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The Wing of Madness - The Life and Work of R.D. Laing (Paperback, New Ed)
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The Wing of Madness - The Life and Work of R.D. Laing (Paperback, New Ed)
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Burston (The Legacy of Erich Fromm, not reviewed) reevaluates the
controversial, best-selling "anti-psychiatrist" of the '60s,
explicating his controversial theories and tracing his
deterioration into quackery and alcoholism in the years before his
death in 1989. Burston (Psychology/Duquesne Univ.) sets out Laing's
confused and miserable life before he tries to reappraise his work.
After an unhappy, impoverished childhood in Glasgow, with a distant
father and an uncaring mother - apparently a borderline psychotic -
the brilliant young Laing flourished at university, eventually
choosing psychiatry as his profession. Laing's apprenticeship
occurred at a time when lobotomies and insulin comas were applied
regularly as treatments for mental problems, and the practices
appalled him. Laing became further disillusioned with his
profession during his compulsory military service, when he was
given the job of determining if soldiers were sane enough to fight
in the Korean War. Combining Freudian theories and existentialism,
Laing's first works, The Divided Self (1960), Self and Others
(1961), and Sanity, Madness and the Family (1964), stressed the
burden of insanity on the families of those afflicted and on
society, albeit with sympathy, even respect, for the insane. His
more strident works, such as The Politics of Experience (1967),
which asserted that society itself was dangerously delusional, made
him one of the gurus of the rebellious '60s. The following decades,
however, brought only personal, professional, and financial
setbacks until he finished by espousing prenatal memory and
"rebirthing" techniques. Burston cogently places Laing among the
heated debates within psychoanalysis, and he offers a careful
reading of Laing's theories. As for contributions to psychiatric
care, Burston's case for the relevance of Laing's therapy commune
for today's community care is less convincing. If the biographical
side verges on special pleading, Burston's critique of Laing's
writings manages to salvage some philosophical cohesion, though not
quite enough to offset the sad record of Laing's peculiar life and
headlong decline. (Kirkus Reviews)
Daniel Burston chronicles Laing's meteoric rise to fame as one of
the first media psycho-gurus of the century, and his spiraling
decline in the late seventies and eighties. Here are the successes:
Laing's emergence as a unique voice on the psychiatric scene with
his first book, The Divided Self, in 1960; his forthright and
articulate challenges to conventional wisdom on the origins,
meaning, and treatment of mental disturbances; his pioneering work
on the families of schizophrenics, Sanity, Madness and the Family
(coauthored with A. Esterson). Here as well are Laing's more
dubious moments, personal and professional, including the bizarre
experiment with psychotic patients at Kingsley Hall. Burston traces
many of Laing's controversial ideas and therapeutic innovations to
a difficult childhood and adolescence in Glasgow and troubling
experiences as an army doctor; he also offers a measured assessment
of these ideas and techniques. The R. D. Laing who emerges from
these pages is a singular combination of skeptic and visionary, an
original thinker whose profound contradictions have eclipsed the
true merit of his work. In telling his story, Burston gives us an
unforgettable portrait of an anguished human being and, in
analyzing his work, recovers Laing's achievement for posterity.
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