“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.” R D Laing, 1927 -
1989
Yesterday morning I heard
the Scottish psychiatrist’s son, Adrian Laing, speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live programme (about 30 minutes in if you listen again). He recalled
life with his father, a bittersweet combination of experiences also documented
recently in The Daily Telegraph, and then outlined his participation in one of
Laing’s more unconventional therapies – a “rebirthing”.
The story reminded me of
a comment in Laura’s recent post on Thomas Szasz, where a reader made the link
between Szasz and Laing. The Anti-Psychiatry page on Wikipedia pulls them both
into the same camp, but as Laura pointed out – Szasz was not anti-psychiatry,
it was the coercive nature of psychiatry as practised that he opposed. Nevertheless,
the two psychiatrists are often lumped together in the political debate over
psychiatry, and in pushing the view “that psychiatric treatments are ultimately
more damaging than helpful to patients”.
The debate, which was particularly vocal in the 60s and 70s, is regarded by some to have been “of its time” and no longer relevant. After all,
mainstream psychiatry (relying heavily on drugs in its attempts to treat what
are regarded as medical problems) seems to rule the roost, certainly in the
developed world. However, it appears as if the debate is gaining renewed
momentum of late...
I unexpectedly discovered a copy of Laing’s “The Politics of Experience
and The Bird of Paradise” on a bookshelf here at home. (It’s not mine – G is
also more well-read than me!) Yesterday after listening to Adrian I read the
chapter on “The Schizophrenic Experience.” Here are a couple of, what I
believe, are relevant quotes:
“It seems to us that without
exception the experience and behaviour that gets labelled schizophrenic is a special strategy that a person invents in
order to live in an unlivable situation.” (Following research studies made
by Laing and two colleagues. His emphasis).
“’Schizophrenia’ is a diagnosis, a label applied by some people to
others. This does not prove that the labelled person is subject to an
essentially pathological process, of unknown nature and origin, going on in his or her body.”
Dr Joanna Moncrieff, a practising psychiatrist and critic of
pharmaceutical drugs, said that “I was reading Thomas Szasz and R.D. Laing when
I was at medical school – they were the only ray of interest I could find in
the subject area.” With like-minded colleagues she set up the Critical Psychiatry Network which aims to
debate issues such as “scepticism towards the evidence base, the biological
basis to psychiatry, the efficacy of biological treatments, and an objection to
the emphasis on coercion and medicalisation and the issues of social control.”
So... the debate does seem to be very much out there and current. What
do you think?
PS: You can watch an intriguing 1989 Channel 4 documentary on R D Laing here. It’s 1.5 hours long (but absolutely worth it), so make sure you are sitting comfortably...
