Scottish psychiatrist (1927-1989)
The dialectic, if it exists, is the singular adventure of each person's relations with the objects of his experience. There are no categories, in anyone's head or in the sky: there is no pre-established scheme which can be imposed on these singular developments: the dialectic does not impose on historical man terrible contradictions in terms of which he has to live: but under the sway of scarcity and necessity the actions of men are such that dialectical rationality alone makes them intelligible. The dialectic, if it exists, can be only totalization of concrete totalizations carried out by a multiplicity of totalizing singularities.
R. D. LAING
Reason and Violence: A Decade of Sartre's Philosophy, 1950-1960
I am quite sure that a good number of "cures" of psychotics consist in the fact that the patient has decided, for one reason or other, once more to play at being sane.
R. D. LAING
The Divided Self
I'm ridiculous to feel ridiculous when I'm not.
R. D. LAING
Knots
From the alienated starting point of our pseudo-sanity, everything is equivocal. Our sanity is not "true" sanity. Their madness is not "true" madness. The madness of our patients is an artifact of the destruction wreaked on them by us, and by them on themselves.
R. D. LAING
"Transcendental Experience in Relation to Religion and Psychosis", The Psychedelic Review, 1964
The schizophrenic may indeed be mad. He is mad. He is not ill. I have been told by people who have been through the mad experience how what was then revealed to them was veritable manna from Heaven. The person's whole life may be changed, but it is difficult not to doubt the validity of such vision. Also, not everyone comes back to us again.
R. D. LAING
"Transcendental Experience in Relation to Religion and Psychosis", The Psychedelic Review, 1964
How do we define, how do we describe, how do we explain and/or understand ourselves? What sort of creatures do we take ourselves to be? What are we? Who are we? Why are we? How do we come to be what or who we are or take ourselves to be? How do we give an account of ourselves? How do we account for ourselves, our actions, interactions, transactions (praxis), our biologic processes? Our specific human existence?
R. D. LAING
"The Use of Existential Phenomenology in Psychotherapy", The Evolution of Psychotherapy
The human mind has to ask "Who, what, whence, whither, why am I?" And it is very doubtful if the human mind can answer any of these questions.
R. D. LAING
Wisdom, Madness and Folly: The Making of a Psychiatrist
To mystify, in the active sense, is to befuddle, cloud, obscure, mask whatever is going on, whether this be experience, action, or process, or whatever is "the issue." It induces confusion in the sense that there is failure to see what is "really" being experienced, or being done, or going on, and failure to distinguish or discriminate the actual issues. This entails the substitution of false for true constructions of what is being experienced, being done (praxis), or going on (process), and the substitution of false issues for the actual issues.
R. D. LAING
"Mystification, Confusion & Conflict", Intensive Family Therapy, 1965
We are effectively destroying ourselves by violence masquerading as love.
R. D. LAING
The Politics of Experience
No one has the answer: we are answer and question.
R. D. LAING
The Politics of Family and Other Essays
The brotherhood of man is evoked by particular men according to their circumstances. But it seldom extends to all men. In the name of our freedom and our brotherhood we are prepared to blow up the other half of mankind and to be blown up in our turn.
R. D. LAING
The Politics of Experience
Few books today are forgivable. Black on canvas, silence on the screen, an empty white sheet of paper are perhaps feasible.
R. D. LAING
introduction, The Politics of Experience
One cannot say everything at once.
R. D. LAING
preface, The Divided Self
A mental healer may be a psychiatrist. A psychiatrist may or may not be a mental healer.
R. D. LAING
Wisdom, Madness and Folly: The Making of a Psychiatrist
What we call "normal" is a product of repression, denial, splitting, projection, introjection and other forms of destructive action on experience. It is radically estranged from the structure of being. The more one sees this, the more senseless it is to continue with generalized descriptions of supposedly specifically schizoid, schizophrenic, hysterical "mechanisms."
R. D. LAING
The Politics of Experience/The Bird of Paradise
Truth is literally that which is without secrecy, what discloses itself without a veil.
R. D. LAING
attributed, R. D. Laing: The Philosophy and Politics of Psychotherapy
The fountain has not played itself out, the Flame still shines, the River still flows, the Spring still bubbles forth, the Light has not faded. But between us and It, there is a veil which is more like fifty feet of solid concrete. Deus absconditus. Or we have absconded.
R. D. LAING
"Transcendental Experience in Relation to Religion and Psychosis", The Psychedelic Review, 1964
Freud was a hero. He descended to the "Underworld" and met there stark terrors. He carried with him his theory as a Medusa's head which turned these terrors to stone. We who follow Freud have the benefit of the knowledge he brought back with him and conveyed to us. He survived. We must see of we now can survive without using a theory that is in some measure an instrument of defence.
R. D. LAING
The Divided Self
We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing.
R. D. LAING
introduction, The Politics of Experience
When I go beyond a certain range it's outside of my direct horizon therefore I've got to rely on the writings and personal communications given to me by other people that I know.... I've got to try to piece together some tentative information picture of what the whole thing is like, but I'm aware that it becomes more and more speculative as it becomes more and more second, third, fourth hand. And this applies to absolutely everyone.
R. D. LAING
interview, "Our Present Madness", Unit, no. 11