Reading for Leisure #3: Laing

Laing, R.D. (1968): The Politics of Experience. Ballantine Book, Inc. USA

This is an existential book about how we view normality and label the psychologically 'ill'. Each chapter is a lecture or article that was put together in this book. Basically the author argues that our society and way of experiencing things is messed up. The only reason we dont really see this on a day to day basis is because the majority of us view things the same way. So statistically it is normal. Then the author argues that those that do not adequately adjust to this mad world are considered crazy. they are labeled because we cannot relate to these individuals the way we can with others. This label is political though because it is viewed as an illness. In the last chapter, Laing argues that going crazy is one way to experience greater human understanding, and that all religions aspired to achieve this level of consciousness. He does this by recording a story of a man in the navy who had a 'journey' [read psychotic breakdown] for ten days. After so much fear and vast knowingness, he 'decides' to become sane again. This man's tale ends with a plea for a return to method of caring for those in mental hospitals be less about 'cures' and more about caring for ppl. very thought provoking and touching book.

Here are some super amazing quotes i liked:

From the moment of birth, when the Stone Age baby confronts the twentieth-century mother, the baby is subjected to these forces of violence, called love, as its mother and father,and their parents and their parents before them, have been. These forces are mainly concerned with destroying most of its potentialities, and on the whole this enterprise, is successful. By the time the new human being is fifteen or so, we are left with a being like ourselves, a half-crazed creature more or less adjusted to a mad world. This is normality in our present age. (pp 58)

A child born today [1968] in the United Kingdom stands a ten times greater chance of being admitted to a mental hospital than to a university, and about one fifth of a mental hospital admissions are diagnosed schizophrenic. This can be taken as an indication that we are driving our children mad more effectively than we are genuinely educating them. Perhaps it is our way of educating them that is driving them mad. (pp 104)

I love the book so much, I'd rewrite every word in this blog if is wasn't plagiarism!