Ronald David Laing

An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness

The Divided Self

R. D. Laing

an existential study in sanity and madness

The divided self

WOW this is hands down the best book on psychosis i've ever read - finished in one night and i cannot believe it has taken me this long to get around to reading laing. brilliant and breathtaking and human and incredible... read me to absolute filth. so excited to get into this oeuvre

eris

Gavin

Dreadful bloody pseudoscience in the abscessed vein of Freud. Blames schizophrenia on strict parenting and then celebrates its completely disabling horror. 

See here for an illustrative anecdote about what this attitude did to patients in the 60s; see here and here for the actual long-term effect of parenting.

(view spoiler)[(it's not large). (hide spoiler)]

One good thing though: his idea of "ontological insecurity" as a distinctive debilitating state. I've met someone with a real case of this (a philosophical case) and it was as bad as you'd expect. But I doubt Laing ever did.

R. Laing

First published in 1960, this watershed work aimed to make madness comprehensible, and in doing so revolutionized the way we perceive mental illness. Using case studies of patients he had worked with, psychiatrist R. D. Laing argued that psychosis is not a medical condition but an outcome of the �divided self�, or the tension between the two personas within us: one our authentic, private identity, and the other the false, �sane� self that we present to the world.

The Divided Self An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness