Laing, R. D. (1927-1989), was a Scottish psychiatrist who became famous for his unorthodox theory of psychiatric disorders. He believed that such disorders are caused by the sufferers’ relationships with other members of their immediate family and with society in general. Laing held the view that psychiatrists ought to treat patients not by regarding them as ill but by urging them to believe that they are going through a beneficial experience.
Laing arrived at his social theory of mental illness through his study of schizophrenia. His books on the subject include The Divided Self (1960); The Self and Others (1961); Sanity, Madness and the Family (1964), which he wrote with the Scottish psychiatrist Aaron Esterson; and The Politics of the Family (1971). In these writings, he claimed that people become schizophrenic in situations where family and social pressures seek to make them conform to standards that they themselves consider abnormal or alien. Laing thought that when people become uncertain about their very existence, a defensive reaction is set off within them that divides the self into its component parts and brings about the symptoms of schizophrenia. Laing considered that madness was a heightened form of the ordinary state of alienation. His views ran counter to the idea that schizophrenia and other disorders had biological or chemical causes.
Ronald David Laing was born in Glasgow, Scotland, on Oct. 7, 1927. He studied medicine at Glasgow University and, after graduating in 1951, worked briefly as a psychiatrist for the British Army. From 1953 to 1956, he completed his training in psychiatry at Glasgow University. He joined the staff of the Tavistock Clinic in London in 1956. Laing also wrote books on existential philosophy and poetry. His writings include The Politics of Experience (1967), Knots (1970), Sonnets (1979), and The Voice of Experience (1982). His autobiography, Wisdom, Madness, and Folly: The Making of a Psychiatrist, 1927-1957, appeared in 1985. He died on Aug. 23, 1989.
