Ronald David Laing

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Ronald David Laing

Ronald David Laing (7 October 1927 – 23 August 1989), was a Scottish

Scotland

conventional_long_name = ScotlandAlba|common_name= Scotland|image_flag = Flag of Scotland.svg|flag_width = 130px...
psychiatrist

Psychiatrist

A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry and is certified in treating mental disorders. All psychiatrists are trained in diagnostic evaluation and in psychotherapy....
who wrote extensively on mental illness

Mental illness

A mental disorder or mental illness is a psychological or behavioral pattern that occurs in an individual and is thought to cause distress or disability that is not expected as part of normal development or culture....
in particular, the experience of psychosis

Psychosis

Psychosis , with adjective psychotic, literally means abnormal condition of the mind, and is a generic psychiatry term for a mental state often described as involving a "loss of contact with reality"....
. Laing's views on the causes and treatment of serious mental disfunction, greatly influenced by existential philosophy, ran counter to the psychiatric orthodoxy of the day by taking the expressed feelings of the individual patient or client as valid descriptions of lived experience rather than simply as symptoms of some separate or underlying disorder.

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Quotations

Alienation as our present destiny is achieved only by outrageous violence perpetrated by human beings on human beings.

Children do not give up their innate imagination, curiosity, dreaminess easily. You have to love them to get them to do that.

If I don't know I don't know, I think I know. If I don't know I know I know, I think I don't know.

Insanity - a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.

Life is a sexually transmitted disease and the mortality rate is one hundred percent.

Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through. It is potential liberation and renewal as well as enslavement and existential death.

Encyclopedia

Ronald David Laing (7 October 1927 – 23 August 1989), was a Scottish

Scotland

conventional_long_name = ScotlandAlba|common_name= Scotland|image_flag = Flag of Scotland.svg|flag_width = 130px...
psychiatrist

Psychiatrist

Mental illness

Psychosis

Anti-psychiatry

See also: Biopsychiatry controversyAnti-psychiatry usually refers to a movement that emerged in the 1960s hostile to most of the fundamental assumptions and common practices of psychiatry....
movement, he himself rejected the label as such, as did certain others critical of conventional psychiatry at the time.

Early years

Laing was born in the Govanhill

Govanhill

Govanhill is a district in the Scotland city of Glasgow. It is situated south of the River Clyde between the Gorbals, Mount Florida and Queen's Park, Glasgow....
district of Glasgow

Glasgow

Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and List of largest United Kingdom settlements by population in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's Scottish Lowlands....
on 7 October 1927 to David Park MacNair Laing and Amelia Glen Laing (née Kirkwood) . He was educated at Hutchesons' Grammar School

Hutchesons' Grammar School

Hutchesons' Grammar School is a coeducation fee-paying school in Glasgow, Scotland. It was founded by the brothers George and Thomas in 1641 and was opened originally to teach orphans, starting with "12 boys on the roll"....
, going on to study medicine

Medicine

Medicine is the art and science of healing. It encompasses a range of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
at the University of Glasgow

University of Glasgow

The University of Glasgow was founded in 1451, in Glasgow, Scotland, and, along with its contemporary institution, the University of St Andrews, it formed the Kingdom of Scotland's equivalent to Oxbridge....
failing his exams on his first attempt, in 1950, but passing in a subsequent re-sit.

Career

Laing spent a couple of years as a psychiatrist in the British Army

British Army

The British Army is the Army branch of the British Armed Forces. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdoms of Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707....
(Royal Army Medical Corps

Royal Army Medical Corps

The Royal Army Medical Corps is a specialist corps in the British Army which provides medical services to all British Army personnel and their families in war and in peace....
; drafted despite his asthma

Asthma

Asthma is a common chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, in which the Lung constrict, become inflammation, and are lined with excessive amounts of thickened mucus, often in response to one or more triggers....
that made him unfit for combat

Combat

Combat, or fighting, is purposeful violence conflict intended to establish dominance over the opposition.The term "combat" typically refers to armed conflict between military forces in warfare, whereas the more general term "fighting" can refer to any violent conflict....
), where he found an interest in communicating with mentally distressed people. In 1953 Laing left the Army and worked at Gartnavel Royal Hospital

Gartnavel Royal Hospital

Gartnavel Royal Hospital is a mental health facility based in the west end of Glasgow, Scotland. It provides inpatient psychiatric care for the population of the West of the City; covering Hillhead, Partick, Scotstoun, Yoker, Clydebank, Drumchapel, Bearsden and Milngavie....
, Glasgow. During this period he also participated in an existentialism-oriented discussion group in Glasgow, organised by Karl Abenheimer and Joe Schorstein. In 1956 Laing went on to train on a grant at the Tavistock Clinic

Tavistock Institute

The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations is a British charity concerned with group behaviour and organisational behaviour. It was launched in 1946, when it separated from the Tavistock Clinic....
in London, widely known as a centre for the study and practice of psychotherapy

Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy is an intentional interpersonal relationship used by trained psychotherapists to aid a wiktionary:Client in problems of living. It aims to increase the individual's sense of health and reduce their subjective sense of discomfort....
(particularly psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is a body of ideas developed by Austrian physician Sigmund Freud and his followers, which is devoted to the study of human psychological functioning and behaviour....
). At this time, he was associated with John Bowlby

John Bowlby

John Bowlby was a United Kingdom psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, notable for his interest in child development and his pioneering work in attachment theory....
, D. W. Winnicott

Donald Winnicott

Donald Woods Winnicott was a pediatrician and psychoanalyst....
and Charles Rycroft

Charles Rycroft

Charles Frederick Rycroft was a British psychologist and a well-known author. For most of his career he had a private psychiatric practice in London....
. He remained at the Tavistock Institute

Tavistock Institute

The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations is a British charity concerned with group behaviour and organisational behaviour. It was launched in 1946, when it separated from the Tavistock Clinic....
until 1964.

In 1965, Laing and a group of colleagues created the Philadelphia Association

Philadelphia Association

The Philadelphia Association is a United Kingdom "charity concerned with the understanding and relief of mental suffering." It was founded in 1965 by the psychiatrist and psychoanalyst R....
and started a psychiatric community project at Kingsley Hall

Kingsley Hall

Kingsley Hall is a community centre in the East End of London. It dates back to the work of Doris Lester and Muriel Lester, who had a nursery school in nearby Bruce Road....
, where patients and therapists lived together. The Norwegian author Axel Jensen

Axel Jensen

Axel Buchardt Jensen was a Norway author. From 1957 until 2002 he published both fiction and non-fiction texts which include novels, poems, essays, a biography, manuscripts for cartoons and animated films....
became a close friend and Laing often visited him onboard his ship, Shanti Devi

Shanti Devi

Shanti Devi is a schooner previously owned by famous Norway author Axel Jensen and his Indian wife Pratibha. They lived on board for many years until 1990....
, in Stockholm

Stockholm

is the capital and largest city of Sweden. It is the site of the national Swedish Government of Sweden, the Parliament of Sweden, and the official residence of the Swedish Monarchy of Sweden....
. Much of Laing's behaviour at Kingsley Hall at this period would in current practice be cited as unethical; he, his colleagues and his patients experimented with LSD

LSD

Lysergic acid diethylamide, LSD, LSD-25, or acid, is a semisynthetic psychedelic drug of the ergoline family. Its unusual psychological effects, which include visuals of colored patterns behind the eyes in the mind, a sense of time distorting, and crawling geometric patterns, have made it one of the most widely known psyched...
and Laing encouraged some female patients to sleep with him. He also argued against the use of pharmaceuticals to control psychotic symptoms

Inspired by the work of American psychotherapist Elizabeth Fehr, Laing began to develop a team offering 'rebirthing workshops' in which one designated person chooses to re-experience the struggle of trying to break out of the birth canal represented by the remaining members of the group who surround him/her.

Laing and "anti-psychiatry"

Laing is regarded as an important figure in the anti-psychiatry

Anti-psychiatry

David Cooper (psychiatrist)

South Africa psychiatrist Dr. David G. Cooper was a noted theorist and leader in the anti-psychiatry movement , along with R. D. Laing, Thomas Szasz and Michel Foucault....
, though he never denied the value of treating mental distress. He wanted to challenge the core values of a psychiatry which considers mental illness as primarily a biological phenomenon, of no social, intellectual or political significance.

Laing was a critic of psychiatric diagnosis, arguing that diagnosis of a mental disorder contradicted accepted medical procedure: diagnosis was made on the basis of behavior or conduct, and examination and ancillary tests that traditionally precede diagnosis of viable pathologies like broken bones or pneumonia occurred after (if at all) the diagnosis of mental disorder. Hence, according to Laing, psychiatry was founded on a false epistemology: illness diagnosed by conduct but treated biologically.

The fact that medical doctors had annexed mental disorders did not mean they were practicing medicine; hence, the popular term "medical model of mental illness" is oxymoronic, since, according to Laing, diagnosis of mental illness did not follow the traditional medical model. The notion that biological psychiatry

Biological psychiatry

Biological psychiatry, or biopsychiatry is an approach to psychiatry that aims to understand mental disorder in terms of the biology function of the nervous system....
is a real science or a genuine branch of medicine has been challenged by other critics

Anti-psychiatry

Personal life

Laing's personal life can be seen as an extreme example of how each generation of a family has consequences for the next. His parents led a life of extreme denial, exhibiting bizarre behaviour. His father David, an electrical engineer, seems often to have come to blows with his own brother, and himself had a breakdown when Laing was a teenager. His mother Amelia was described as "still more psychologically peculiar". According to one friend and neighbour, "everyone in the street knew she was mad".

Laing was troubled by his own personal problems, suffering from both episodic alcoholism

Alcoholism

Alcoholism is a term with multiple and sometimes conflicting definitions to describe the detrimental effects of alcohol intake.In common and historic usage, alcoholism refers to any condition that results in the continued consumption of alcoholic beverages despite health problems and negative social consequences....
and clinical depression

Clinical depression

Major depressive disorder is a mental disorder characterized by a pervasive depression , low self-esteem, and anhedonia in normally enjoyable activities....
, according to his self-diagnosis in his 1983 BBC Radio interview with Dr. Anthony Clare

Anthony Clare

Anthony Ward Clare was an Irish psychiatrist well-known in the UK and Ireland as a presenter of programmes about psychiatry on BBC TV and Radio....
, although he reportedly was free of both in the years before his death. He died at age 61 of a heart attack

Myocardial infarction

Myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when the Blood flow to part of the heart is interrupted. This is most commonly due to occlusion of a coronary artery following the rupture of a Vulnerable plaque, which is an unstable collection of lipids and white blood cells in the wall of an artery....
while playing tennis with his colleague and dear friend Robert W. Firestone.

Laing fathered six sons and four daughters by four women. His son Adrian, speaking in 2008 said, "It was ironic that my father became well-known as a family psychiatrist, when, in the meantime, he had nothing to do with his own family."

Adam, his oldest son by his second marriage, was found dead in May 2008, in a tent on a Mediterranean island, following what might have been a "suicidal binge" following the breakup of a long-term relationship with his girlfriend Janina. He died of a heart attack aged 41.

His daughter Susan died in March 1976 aged 21 of leukemia.

Works

On mental illness

Laing argued that the strange behavior and seemingly confused speech of people undergoing a psychotic

Psychosis

Psychosis , with adjective psychotic, literally means abnormal condition of the mind, and is a generic psychiatry term for a mental state often described as involving a "loss of contact with reality"....
episode were ultimately understandable as an attempt to communicate worries and concerns, often in situations where this was not possible or not permitted. Laing stressed the role of society, and particularly the family

Family

Family denotes a group of people affiliated by a common ancestry, affinity or co-residence. Although the concept of consanguinity originally referred to relations by "blood," some cultural anthropology have argued that one must understand the idea of "blood" metaphorically, and that many societies understand 'family' through other concepts r...
, in the development of "madness" (his term). He argued that individuals can often be put in impossible situations, where they are unable to conform to the conflicting expectations of their peers, leading to a "lose-lose situation" and immense mental distress for the individuals concerned. (In 1956, in Palo Alto, Gregory Bateson

Gregory Bateson

Gregory Bateson was a United Kingdom anthropology, social sciences, linguistics, semiotics and cybernetics whose work intersected that of many other fields....
and his colleagues Paul Watzlawick

Paul Watzlawick

Paul Watzlawick, Ph.D was a theoretician in Communication theory and Constructivist epistemology#Radical constructivism and has commented in the fields of family therapy and general psychotherapy....
, Donald Jackson

Donald deAvila Jackson

Don D. Jackson was an United States psychiatrist best known for his pioneering work in family therapy.From 1947 to 1951 he studied under Harry Stack Sullivan....
, and Jay Haley

Jay Haley

Jay Douglas Haley was one of the more influential psychotherapy of the 20th century. He was one of the founding figures of brief therapy and family therapy and one of the more accomplished teachers, supervisors, and authors in these disciplines....
articulated a related theory of schizophrenia as stemming from double bind

Double bind

Catharsis

Catharsis is a Ancient Greek word meaning "purification", "cleansing" or "clarification." It is derived from the infinitive verb of Transliteration as kathairein "to purify, purge," and adjective katharos "pure or clean."...
and trans-formative experience.

Psychiatrist and philosopher Karl Jaspers

Karl Jaspers

Karl Theodor Jaspers was a Germany psychiatrist and philosopher who had a strong influence on modern theology, psychiatry and philosophy. Trained in and practiced psychiatry, Jaspers later turned to philosophical inquiry and attempted to discover an innovative philosophical system....
had previously pronounced, in his work General Psychopathology, that many of the symptoms of mental illness (and particularly of delusion

Delusion

A delusion is commonly defined as a fixed false belief and is used in everyday language to describe a belief that is either false, fanciful or derived from deception....
s) were "un-understandable", and therefore were worthy of little consideration except as a sign of some other underlying primary disorder. Laing saw psychopathology

Psychopathology

Psychopathology is a term which refers to either the study of mental illness or mental distress, or the manifestation of behaviours and experiences which may be indicative of mental illness or psychological impairment, such as abnormal, maladaptive behavior or mental activity....
as being seated not in biological or psychic organs – whereby environment is relegated to playing at most only an accidental role as immediate trigger of disease (the "stress diathasis model" of the nature and causes of psychopathology) – but rather in the social cradle, the urban home, which cultivates it, the very crucible in which selves are forged. This re-evaluation of the locus of the disease process – and consequent shift in forms of treatment – was in stark contrast to psychiatric orthodoxy (in the broadest sense we have of ourselves as psychological subjects and pathological selves). Laing was revolutionary in valuing the content of psychotic behavior and speech as a valid expression of distress, albeit wrapped in an enigmatic language of personal symbolism which is meaningful only from within their situation. According to Laing, if a therapist can better understand his or her patient, the therapist can begin to make sense of the symbolism of the patient's psychosis, and therefore start addressing the concerns which are the root cause of the distress.

Laing expanded the view of the "double bind

Double bind

A double bind is a dilemma in communication in which an individual receives two or more conflicting messages, with one message negating the other; a situation in which successfully responding to one message means failing with the other and vice versa, so that the person will be automatically wrong regardless of response....
" hypothesis put forth by Bateson and other anthropologists, and came up with a new concept to describe the highly complex situation that unfolds in the process of "going mad" - an "incompatible knot". Laing compared this to a situation where your right hand can exist but your left hand cannot. In this untenable position, something has got to give, and more often than not, what gives is psychological stability; a self-destruction sequence is set in motion.

Laing never denied the existence of mental illness, but viewed it in a radically different light from his contemporaries. For Laing, mental illness could be a trans-formative episode whereby the process of undergoing mental distress was compared to a shamanic journey. The traveler could return from the journey with (supposedly) important insights, and may have become (in the views of Laing and his followers) a wiser and more grounded person as a result. This was consistent with the critique of the alleged dubious validity of "value judgements" prevalent in Western society, which was common amongst academics in the 1960s and 1970s (for example, the views of Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault was a French philosophy, historian, intellectual, Critical theory and sociologist. He held a chair at the Coll?ge de France with the title "History of Systems of Thought," and also taught at the University of California, Berkeley....
).

Ontological insecurity, family nexus, and the double-bind

In The Divided Self (1960), Laing contrasted the experience of the "ontologically secure

Ontological security

Ontological security is a stable mental state derived from a sense of continuity in regard to the events in one's life. Anthony Giddens refers to ontological security as a sense of order and continuity in regard to an individual?s experiences....
" person with that of a person who "cannot take the realness, aliveness, autonomy and identity of himself and others for granted" and who consequently contrives strategies to avoid "losing his self". Laing explains how we all exist in the world as beings, defined by others who carry a model of us in their heads, just as we carry models of them in our heads. In later writings he often takes this to deeper levels, laboriously spelling out how "A knows that B knows that A knows that B knows ..."! Our feelings and motivations derive very much from this condition of "being in the world" in the sense of existing for others, who exist for us. Without this we suffer "ontological insecurity", a condition often expressed in terms of "being dead" by people who are clearly still physically alive.

In Self and Others (1961), Laing's definition of normality shifted somewhat.

In Sanity, Madness and the Family (1964), Laing and Esterton give accounts of several families, analysing how their members see each other and what they actually communicate to each other. The startling way in which lies are perpetuated in the interest of family politics rings true to many readers from 'normal' families, and Laing's view is that in some cases these lies are so strongly maintained as to make it impossible for a vulnerable child to be able to determine what truth actually is, let alone what the truth of their situation is.

He uses the term 'family nexus

Family nexus

The term family nexus was used by the psychiatrist R D Laing to describe a common viewpoint held and reinforced by the majority of family members regarding events in the family and relationships with the world....
' to describe the consensus view within the family, but from there on much of his writing appears ambivalent, as Andrew Collier has pointed out in The Philosophy and Politics of Psychotherapy (with a contribution from Laing, 1977). One strand of Laing's thinking, traceable to Marx and Sartre, condemns society for shackling humankind against its will, taking away individual freedom. Left to their own devices, people are healthy, and people with so-called mental illness are just trying to find their way back to their natural state. This was the basis for his approach to psychotherapy, as in the case of his most famous "patient" Mary Barnes

Mary Barnes

Mary Edith Barnes was an England artist and writer who suffered from schizophrenia but recovered to become a successful painter. She is particularly known for her documentation of her experience at Ronald David Laing's experimental therapeutic community at Kingsley Hall, London....
. An idea typical of his work is the following quote in his book, The Politics of Experience, "We are effectively destroying ourselves with violence masquerading as love."

A paradox arising from Laing's interpretations is that it is the very need for ontological security Laing discussed in his first book that is the driving force that builds societies. Laing characterised the family nexus as often placing children in a 'double bind', unable to obey conflicting injunctions from family members, but he does not 'blame' those family members. The family members are usually unaware that they are doing such things, and are just as confused as the children within the situation. The Preface to the Second Edition and Introduction to Sanity, Madness and the Family offer a concise articulation of this issue.

Influence

Laing's ideas are not currently generally espoused by the psychiatric establishment. Significant critiques of his ideas have been published by contemporary psychiatric authorities.. Lack of perceived success of "care in the community" programmes for the mental health patients in the UK, and the absence of clear evidence that patients can be practically assisted, or their lives significantly enhanced, by Laingian therapies, (especially without the use of pharmaceuticals), has impeded their acceptability.

In 1965 Laing co-founded the UK charity the Philadelphia Association

Philadelphia Association

The Philadelphia Association is a United Kingdom "charity concerned with the understanding and relief of mental suffering." It was founded in 1965 by the psychiatrist and psychoanalyst R....
, which he also chaired. His work influenced the wider movement of therapeutic communities

Therapeutic community

Therapeutic community is a term applied to a participative, group-based approach to long-term mental illness, personality disorders and drug addiction....
, operating in less "confrontational" (in a Laingian perspective) psychiatric settings. Other organizations created in a Laingian tradition are the Arbours Association and the New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling in London .

Selected bibliography

Laing, R.D. (1960) The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Laing, R.D. (1961) The Self and Others. London: Tavistock Publications.
Laing, R.D. and Esterson, A.
Aaron Esterson

Aaron Esterson was a British psychiatrist, practising in Glasgow.He was one of the founders of the Philadelphia Association along with R. D. Laing...
(1964) Sanity, Madness and the Family. London: Penguin Books.
Laing, R.D. and Cooper, D.G. (1964) Reason and Violence: A Decade of Sartre's Philosophy. (2nd ed.) London: Tavistock Publications Ltd.
Laing, R.D., Phillipson, H. and Lee, A.R. (1966) Interpersonal Perception: A Theory and a Method of Research. London: Tavistock.
Laing, R.D. (1967) The Politics of Experience and the Bird of Paradise. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Laing, R.D. (1970) Knots. London: Penguin. ,
Laing, R.D. (1971) The Politics of the Family and Other Essays. London: Tavistock Publications.
Laing, R.D. (1976) Do You Love Me? An Entertainment in Conversation and Verse New York: Pantheon Books.
Laing, R.D. (1976) Sonnets. London: Michael Joseph.
Laing, R.D. (1976) The Facts of Life. London: Penguin.
Laing, R.D. (1977) Conversations with Adam and Natasha. New York: Pantheon.
Laing, R.D. (1982) The Voice of Experience: Experience, Science and Psychiatry. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Laing, R.D. (1985) Wisdom, Madness and Folly: The Making of a Psychiatrist 1927-1957. London: Macmillan.
Mullan, B. (1995) Mad to be Normal: Conversations with R.D. Laing. London: Free Association Books
Free Association Books

Free Association Books is an innovative project started in 1980s London. It arose as the brainchild of Robert M. Young and colleagues, who, disillusioned by the decline of the liberatory movement, began a search using psychoanalysis to understand the problems of liberation....
.
Wlison A.N. (2008) Our Times. London:Hutchinson

Books on R.D. Laing

Boyers, R. and R. Orrill, Eds. (1971) Laing and Anti-Psychiatry. New York: Salamagundi Press.
Burston, D. (1996) The Wing of Madness: The Life and Work of R. D. Laing. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Burston, D. (2000) The Crucible of Experience: R.D. Laing and the Crisis of Psychotherapy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Clay, J. (1996) R.D. Laing: A Divided Self. London: Hodder & Stoughton.
Collier, A. (1977) R.D. Laing: The Philosophy and Politics of Psychotherapy. New York: Pantheon.
Evans, R.I. (1976) R.D. Laing, The Man and His Ideas. New York: E.P. Dutton.
Friedenberg, E.Z. (1973) R.D. Laing. New York: Viking Press.
Miller, G. (2004) R.D. Laing. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Laing, A. (1994) R.D. Laing: A Biography. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press.
Kotowicz, Z. (1997) R.D. Laing and the Paths of Anti-Psychiatry. London: Taylor & Francis.
Mullan, B., Ed. (1997) R.D. Laing: Creative Destroyer. London: Cassell & Co.
Mullan, B. (1999) R.D. Laing: A Personal View. London: Duckworth.
Raschid, S., Ed. (2005) R.D. Laing: Contemporary Perspectives. London: Free Association Books
Free Association Books

Free Association Books is an innovative project started in 1980s London. It arose as the brainchild of Robert M. Young and colleagues, who, disillusioned by the decline of the liberatory movement, began a search using psychoanalysis to understand the problems of liberation....
.
Russell, R. and R.D. Laing (1992) R.D. Laing and Me: Lessons in Love. New York: Hillgarth Press.

Films and Plays on R.D. Laing

Asylum (1972). A documentary directed by Peter Robinson showing Laing's psychiatric community project where patients and therapists lived together. Laing also appears in the film.

Did You Used to be R.D. Laing? (1989). A documentary by Kirk Tougas and Tom Shandel, produced by Third Mind Productions, Vancouver Canada. — Frequently drawing on stories from his own life, and from his patients' experiences, Laing presents his insight into the art of therapy, the lies we tell each other in the name of love, the recurring patterns of behaviour which sometimes can be traced to birth, and the regrettable human instinct to suppress any behaviour and thought which is strange or disturbing. A 90 minute portrait of the psychiatrist, philosopher, poet and prankster.

Did you used to be R.D. Laing? (2000 play). Edinburgh Festival Fringe Award winning play written and performed by Mike Maran.

External links

, Edited by Daniel Burston