(Selected Works of R.D. Laing, 5) 1998 - The Politics of the Family And Other Essays (143p) [Inua].pdf

The Politics of the Family‚ August 3, 2011
by R.D. Laing (Author)

Using concepts of schizophrenia, R.D. Laing demonstrates that we tend to invalidate the subjective and experiential and accept the proper societal view of what should occur within the family.

This book is strange of his writings. It is composed simply of interviews about patients and their families. These interviews were recorded by the tape recorders or the hidden observers. It's all of this book. All conversations or their situations, however, talk something important to us silently. No theoretical comments are added, but only the fact. Let the theoretical considerations trusted to others in other places. By understanding the malicious situations of the patients, it will show us the important method of the observation about our unconscious situations of conflicts.

He asserts, "Schizophrenia is the name for a condition that most psychiatrists ascribe to patients they call schizophrenic." (Pg. 44) He suggests, "observations on the behavior of animals in captivity tells us nothing reliable about their behavior in their natural setting. The whole of our present civilization may be a captivity. But the observations upon which psychiatrists and psychologists have drawn in order to build up the prevailing picture of schizophrenia have, almost entirely, been made on human beings in double or even treble captivity." (Pg. 57-58)

A psychoanalyst and psychiatrist, Laing worked at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations. His books include The Self and Others and The Politics of Experience.

ISBN-10: 0887845460
ISBN-13: 978-0887845468