When I bought this book at a small used bookshop here in Seattle, the proprietor of the establishment told me, “Thirty years ago, I couldn’t keep this book on the shelf!” He said he would run through hundreds of copies of it and still need more; it was that popular!
In the almost forty years since this book came out (1967), a lot seems to have changed. If you mention the name R.D. Laing anymore, few people - if any - even know who he was, let alone what was so astonishing about his work that kept people in a buying frenzy and talking about it for years to come.
First getting into this book is a little bit difficult. Laing has sort of a peculiar writing style that goes to great lengths to delineate the relationships between people and to one another’s experiences. One of his big points is that we typically don’t interact with people, so much as we interact with their behavior. At the same time, they interact with our behavior - and the complexity arises in that the actual experience of another person is always occluded from us, always clothed in their behavior. It’s a seemingly simple point that he uses as an implement to slice apart everyday interactions between people, and finally society itself.
His work isn’t just philosophical meandering though. It has very vivid and useful concepts which are as true today as they were forty years ago. A nice sample comes from page 94:
All those people who seek to control the behavior of large numbers of other people work on the experiences of those other people. Once people can be induced to experience a situation in a similar way, they can be expected to behave in similar ways. Induce people all to want the same thing, hate the same thing, feel the same threat, then their behavior is already captive - you have acquired your consumers or your cannon-fodder.
Laing is also linked today with what’s referred to as the Anti-Psychiatry movement. His ideas, like those of others in this group challenged the prevailing notions of what mental illness really is. Laing seems to have believed that it was not really even illness at all, but a natural healing process. In fact, the ultimate and breath-taking conclusion of his book is that it is not the mentally ill individual who is sick at all, but it is the society itself. The society, he believed, was insane. To undergo a transformative inner experience, which we might refer to as mental illness, is in tune with the individual’s attempt to free herself of that insanity, and to become whole and sane herself.
Overall, a very worthwhile book to read if you’re interested in psychiatry, psychology, modern philosophy or the under-pinnings of the counter-culture of the 1960’s, 70’s and even today.
Comment by spiritual_recovery — June 8, 2006 @ 5:40 am
All those people who seek to control the behavior of large numbers of other people work on the experiences of those other people. Once people can be induced to experience a situation in a similar way, they can be expected to behave in similar ways. Induce people all to want the same thing, hate the same thing, feel the same threat, then their behavior is already captive - you have acquired your consumers or your cannon-fodder.
Something that continues to surprise me of late is the similarity between the f control and manipulation I see coming from various government sects and that which has historically been displayed in the treatment of the mentally ill. Perhaps this is because much of psychiatry is rooted in authority and control, this idea that “I know best so you should/will/must do as I say”. Any indication that you won’t is an indication of your illness. I find myself reflecting too, on the fact that long before the Nazi’s “rounded up” the Jews, they first exterminated the “mentally ill”.
When one considers the desires of the current administration to pre-screen all Americans for mental illness, the deception and greed surrounding the pharmaceutical industry (big pharma generated ten billion in sales last year and antipsychotic medication is now being routinely prescribed even to pre-school children), as coupled with the contract for detention centres across America that Halliburton managed to pick up… it’s apparent that what we think is of vital concern to many.
Comment by spiritual_recovery — June 9, 2006 @ 11:30 pm
Came across this tonight, I thought it fit well with the theme…
Eli Lilly, Zyprexa, & the Bush Family - The diseasing of our malaise
Comment by khephret — June 19, 2006 @ 9:53 pm
If you’re interested in finding out more about the antipsychiatry movement, you would do well to read the works of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Their works cover a number of different subjects, mainly because Deleuze was a philosopher and Guattari was a psychiatrist. They definitely were big fans of Laing. You might try reading the Anti-Oedipus:Capitalism & Schizophrenia, if you can get past the purposely obtuse writing style (they’re French).
-k
Comment by juno jones — June 20, 2006 @ 10:16 am
Oh yes, and if you do not conform to false middle class stereotypes you ARE crazy. Like many other mid-west middle-class kids in the punky ’80’s (and I’m sure it’s still going on today…) I went thru my tri-cyclics phase where all of my angst,anger, and deep depression about what adults had done, and were currently doing to this world was boiled down by psychiatrists into some kind of ‘rebellion against my parents’ and dismissed. I was lucky, tri-cyclics suck and I can read drug PDR’s (tardic dyskenesia anyone?) so I traded my drugs to people who had the chemistry to enjoy them for ones(like herb)I could enjoy. Another friend of mine went thru an institutionalization during this period. She remembers being fed nightmarish(literally)quantities of haldol while in this hospital. She finally realized that to get released, she had to dress ‘normally’ and begin wearing makeup,’doing’ her hair (of all things)and acting like a airhead because I guess the powers that be believe that normal teenage girls wear makeup, spend hours in the bathroom doing their hair and prattle incessantly about boys. Isn’t that what Betty and Veronica do? None of this asking authority, ‘What the F**K are you doing to us?’.
If you want to know more about the dangers (and dangerous appeal) of the current psychiatric drugs read a book called ‘Talking Back to Prozac’ sorry, I don’t remember the authors right off hand. All I know is that a ‘retrograde’ reaction to xanax makes you want to kill everyone then take yourself out. Thank gods some of us have extracurricular experience and can tell when it’s just the drugs talking…..
Comment by Jennifer Emick — June 21, 2006 @ 1:48 pm
You nailed it, Juno- I was ‘rebellious’ myself, absolutely disgusted and enraged by the apathy of society, I can’t tell you how many of my friends were institutionalized for ‘oppositional defiance disorder-’ IOW, for demanding of authority that it justify itself. It kills me that while psychoanalysis came about because people wanted to assist people in figuring themselves out, it’s now largely a mechanism for drugging people OUT of awareness. (not toi mention the terrible irony of referring to entheogens as ‘escapist’ and prozac as ‘medicine.’)
Comment by Black&Blue — June 21, 2006 @ 4:25 pm
“Another friend of mine went thru an institutionalization during this period. She remembers being fed nightmarish(literally)quantities of haldol while in this hospital. She finally realized that to get released, she had to dress ‘normally’”…
This reminds me of a book I re-read recently, called “Poker Without Cards” by Ben Mack. A great read that covers a lot of ground in a Transcript-style presentation. Psychology and Psychiatry are indicted on multiple grounds.
A PDF used to be available, may still be, and the book has now been commercially published as well.
Comment by dapperdan — June 22, 2006 @ 10:46 am
two words:thomas szasz.any books by the man will enlighten one.
Comment by Pop Occulture — June 22, 2006 @ 9:17 pm
Black&Blue: I have a long 2 part interview with the author of Poker Without Cards here and #2 here.
Comment by flawedplan — June 29, 2006 @ 11:57 am
Hi, I found this blog during my regularly scheduled Laing search, that was a great summation, maybe the best I’ve ever seen online and I get into these conversations on a ridiculous basis. I’ve never been here before, am off to take a look around, good show.
Pingback by The mind of which we are unaware - Pop Occulture Blog — July 7, 2006 @ 10:28 am
[…] RD Laing is super awesome, by the way. Check out my recent review of his book The Politics of Experience. Great book. Read Similar Articles: […]
Comment by hf — July 8, 2006 @ 11:04 am
Laing’s argument fascinates me. I agree with much of it, but I think it suffers from the Highlander fallacy. There Can Be Only One Cause!
Pingback by Film Noir and Censorship - Pop Occulture Magazine — July 26, 2006 @ 12:54 pm
[…] Consider this quote from psychologist R.D. Laing when you think about the purpose of mass media: All those people who seek to control the behavior of large numbers of other people work on the experiences of those other people. Once people can be induced to experience a situation in a similar way, they can be expected to behave in similar ways. Induce people all to want the same thing, hate the same thing, feel the same threat, then their behavior is already captive - you have acquired your consumers or your cannon-fodder. […]