Rating: 
Summary: Understanding the process of 'breaking down'
Review: This book is probably one of the most important books of our times, particularly in that it advanced the way we look at and seek to understand ourselves. It has received widespread acclaim, but now has fallen a little bit by the wayside and this is a huge pity. In terms of understanding what it means to be human, and the central characteristics of the human condition I would rank it with Freud's Interpretation of Dreams (although it is by no means an explicitly Freudian book, many parts recall Freud as an influence). Although it deals explicitly with madness, and breakdown, its ideas and concepts resonate far beyond this enclosure. Laing succeeds in communicating his own insights into madness in a clear intelligent way.He utilises the works of diverse existential philosophers to examine the process by which one becomes mad, the 'fronts' (Goffman), or 'false selves' (Laing) we utilise in our everyday lives are, for Laing, the source of breakdown. Into this Laing incorporates a phenomenolgical analysis which looks at the interpersonal context of breakdown. Rather that taking the traditional biological determinist route favoured by psychiatry, Laing looks at the social situations in which madness emerges. This book gave me profound insights into what it means to be mad, but more importantly, I learned first and foremost what it means to be human. This book is a must-read for annybody who has ever experienced, encountered, or even has a passing interest in madness.
Rating:
Summary: Inside the world of the psychotic
Review: This is Ronald Laing's brilliant first work, written by the eminent psychiatrist at the tender young age of 28. I must say that it contains one of the most eloquent and compassionate descriptions of the process by which an individual retreats from the world of consensual experience and enters the fantastic world of psychosis. Laing provides a detailed theory of this process in his dichotomy between the "false" and "real" selves (based on the existentialist notions of inauthentic and authentic existence, respectively). (Laing explains that the "false self" is best thought of as a "system of false selves".) Beginning with the eccentric neurotic and "schizoid" individuals, Laing explains how these individuals, from a sense of ontological insecurity, progress into the schizophrenic stage of acute psychosis. He harvests the profound insights of existential philosophers (Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, et al) and applies them to his psychoanalysis. While I find his explanations of the schizoid individual pretty compelling, they become more and more difficult to follow as he approaches the schizophrenic stage. (In fact, the last case presented in his book of chronic schizophrenia, "The Ghost of the Weed Garden", is downright depressing, and his idea of the schizophrenogenic family (as opposed to schizophrenogenic mother) of this girl seems somewhat unfair to the family members of this chronically psychotic individual.) Most people today would agree that schizophrenia (or "the schizophrenias", whatever the disease/s is/are) is best explained in terms of physiology; however, Laing offers an excellent existential analysis of the "illness" and provides insight into the unique perspectives of the borderline psychotic and psychotic individuals. All in all, this is a beautiful exposition of the schizoid/schizophrenic mode of being-in-the-world.
| 
