R. D. Laing
R. D. Laing
Ronald David Laing, usually cited as R. D. Laing, was a Scottish psychiatrist who wrote extensively on mental illness – in particular, the experience of psychosis. Laing's views on the causes and treatment of serious mental dysfunction, greatly influenced by existential philosophy, ran counter to the psychiatric orthodoxy of the day by taking the expressed feelings of the individual patient or client as valid descriptions of lived experience rather than simply as symptoms of some separate or underlying disorder. Laing was...
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth7 October 1927
R. D. Laing quotes about
love-is thinking spirituality
What we think is less than what we know; What we know is less than what we love; What we love is so much less than what there is. And to that precise extent we are so much less than what we are.
infancy-is trance hypnotic
We are all in a post-hypnotic trance induced in early infancy.
fate destiny diversity
Alienation as our present destiny is achieved only by outrageous violence perpetrated by human beings on human beings.
spiritual thinking shapes
The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice.
feelings body hopelessness
Being embodied as such is no insurance against feelings of hopelessness or meaningslessness. Beyond his body, he still has to know who he is.
medicine differences doctors
Doctors have throughout time made fortunes on killing their patients with their cures. The difference in psychiatry is that it is the death of the soul.
beauty lying ifs
Beauty is almost no longer possible if it is not a lie.
nature class society
We are all murderers and prostitutes - no matter to what culture, society, class, nation one belongs, no matter how normal, moral, or mature, one takes oneself to be.
existence non-existence
Rule A: Don't. Rule A1: Rule A doesn't exist. Rule A2: Do not discuss the existence or non-existence of Rules A, A1 or A2.
patient cold schizophrenia
No one has schizophrenia, like having a cold. The patient has not "got" schizophrenia. He is schizophrenic.
essentials paradox aspect
Here we have the paradox, the potentially tragic paradox, that our relatedness to others is an essential aspect of our being, as is our separateness, but any particular person is not a necessary part of our being.
mind body mind-body
We live equally out of our bodies and out of our minds.
roots squares square-roots
The square root of nothing.
ridiculous feels
I'm ridiculous to feel ridiculous when I'm not.