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
- vacuums
- enlightenment
- psychological
- breakthrough
- insane-world
- break-through
- insanity
- madness
- sanity
- ambiguous
- ridiculous
- feels
- roots
- squares
- square-roots
- patient
- cold
- schizophrenia
- veils
- truth-is
- secrecy
- existence
- non-existence
- diversity
- needs
- independence
- perfectly-natural
- essentials
- paradox
- aspect
insane-world break-through insanity
Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through.
our-society lost ritual
In our society many of the old rituals have lost much of their power. New ones have not arisen.
insanity independence perfectly-natural
Insanity is a perfectly natural adjustment to a totally unnatural and negative environment.
enlightenment psychological breakthrough
Psychological breakdowns are actually breakthroughs to enlightenment.
madness sanity ambiguous
In the context of our present pervasive madness that we call normality, sanity, freedom, all our frames of reference are ambiguous and equivocal.
break-through diversity needs
Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through. It is potential liberation and renewal as well as enslavement and existential death.
successful reality pseudo
Schizophrenia is a successful attempt not to adapt to pseudo- social realities.
vacuums
No one acts or experiences in a vacuum...
infancy-is trance hypnotic
We are all in a post-hypnotic trance induced in early infancy.
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.
roots squares square-roots
The square root of nothing.