- Paperback: 308 pages
- Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd; New edition edition (20 Feb 1997)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0340684518
- ISBN-13: 978-0340684511
- Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 13 x 2.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 591,957 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Description
Product Description
R.D. Laing was Britain's most famous psychoanlayst and a hugely contentious figure. His ambition to make madness intelligible was reached through unorthodox means and despite being a gifted professional, he was sneered at by the establishment. In this biography, John Clay traces Laing's colourful life from his childhood in Glasgow to the heights of fame in the 1960s and assesses the influence his ideas had on the future of psychiatry.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Paperback
Excellent, clear and easy to read. Contains info on his early life and his impact on the psychiatric profession. Laing is clear product of his Glasgow working class roots - he comes across as down to earth, with a good sense of humour but also troubled and tough. I loved the story about how in a conference in Amsterdam, he suggested to the Dalai Lama - a fellow participator that afterwards he should throw on some old jeans and they should both hit the town for a night out. The Dalai Lama declined but was amused by the idea. It also interested me just how much involved Laing came to be in religion.
2 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
If you've the slightest interest in psychology, you'll have heard of Ronnie David Laing, Britain's answer to Timothy Leary, who blazed the trail for today's integrationist therapy and links the revolutionary thought of Freud and 'modern' analysis. This book is a detailed account of his life without being turgid, but about halfway through you get the distinct feeling that all John Clay is doing is regurgitating other sources - was he in a hurry to finish it? Or maybe it's just that Laing's deterioration as an alcoholic made him less interesting to a mainstream psychologist. If you've read Harry Thompson's(?) bio of similar sixties icon/eighties wino Peter Cook you'll know what I mean; that was fascinating all the way through - towards the end of this Clay seems to lose interest in his subject. A stimulating read, nevertheless, if only because Laing was such a massive personality. I could have done with deeper analysis of Laing himself - and who came first with that look, him or Peter Stringfellow?
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
1 review
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
love and destruction
15 July 2010
Format:Paperback
This is an excellent, thorough biography about a very enigmatic person, Scottish psychoanalyst R.D. Laing. Laing, having been raised in a family with a mentally ill mother and inattentive father, showed exceptional skill in communicating with people labeled schizophrenic. He seemed able to access them with a compassion rarely shown by his colleagues, who tended to be more interested in exerting power over them, an ultimately unsuccessful way to get along with others whether they're schizophrenic or not. Yet Laing was also a very angry man, often prone to being abusive, not only toward his colleagues, family and friends, but sometimes toward his patients, who in the end he admitted resenting because they filled his life with their misery.
Laing was an icon for many who were struggling with society's expectations and trying to figure out how they fit in the world, and was especially popular with college students. People labeled schizophrenic followed him around as though he was the Pied Piper.
Laing helped create treatment centers for people labeled schizophrenic where they were treated like people, not looked down on as defective inferiors. To great extent, most of these places were much more successful treating these people, as shown by lack of recidivism. (Soteria House in San Jose, California, which was ultimately closed after staff allowed violence resulting in death of two persons in a misguided, if not psychotic, effort to put Laing's theories into practice, remains the exception.)
R.D. Laing came up with a revolutionary theory that love of a parent was an ultimately destructive force that stole the self from a child. He seems to have viewed the world in the most negative of terms. He himself suffered one bad marriage after the other, and had a lot of problems dealing with his own children, some of whom grew up despising him.
For Laing, love was something he desperately wanted, yet feared. He drove those who loved him away from him by behaving abusively toward them. He seemed unwilling to accept the fact that humans are imperfect, and rejected them for their imperfections. Their love, to him, was always tainted with poison that could destroy his perhaps very fragile sense of self.
In the end, he killed himself in a way. He knew he had heart trouble and played tennis as hard as he could until he had a heart attack and quickly died.
Laing is a fascinating character, a creative destroyer, a man of contradictions. He started an important revolution in psychiatry. He was brilliant but tortured, full of anger and perhaps rage as well.
This book is well worth reading, and exceptionally honest and well done.
Laing was an icon for many who were struggling with society's expectations and trying to figure out how they fit in the world, and was especially popular with college students. People labeled schizophrenic followed him around as though he was the Pied Piper.
Laing helped create treatment centers for people labeled schizophrenic where they were treated like people, not looked down on as defective inferiors. To great extent, most of these places were much more successful treating these people, as shown by lack of recidivism. (Soteria House in San Jose, California, which was ultimately closed after staff allowed violence resulting in death of two persons in a misguided, if not psychotic, effort to put Laing's theories into practice, remains the exception.)
R.D. Laing came up with a revolutionary theory that love of a parent was an ultimately destructive force that stole the self from a child. He seems to have viewed the world in the most negative of terms. He himself suffered one bad marriage after the other, and had a lot of problems dealing with his own children, some of whom grew up despising him.
For Laing, love was something he desperately wanted, yet feared. He drove those who loved him away from him by behaving abusively toward them. He seemed unwilling to accept the fact that humans are imperfect, and rejected them for their imperfections. Their love, to him, was always tainted with poison that could destroy his perhaps very fragile sense of self.
In the end, he killed himself in a way. He knew he had heart trouble and played tennis as hard as he could until he had a heart attack and quickly died.
Laing is a fascinating character, a creative destroyer, a man of contradictions. He started an important revolution in psychiatry. He was brilliant but tortured, full of anger and perhaps rage as well.
This book is well worth reading, and exceptionally honest and well done.
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