The author of this collection of essays espouses a number of
radical concepts. For instance, he maintains that psychosis is
really a transcendental experience, a trip to a world of released
libido that ends in an existential rebirth, and that our idea of
normal is "a form of destructive action on experience" - that to be
normal is to be absurd. Our educative process is likened to the
force-feeding of a goose, making us brutal, half-crazed creatures.
The author concludes from statistics that "we are driving our
children mad more effectively than we are genuinely educating
them," and that psychoanalysis as we know it is a "degradation
ceremonial" that can culminate in depriving us of our civil
liberties. Madness is, in other words, a political experience, of
this time, that place. Exasperated by our society's narrow
definition of normality which inhibits the interior life, R.D.
Laing has some arresting things to say. The general reader may find
the occasional forays into phenomenology so much gobbledegook, and
may be somewhat put off by the author's own flamboyant rhetoric,
but this book is potentially disturbing and exciting reading.
(Kirkus Reviews)
In 'The Politics of Experience' and the visionary 'Bird of
Paradise', R.D. Laing shows how the straitjacket of conformity
imposed on us all leads to intense feelings of alienation and a
tragic waste of human potential. He throws into question the notion
of normality, examines schizophrenia and psychotherapy,
transcendence and 'us and them' thinking, and illustrates his ideas
with a remarkable case history of a ten-day psychosis. 'We are
bemused and crazed creatures,' Laing suggests. This outline of 'a
thoroughly self-conscious and self-critical human account of man'
represents a major attempt to understand our deepest dilemmas and
sketch in solutions. 'Everyone in contemporary psychiatry owes
something to R.D. Laing' Anthony Clare, the Guardian.
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