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cubanpete's review
5.0
I visited Kingsley Hall about 4 years ago and knew of R.D.Laing before that, but only got round to reading something by him now. It's fascinating how his ideas about schizoid worldview are also, to a great degree, applicable to healthy people. I came to Divided Self with a view of studying schizophrenia and instead ended up studying myself. Laing's approach was a big step away from 'us and them' and towards 'mental-health-as-a-spectrum'. I'm not surprised he inspired so many psychiatrists. What a wonderful, empathetic man. Can't wait to read his more 'out there' books.
gray_reading's review against another edition
challenging
dark
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
5.0
bnj_otb's review against another edition
4.0
Tough but lucid. Leaves me with a desire for more exitential phenomenology
fth0tfitzgerald's review against another edition
Fin nok, men han gentager sig selv en del.
Jeg læste den pga. et tumbler opslag om Johan Liebert, jeg har stadig ikke set Monster.
Jeg læste den pga. et tumbler opslag om Johan Liebert, jeg har stadig ikke set Monster.
sl0w_reader's review against another edition
4.0
As an early and historic example of thinking about the 'insane' or 'mental illness' in a different (not medicalised) way, Laing has done the world a great service in bringing ideas about the nature of human being from the world of existential philosophy together with his experience of 'schizophrenic' individuals in the context of their families.
If you work as a therapist, I would suggest this is a must-read, even if you take issue with Laing's ideas about schizophrenia. Psychiatrists, on the other hand, shouldn't read it, because it will upset them if they don't credit his viewpoint, and upset them even more if they do.
Among its flaws, it does get a little too caught up still with psychiatric concepts and speculation that aren't rooted in phenomenology, but he makes a very good attempt to bring the latter to bear on his case material. And in places he's a somewhat repetitive writer - but that also helps to solidify the ideas he's trying to get across.
Overall, in this book he sounds like someone you'd like to have at your side if your mind really took a wander off the beaten track - with his apparent capacity for patient and careful listening and fearless compassion. I imagine very few psychiatrists of his day would have had the time, courage or skills for that, and even less so nowadays in their hyper-pharmacological paradigm of trying to quickly anaesthetise mental and existential distress with pills.
If you work as a therapist, I would suggest this is a must-read, even if you take issue with Laing's ideas about schizophrenia. Psychiatrists, on the other hand, shouldn't read it, because it will upset them if they don't credit his viewpoint, and upset them even more if they do.
Among its flaws, it does get a little too caught up still with psychiatric concepts and speculation that aren't rooted in phenomenology, but he makes a very good attempt to bring the latter to bear on his case material. And in places he's a somewhat repetitive writer - but that also helps to solidify the ideas he's trying to get across.
Overall, in this book he sounds like someone you'd like to have at your side if your mind really took a wander off the beaten track - with his apparent capacity for patient and careful listening and fearless compassion. I imagine very few psychiatrists of his day would have had the time, courage or skills for that, and even less so nowadays in their hyper-pharmacological paradigm of trying to quickly anaesthetise mental and existential distress with pills.