Name: The Divided Self
Rating: 4.166666666666667 (6 reviews)

Ronald David Laing

An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness

The Divided Self

R. Laing

First published in 1960, this watershed work aimed to make madness comprehensible, and in doing so revolutionized the way we perceive mental illness. Using case studies of patients he had worked with, psychiatrist R. D. Laing argued that psychosis is not a medical condition but an outcome of the �divided self�, or the tension between the two personas within us: one our authentic, private identity, and the other the false, �sane� self that we present to the world.

Tim Pendry

Laing still has his followers and his own work moved on somewhat from this 'classic' early text but, as the introduction to this edition by neuropsychiatrist Anthony David suggests, his 'insights' of the late 1950s into the causes of schizophrenia have not stood the professional test of time. This does not mean that he was wrong since we should always be wary of expert claims (they may be overturned a decade or more later) but only that the book is not likely to be useful to working psychologists rather than cultural historians and those 'searching for meaning'. The book should be seen as a humanist tract coming out of two intellectual trends - existentialist philosophy and psychotherapy. It still has value as insight into the trajectory of thought as our culture moved into the 'sixties'. It is still provocative in its working model of our own condition. The basic thesis is outlined with all the complex language of these two traditions, creating the paradox that an appeal to direct engagement with the problem of 'madness' beyond objectivity is couched in a rather sclerotic and often derivative language of 'given discourses'. Critics might also point out to Laing's well known personal instabilities and his inability to maintain his own family despite the costs that his own writings might have implied as far as his children were concerned. I am not going to go down that route. What is clear is that Laing is as divided as his objects of study in simultaneously trying to maintain some degree of scientific objectivity (while chafing against the theory) and 'sympathy' for the sufferers of mental breakdown. Sometimes it feels as if this book is his own psychotherapy. The best chapters (whatever the scientific validity) are the last two which give us evidence of one schizophrenic's [Joan] own assessment of their situation (helping Laing's thesis along the way) and a dreadful account of extreme suffering [Julie]. The book ends with no resolution, no suggestion of a cure or a treatment, just a description of a state of being with the barest suggestion of some hope that is barely justified by what has gone before. The book becomes, in the end, an intellectual exercise. To get to that point, Laing puts forward a theory of the dynamic between the 'false self' and the 'inner self' that is too complicated to summarise here but depends greatly on existentialism and phenomenology to carry its weight. I am not qualified to judge the validity of his work in relation to treatment matters. Perhaps there are insights that are being ignored by modern experts. However, I was not as a lay person persuaded that Laing had honestly been more than suggestive. He provides 'insufficient data'. The book becomes useful not because it tells us very much about schizophrenia that is useful (other than to confirm that it exists and is horrible) but because Laing is capturing (through the philosophy rather than his profession of psychiatry) some dark truths about our general condition. What I found useful was the existentialist 'mythology' that he develops out of a combination of his own discomfort, study. professional practice and the observed tragedy of people whose minds completely break down for whatever reason. What seems psychologically (at least as a means to treatment and cure) inadequate seems quite the opposite as a popularisation of the grim insights of the existentialist philosophers which have always struck me as both intrinsically true and socially unpalatable. This does not mean that it is a great work in any way because the great work in this area is to be found in the philosophers themselves - Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Sartre amongst others. The book is more in the tradition of Colin Wilson's 'The Outsider' as exposition of an 'ideology'. This is not to say that it is not an important historical text precisely because a tormented professional, faced by the horrors of madness, is attempting to find an answer and offers the last late flowering of existentialist thought as part of his tool kit (at least in this book). Having said that, the humanist aspects of his analysis are still valuable and they ring true. Laing has found something very askew in the way our consciousness can work, how families can twist things into crisis and minds can collapse in onto themselves like black holes. There is a lot of philosophy surrounding consciousness and a separate (continental) philosophy of our relation to being but less is done on the historical evolution and contingency of consciousness not just in individual human development but within humanity over time. Of course, the problem is that the data is often not there and what is there is skewed to extreme cases and literate elites (who mask their inner selves in any case as part of their means of retaining power). My intuition (no more) is that Laing was looking at a set of general truths about consciousness (which existential phenomenology provides) but then taking the contingent conditions of the nuclear family in the mid-twentieth century and over-egging his pudding as a result. Nevertheless, as I read the book, periodically I would find an insight that raised the potential fragility of my own sanity (and those around me) and how the process he describes could spin any of us under certain conditions (but there is surely a genetic issue of predisposition) into the abyss. Most of us, if we think about it, know that our inner self and our socialised self (centred initially on the family and its treatment of our autonomy) have some type of dynamic relationship that may not be unstable for everyone but could become very unstable and may result in miserable 'fixes'. From this perspective the book is still worth reading for its ability to 'shake up' our complacent beliefs that we have achieved reliable stability on the one hand or must accept our miserable 'fixes' or neuroses (designed to hold us together) as both given and inevitable on the other. Laing's description of minds becoming increasingly trapped in some sort of 'death in life' where a whole series of paradoxes, contradictions, failures of communications, ignorances and misunderstanding conspire to send someone into hell remains coherent and plausible. The book does not really answer why some people and not others, why some 'fixes' are creative, beneficial and part of personality (he alludes to William Blake suggestively) and some are disastrous and what can be done about it all. The book is not 'helpful' in that respect. Indeed, I think some people might be rather disturbed by the book in a way that is not at all helpful though I doubt if it would send anyone mad on its own. It is not Act II of 'The King in Yellow'. All in all, worth reading but less as psychology and more as thoughtful popular philosophy.

While most psychiatrist were busy trying to fix things, R.D. Laing was one of the few who sought to understand the human within, even though he labeled an anti-psychiatrist, controversial and couldn't save himself.

Back in 60s, psychiatry treated patients like machine, electric shocks, LSD, you name it, and often these methods worsened their condition. Laing was there as if asked radical question: "What if madness actually makes sense?"

With a deep interest in philosophy, Laing examined schizophrenic patients through an existential lens (Sartre and Heidegger) and argue that for some, the world is so terrifying and end up make them split into false self and true self to escape the fear oof being "engulf" by other people. Laing said that schizoid individual lacks ontological security and experiencing the world as a series of existential threats such as engulfment, implosion, and depersonalisation-pertification. To protect their fragile inner self, they build a false self system to interact with the world.

What I love about this book is how Laing uses philosophy to explain human condition, he doesn't provide a list of symptoms, but rather empathy. His work centres on ontological insecurity and even though it's a heavy material, it was written so clearly.

This book isn't perfect, of course, there are several weaknesses in it. Laing puts a lot of blame on family dynamics and society as the primary trigger for ontological insecurity and in doing so, he oversimplifies the complex interplay between brain chemistry and social environment.

A gut punch book, DS serves as a reminder that the line of normalcy is thin and even if you ain't struggling with a mental health crisis, Laing's insight is briliant and deeply empathetic/

While most psychiatrist were busy trying to fix things, R.D. Laing was one of the few who sought to understand the human within, even though he labeled an anti-psychiatrist, controversial and couldn't save himself.

Back in 60s, psychiatry treated patients like machine, electric shocks, LSD, you name it, and often these methods worsened their condition. Laing was there as if asked radical question: "What if madness actually makes sense?"

With a deep interest in philosophy, Laing examined schizophrenic patients through an existential lens (Sartre and Heidegger) and argue that for some, the world is so terrifying and end up make them split into false self and true self to escape the fear oof being "engulf" by other people. Laing said that schizoid individual lacks ontological security and experiencing the world as a series of existential threats such as engulfment, implosion, and depersonalisation-pertification. To protect their fragile inner self, they build a false self system to interact with the world.

What I love about this book is how Laing uses philosophy to explain human condition, he doesn't provide a list of symptoms, but rather empathy. His work centres on ontological insecurity and even though it's a heavy material, it was written so clearly.

This book isn't perfect, of course, there are several weaknesses in it. Laing puts a lot of blame on family dynamics and society as the primary trigger for ontological insecurity and in doing so, he oversimplifies the complex interplay between brain chemistry and social environment.

A gut punch book, DS serves as a reminder that the line of normalcy is thin and even if you ain't struggling with a mental health crisis, Laing's insight is briliant and deeply empathetic/

R. D. Laing

an existential study in sanity and madness

The divided self

WOW this is hands down the best book on psychosis i've ever read - finished in one night and i cannot believe it has taken me this long to get around to reading laing. brilliant and breathtaking and human and incredible... read me to absolute filth. so excited to get into this oeuvre

eris

Gavin

Dreadful bloody pseudoscience in the abscessed vein of Freud. Blames schizophrenia on strict parenting and then celebrates its completely disabling horror. 

See here for an illustrative anecdote about what this attitude did to patients in the 60s; see here and here for the actual long-term effect of parenting.

(view spoiler)[(it's not large). (hide spoiler)]

One good thing though: his idea of "ontological insecurity" as a distinctive debilitating state. I've met someone with a real case of this (a philosophical case) and it was as bad as you'd expect. But I doubt Laing ever did.

The Divided Self An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness

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