Ronald D. Laing Libros

Madmen were once thought to be possessed by the devil: only very slowly has the clinical approach superseded that idea. Sanity, Madness and the Family may well come to be seen as a classic of psychiatry just because it invites an equally radical change in our view of madness. To prepare this human and readable report Drs Laing and Esterson conducted and recorded (on tape) a series of interviews, during a period of 5 years, with 11 patients who had been authoritatively diagnosed as 'schizophrenic': the novel aspect of their investigation was that parents and relatives of the patients, in all possible combinations, were drawn into these interviews. In this way the authors dramatically exposed the cross-currents of affection, hatred, and indifference within the family, frequently displaying the ugly sight of children being brainwashed by parents. Their study throws doubt on the traditional view of schizophrenia as an illness with specific symptoms and its own pathology: it suggests rather that some forms of madness may largely be social creations and many of their symptoms no more than the tortured ruses of people struggling to live in unlivable situations.

In 1958, while working at the Tavistock, John Bowlby introduced Laing to Gregory Bateson's double bind theory of schizophrenia. Intrigued, Laing engaged another Glaswegian, Dr. Aaron Esterson, in an intensive phenomenological study of more than 100 families of diagnosed schizophrenics in the London area. In 1962, Laing travelled to meet Bateson and his co-workers in Palo Alto (and elsewhere across the U.S.A.) In 1964, Laing and Esterson published the results of their study in a brilliant and deeply disturbing book, Sanity, Madness & The Family, which John Bowlby described as the most important book about families in the 20th century.

To withstand the pressures of conformity we must understand how insidiously they attack. To develop genuine, creative relationships we must be aware of a person's capacity to inhibit, control or liberate another. In this study of the patterns of interaction between people r. Laing, author of The Divided Self, attempts to unravel some of the knots in which we unfailingly tie ourselves. Taking his examples both from literature and case material, he shows that every relationship implies definition of self by other and other by self and that if the self does not receive confirmation by the contacts with others, or if the attributions that others ascribe to it are contradictory, its position becomes untenable and it may break down. Cover design by Germano Facetti

In The Divided Self (1960), Laing contrasted the experience of the "ontologically secure" person with that of a person who "cannot take the realness, aliveness, autonomy and identity of himself and others for granted" and who consequently contrives strategies to avoid "losing his self". Laing explains how we all exist in the world as beings, defined by others who carry a model of us in their heads, just as we carry models of them in our heads. In later writings he often takes this to deeper levels, laboriously spelling out how "A knows that B knows that A knows that B knows..."! Our feelings and motivations derive very much from this condition of "being in the world" in the sense of existing for others, who exist for us. Without this we suffer "ontological insecurity", a condition often expressed in terms of "being dead" by people who are clearly still physically alive.

In �The Politics of Experience� and the visionary �Bird of Paradise�, R.D. Laing shows how the straitjacket of conformity imposed on us all leads to intense feelings of alienation and a tragic waste of human potential. He throws into question the notion of normality, examines schizophrenia and psychotherapy, transcendence and �us and them� thinking, and illustrates his ideas with a remarkable case history of a ten-day psychosis. �We are bemused and crazed creatures,� Laing suggests. This outline of �a thoroughly self-conscious and self-critical human account of man� represents a major attempt to understand our deepest dilemmas and sketch in solutions. �Everyone in contemporary psychiatry owes something to R.D. Laing� Anthony Clare, the Guardian.

A series of dialogue-scenarios, which can be read as poems or plays, describing the "knots" and impasses in various kinds of human relationships.

Essays by the renowned psychiatrist on that most central unit: the family. Notes, bibliography, index.

Famed psychologist Dr. R.D. Laing records conversations between himself, his two children (Adam and Natasha) and his wife Jutta. Brilliantly profound listening to the children speak their wisdom. The author points out that nothing is tampered with in the conversations besides some inadvertent ommissions. Also there are no after thoughts or annotations, for he felt he would like that job to someone else. Funny and charming, this book (although currently out of print)can make you appreciate children more often, and listening to them a great deal more.