R.D. Laing A Personal View

This biography pieces together elements of Laing's life, re-evaluating this remarkable man's thought. In particular it addresses his ambivalence towards Freud; his unreconstructed Marxism; his love of Buddha - but his reconstructed Buddhism; his adoration of Nietzsche and Sartre - the only two 'contemporaries' he believed superior to himself; and the ideas he developed through his own experience of working with himself and his patients. His behaviour could range from peacefulness and enlightenment to violence. But he could always be trusted to be none but himself - tender, compassionate, cruel, vindictive, sober or drunk, muddle-headed and/or profoundly perceptive and original, tearful and morose, joyous and contented.