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The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness (Penguin Psychology) Paperback – 22 Nov 1990

by R. Laing (Author)
4.7 out of 5 stars 30 customer reviews
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Product details

  • Paperback: 224 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin; New Ed edition (22 Nov. 1990)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0140135375
  • ISBN-13: 978-0140135374
  • Product Dimensions: 13 x 1.4 x 19.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 345,537 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

Review

"Dr. Laing is saying something very important indeed. . . . This is a truly humanist approach." Philip toynbee in the Observer"It is a study that makes all other works I have read on schizophrenia seem fragmentary. . . . The author brings, through his vision and perception, that particular touch of genius which causes one to say Yes, I have always known that, why have I never thought of it before?'" Journal of Analytical Psychology"

About the Author

R.D. Laing, one of the best-known psychiatrists of modern times, was born in Glasgow in 1927 and graduated from Glasgow University as a doctor of medicine. In the 1960's he developed the argument that there may be a benefit in allowing acute mental and emotional turmoil in depth to go on and have its way, and that the outcome of such turmoil could have a positive value. He was the first to put such a stand to the test by establishing, with others, residences where persons could live and be free to let happen what will when the acute psychosis is given free rein, or where, at the very least, they receive no treatment they do not want. This work with the Philadelphia Association since 1964, together with his focus on disturbed and disturbing types of interaction in institutions, groups and families, has been both influential and continually controversial. R.D. Laing's writings range from books on social theory to verse, as well as numerous articles and reviews in scientific journals and the popular press. His publications are: The Divided Self, Self and Others, Interpersonal Perception (with H. Phillipson and A. Robin Lee), Reason and Violence (introduced by Jean-Paul Sartre), Sanity, Madness and the Family (with A. Esterson), The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise, Knots, The Politics of the Family, The Facts of Life, Do You Love Me?, Conversations with Children, Sonnets, The Voice of Experience and Wisdom, Madness and Folly. R.D. Laing died in 1989. Anthony Clare, writing in the Guardian, said of him: "His major achievement was that he dragged the isolated and neglected inner world of the severely psychotic individual out of the back ward of the large gloomy mental hospital and on to the front pages of influential newspapers, journals and literary magazines... Everyone in contemporary psychiatry owes something to R.D. Laing."

Inside This Book

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First Sentence
The term schizoid refers to an individual the totality of whose experience is split in two main ways: in the first place, there is a rent in his relation with his world and, in the second, there is a disruption of his relation with himself. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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5.0 out of 5 starsCompassionate and Insightful
By A Customer on 26 Mar. 2006
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
I am not in the medical profession, however, do struggle with my own and other family members' mental health problems. Until now, I had never read a description or analysis of the process of schizophrenia which seemed to be true of what I have personally witnessed. Laing has utmost regard for patients and a real interest in trying to understand them. Unlike most of the psychiatric world which is now hung up on diagnosis and categorisations above all else and at the cost of the individual's needs. I feel better equipped and more able to understand what mental processes the concept of schizophrenia is founded upon, and as such, less resistant to psychiatry in general.
2 Comments 48 of 48 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
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5.0 out of 5 starsprofound and humane
By steven garside on 30 Oct. 2001
Format: Paperback
There is little specific to say about this book beyond what has already been noted in the previous excellent and lengthy review. All I can do is re-itterate that Laing provides the most powerful, moving and utterly convincing account of the causes and development of mental illness.
The most important contribution of Laing is that he has shown mental illness to be an extreme outcome of our UNIVERSAL anxiety about 'being in the world' and of inter-acting with others. As such, he gives the mentally ill a dignity, humanity and sense of 'normalcy' denied them by both medical psychiatry and traditional Freudian and neo-Freudian psychotherapy. This is a book which did and continues to change minds and lives. It simply must be read by anyone interested in psychology, social science and the human condition.
For those persuaded by its thesis I would also strongly recommend the work of Ernest Becker who draws on many of the insights of Laing and other writers in the existential-psychotherapy tradition. In particular search out his 'Revolution in Psychiatry' and 'The Denial Of Death'.
Comment 61 of 62 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
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5.0 out of 5 starsAn excellent existential account of madness
By A Customer on 26 Jun. 2001
Format: Paperback
The Divided Self - by R. D. Laing
This book constitutes the definitive attempt to provide an existential account of madness. The traditional approach to understanding madness sees it as a clinical entity, largely divorced from any relevance to the personal or social aspects of the suffering person's life
This book is probably the most intelligent and in depth attack on such a position. Laing argues that madness is not due to chemical imbalances in the brain or any organic disease, and any attempt to understand madness as a pathological process is doomed to failure because it inevitably treats the patient as an object. The book is a logically developed and sustained argument that madness can only be comprehended as the desperate attempts of the individual to integrate their own fragmenting psychological structure. Although the failure to do so is the almost inevitable result, leading ultimately to madness. seen from an existential perspective the process is understandable.
Laing himself puts it "...its basic purpose is to make madness, and the process of going mad comprehensible". Laing achieves this purpose brilliantly through the use of case studies. The greatest achievement of the book, I think, is the way in which Laing explains to the reader how, gradually and systematically, a suffering individual "progresses" from a schizoid, but sane state of mind to a schizophrenic, insane state of mind.
Laing's description of this process is both poignant and tragic. The reader is left with a profound insight into the world of madness, the nature of which I have not come across anywhere else. As a consequence of Laing's existential analysis, an explanation of delusions becomes possible, which is consistent, relevant and faithful to the suffering individual's experience.Read more ›
1 Comment 77 of 80 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
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5.0 out of 5 starsX Ray Eyes
By Dr. Delvis Memphistopheles TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE VOICE on 15 Jun. 2012
Format: Paperback
A book that has stood the test of time extremely well, as Laing operated in the dark ages and beamed a light forward, sometimes it roared as a brazier but often shone with the flicker of a match.

Searing all preconceptions, he took away the certainties of madness to replace it with vagaries. No longer a fixed problem, madness now became subjective, something negotiated between doctor patient and the outside world.

Laing believed that people were psychotic and schizophrenic, it's just he did not believe there was an illness as such, but a condition, a reaction to the world. When the ontological security becomes shattered by an extreme event, outside the norm then the uncertainties of the universe rush in, showing how reality taken for granted and upheld as a norm is inherently fragile.

As it shatters externally so it fragments internally, into small silent pieces. Madness is a retreat into the inner citadel to cope with the fragmentation.

Other issues he touches upon is being born without being loved and the struggle that ensues to try and find meaning and the problems that result when this is no longer present, the person wears a mask and pretends.

Incorporates a devastating critique of science as a belief system along with various cse studies. Laing takes apart commonly held believes, holds them up for inspection and then places them back. The world is never the same again.

He exhibits a ferocious intelligence building on Fromm Reichmann, Sartre, Jaspers, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Janet, Kafka to create a tour de force. The concepts may appear alien depending on the brute ideologies inculcated beforehand, but once understood, Laing offers a pair of X Ray eyes to see the world as it is, not how it wants to appear.

Therefore only for those who want to break on through to the other side
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