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R. D. Laing: The Divided Self

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

Andrew C. Smith
Andrew C. Smith*
Affiliation:
Greenwich District Hospital, London, SE10 9HE
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Extract

R. D. Laing's The Divided Self was never reviewed in this journal. The author's first book, it was published in 1960, and became essential reading in the intellectual counter-culture of the 1960's and 1970's. It is found convincing by critics of psychiatry. By 1965 it was brought out in paperback, and it has remained in print ever since. The current edition has sold over 400, 000 copies, “and continues to sell very well indeed. The book has been translated into virtually every other language in which books are published” (Middleton, 1981). Laing's later books, also, are discussed by sociologists, psychologists, philosophers and historians of ideas. Apart from many articles and essays, books have been devoted to Laing's written work—for example, Laing and Antipsychiatry (Boyers and Orrill, 1971); R. D. Laing: the Philosophy and Politics of Psychotherapy (Collier, 1977); R. D. Laing: His Work and its Relevance for Sociology (Howarth-Williams, 1977) and a volume, Laing, in the Fontana Modern Masters series (Friedenberg∗, 1973). Yet Laing is anathema to many psychiatrists, and his views on schizophrenia and insanity get brief mention in standard psychiatric textbooks, usually dismissed as extreme and/or unscientific.

Type
Books Reconsidered
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 140 , Issue 6 , June 1982 , pp. 637 - 642
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1982 

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