Knots

Product Information

Daniel Burston, a professor of psychology at Duquesne University, as quoted in "RD Laing: The Abominable Family Man," The Sunday Times, (12 April 2009) Birth with R.D. Laing (1978). Documentary on the "institutionalization of childbirth practices in Western society". [38]

In 1987 Laing was forced to withdraw his name from the General Medical Council's medical register after a patient accused him of drunkenness and physical assault (the complaint was later withdrawn). He began to hold 'rebirthing' sessions and took spiritual pilgrimages to Sri Lanka and India. Much of his later work was erratic, crude in tone and increasingly discredited by mainstream psychiatry. 'The general view of Laing's theories within psychiatry is that they are the product of a wild, utopian, romantic imagination - or interesting as museum artefacts but of no contemporary relevance,' says Daniel Burston, author of The Wing of Madness: The Life and Work of RD Laing. 'The view outside psychiatry is more complex.' For sure, they will throw EVERYTHING at you. But whole cities have fallen to the weakness of a good soul, as they fell like dominoes to little King David. Laing, R.D. (1960) The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Thomas Szasz, a contemporary of Laing and someone with whom he felt some affinity, put forth this theory: I remember really liking "Knots" at the time I read it, in my late teens or early 20s, i think. It made an impact, certainly. But not as poetry, not for me.His own family was the first casualty of Laing's increasing celebrity. The reissuing in 1965 of his most famous work, The Divided Self, led to frequent television and radio appearances. In many ways his existentialist approach - he believed that social 'sanity' was fabricated by mutual consent; that the mentally ill were as fully human as the medics who were classifying them - captured the countercultural zeitgeist of the 1960s. His radical rejection of convention ensured he became the most famous cult psychiatrist in the country. Charismatic, darkly handsome and possessed of an innate sharpness of mind, he soon embarked on several extra-marital affairs, spending weeks and months away from the family home in northwest London. Anne was left behind, treading water in the wake of his success. The marriage finally came to a juddering halt in 1967, by which time, says Adrian, 'my mother had totally lost it. She found it so humiliating because he was becoming so well-known but he wasn't living with us.'

Itten, Theodor, The Paths of Soul Making, archived from the original on 16 October 2007 , retrieved 17 October 2007 R. D. Laing", in The New Left, edited by Maurice Cranston, The Library Press, 1971, pp. 179-208. "Ronald Laing must be accounted one of the main contributors to the theoretical and rhetorical armoury of the contemporary Left". As a psychiatrist, both brilliant and unconventional, RD Laing pioneered the humane treatment of the mentally ill. But as a father, clinically depressed and alcoholic, he bequeathed his ten children and his two wives a more chequered legacy. [13] The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice there is little we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.In October 1972, Laing met Arthur Janov, author of the popular book The Primal Scream. Though Laing found Janov modest and unassuming, he thought of him as a "jig man" (someone who knows a lot about a little). Laing sympathized with Janov, but regarded his primal therapy as a lucrative business, one which required no more than obtaining a suitable space and letting people "hang it all out". [17] Adrian leans forward, resting his elbows on the stainless steel cafe table. 'In terms of how he rationalised it... erm... I'm not sure that... I don't think my father felt he was the cause [of the breakdown] so he wouldn't feel it was hypocritical.' Karen Laing quoted in Russell Miller, ‘RD Laing: The abominable family man’, The Times, 12 th April 2009

Ronald Laing was five when his parents told him Santa Claus did not exist. He never forgave them, claiming in later years that the realisation they had been lying to him triggered his first existential crisis. For the rest of his life, his childhood memories were bleak. He told interviewers of an emotionally deprived upbringing in the Govanhill area of Glasgow, with a disciplinarian mother who broke his favourite toys when he became too attached to them. Various – Miniatures (A Sequence of Fifty-One Tiny Masterpieces Edited by Morgan Fisher) (Vinyl, LP, Album)". discogs.com. Discogs . Retrieved 4 October 2016. RD Laing and the others who shared his vision of a genuinely compassionate response to mental disturbance had a profound influence on the practice of My experience of you" is just another form of words for "you-as-l-experience-you", and "your experience of me" equals "me-as-you-experience-me". Your experience of me is not inside you and my experience of you is not inside me, but your experience of me is invisible to me and my experience of you is invisible to you.You know, liberation isn’t one battle. It’s the little skirmishes of an Entire Life - of a life that REFUSES TO QUIT. Laing would disappear for months on end, forgetting birthdays before turning up in a blizzard of misdirected anger. In a 1994 biography he wrote of his father, Adrian recounts one of Laing's rare visits to their new home in Glasgow when, having argued with Jutta, he took out his anger by beating his daughter, Karen. Ah, Sunflower (1967). Short film by Robert Klinkert and Iain Sinclair, filmed around the Dialectics of Liberation conference and featuring Laing, Allen Ginsberg, Stokely Carmichael and others.