Ronald David Laing Knihy

Člověk v pozici outsidera, který se odcizil sám sobě a společnosti, nemůže prožívat sebe samého či ostatní jako „skutečné“. Vytváří si falešné self, přes které se konfrontuje s vnějším světem i s vlastním zoufalstvím. Dezintegrace jeho skutečného self jde ruku v ruce s rostoucím pocitem neskutečnosti jeho falešného self, až do bodu, kdy se v podobě akutního schizofrenního zhroucení dezintegruje celá osobnost. Na případových studiích schizofrenních pacientů autor nejen objasňuje tuto problematiku, ale předkládá vizi duševního zdraví a nemoci jako „stupňů spojení či odpojení dvou lidí, kdy jeden je na základě obecného mínění zdráv“.

Kniha poetickou formou přibližuje vzorce chování lidí. Autorem je psychiatr, který ve své době otřásl vžitými názory na možnosti psychiatrické pomoci a který prosazoval humánní přístup k pacientům.

Madmen were once thought to be possessed by the devil: only very slowly has the clinical approach superseded that idea. Sanity, Madness and the Family may well come to be seen as a classic of psychiatry just because it invites an equally radical change in our view of madness. To prepare this human and readable report Drs Laing and Esterson conducted and recorded (on tape) a series of interviews, during a period of 5 years, with 11 patients who had been authoritatively diagnosed as 'schizophrenic': the novel aspect of their investigation was that parents and relatives of the patients, in all possible combinations, were drawn into these interviews. In this way the authors dramatically exposed the cross-currents of affection, hatred, and indifference within the family, frequently displaying the ugly sight of children being brainwashed by parents. Their study throws doubt on the traditional view of schizophrenia as an illness with specific symptoms and its own pathology: it suggests rather that some forms of madness may largely be social creations and many of their symptoms no more than the tortured ruses of people struggling to live in unlivable situations.

In 1958, while working at the Tavistock, John Bowlby introduced Laing to Gregory Bateson's double bind theory of schizophrenia. Intrigued, Laing engaged another Glaswegian, Dr. Aaron Esterson, in an intensive phenomenological study of more than 100 families of diagnosed schizophrenics in the London area. In 1962, Laing travelled to meet Bateson and his co-workers in Palo Alto (and elsewhere across the U.S.A.) In 1964, Laing and Esterson published the results of their study in a brilliant and deeply disturbing book, Sanity, Madness & The Family, which John Bowlby described as the most important book about families in the 20th century.

To withstand the pressures of conformity we must understand how insidiously they attack. To develop genuine, creative relationships we must be aware of a person's capacity to inhibit, control or liberate another. In this study of the patterns of interaction between people r. Laing, author of The Divided Self, attempts to unravel some of the knots in which we unfailingly tie ourselves. Taking his examples both from literature and case material, he shows that every relationship implies definition of self by other and other by self and that if the self does not receive confirmation by the contacts with others, or if the attributions that others ascribe to it are contradictory, its position becomes untenable and it may break down. Cover design by Germano Facetti

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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.

A series of dialogue-scenarios, which can be read as poems or plays, describing the "knots" and impasses in various kinds of human relationships.

Essays by the renowned psychiatrist on that most central unit: the family. Notes, bibliography, index.