be true despite the possibility of ridicule, retribution, or mere umbrage. Socrates exercised that freedom in the face of death; Diogenes before a bloodthirsty king.

In a society in which suffering is medicalised, there is a tendency to conflate psychological offence with physical violence, with the implication that retaliatory physical violence might be justified. But ‘free speech’ includes the right not to listen. Taking offence, as the Stoics insisted, is always a choice. Offence exists not in the insult but in our reaction to it, and our reactions are completely within our control. It is unreasonable to expect a boor to be anything but a boor; if we take offence at his bad behaviour, we have only ourself to blame.

Diogenes called parrhesia the most beautiful thing in the world because freedom of speech is more than the freedom to make a noise. It is the freedom to question, to contradict, to make mistakes, to change our minds, and to find out who we are and who we might be. Without it, rhetoric falls into propaganda, truth into dogma, and thought itself is strangled.

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John Heaton is, amongst others, a practising psychiatrist and psychotherapist, a regular lecturer on the Advanced Diploma in Existential Psychotherapy programme at Regent’s College, London, and a long- and some-time editor of the Journal for Existential Analysis.

This is Heaton’s third book with Wittgenstein in its title. In it, he applies the great philosopher’s insights to the psychotherapeutic process in all its forms. Heaton’s principle thesis is that many of our deepest and most intractable problems find their roots in linguistic confusions and limitations, and are resolved not by the search for causes inherent in the various pseudo-scientific doctrines and theories of the mind (such as those of Freud and Klein), but by careful attention to the use of language. This is particularly true in neurosis and psychosis in which language is used not so much to clarify and to communicate as to deceive and to obfuscate.

Like all the best things, the talking cure has its roots in ancient Greece with such luminaries as Socrates and Diogenes the Cynic (see my post on Diogenes here). Upon being asked to name the most beautiful of all things, Diogenes replied ‘parrhesia’ (free speech, full expression), and his intransigently courageous and sometimes delightfully shocking behaviour consistently accorded with this, his, truth. The self-understanding that underlies parrhesia is revealed not in reductionist propositions based on questionable pictures of the mind, but in the singular use of language – both by the expression and by its truthfulness. In short, it is revealed not in causes, but in reasons, with all their multiplicities and particularities.

For Wittgenstein as for Heaton, the talking cure is, like philosophy itself, a battle against the bewitchment of intelligence by means of language, for it is not knowledge but understanding that is needed to live an integrated, productive, and, dare I say it, happy, life. To date, this important, indeed, devastating, critique has had little or no impact on psychotherapeutic practices, and Heaton’s revolutionary book requires and deserves to be read not only by psychotherapists and psychiatrists but by every mental health professional. Although the book is not difficult to leaf through, she with little more than a scientific background may find it difficult to understand, accept, or come to terms with certain concepts. As Lichtenberg tells us, ‘A book is like a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out … he who understands the wise is wise already.’

Neel Burton

NB: This review has also been published in the September issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry.