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Title: Divided Self (Penguin Psychology) by Ronald David Laing ISBN: 0-14-013537-5 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 September, 1991 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00

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Average Customer Rating: 4.6 (15 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: Beginning of a Great but Now Forgotten Change
Comment: This is a book written by a truly independent mind exploring mainly with his own original thought that permits the experience that developes with 'patients' unfold on its own. Originally written in 1956, it is nonetheless relatively absent of mindless psychiatric jargon designed to stop people from thinking and coming to their own conclusions. R. D. Laing will go on beyond this book in his future radical development that essentially puts in fundamental question the very purpose and meaning of psychiatry, but leaves behind, supposedly, some ideas that I find fascinating and maybe he developed later under other names. Specifically, his consideration of ontology leads directly to question the very nature of 'insanity'. The way he describes schizophrenia, paying only lip service to the POSSIBILITY of a chemical/genetic cause, is to all intents and purposes a clear exploration of minds taking the pathway of philosophy itself, specifically dealing with fundamental ontology, the nature of the real, the nature of the self, the nature, meaning, and importance of their own emotions, but doing so completely on their own, without educational preparation of any sort, and not even knowing what they are dealing with are the same questions serious philosophers tangle with in great difficulty. The result, then, would be like someone with no architectural training trying to build a twenty story building: chaos, confusion, and inevitably a crash. One key point to understanding Laing is his quote from Sartre at the beginning of one of his chapters to the effect that Sartre no longer believes in the existence of PSYCHOLOGY ITSELF any longer. Rather, that field is much more accurately handled by BIOGRAPHY!

Rating: 5
Summary: an amazing look at mental illness
Comment: R. D. Lang starts out this intriguing book with an introduction where he gives the following statement: "a little girl of seventeen in a mental hospital told me she was terrified because the Atom Bomb was inside of her. That is a dellusion. The statesmen of the world who boast and threaten that they have Doomsday weapons are far more dangerous, and far more estranged from 'reality' than mean of the people whom the label 'phychotic' is affixed." Throughout the rest of the book Laing never stops taking into consideration not only the 'signs' of mental illness, but also what the mentally ill and feeling, thinking, and trying to say. Instead of making the mentally ill into a sub-human species, Laing, allows them to be fully human and in doing so revels more about mental illness than if he had stuck to ridged definitions and destinctions. Not only does he succeed in spreading light onto the many parts of their personalties, fears, and contingencies, but he also illuminates what it is to be a 'mentally sound' person in an unhealthy world.

More than being a book of psychology, THE DIVIDED SELF, is a book of philosophy; Laing often uses examples from the works of Sartre as well as other existential philosophers (Heidegger and Husserl) along with an unusual mix of literary influence from Kafka to Shakespear.

Although the book fails exactly where most people will exspect it to be strongest -- a clinical account of mental illness -- it makes up for its lack of medical facts and outdated information (it was orginally published in 1960) with its many wonderful insights. Laing is as much a psychologist as Frued -- however both of them do better outside of the technical arena, where, oddly enough, both of them try to hide their best philosphical insights behind technical jargon.

Rating: 3
Summary: Confusion
Comment: I read this book without having a good reason really, I saw it in the bookshop and decided it might be interesting. As it stands it was increadibly difficult to understand. Had it been written in the 18th or 19th century I may have understood it better, late 20th century again maybe I would have got it. But the period between the end of the 1st world war and the start of the 80s... I cant get into the mindset of it.

I understood and recognised in myself a lot of the mindsets of the "schizoid" in this book, yet I didn't relate or connect with it at all, which left me somewhat bewildered. The language used was too academic for me really, but I was severly sleep deprived when I read it. A further comment is that the worldveiw promoted by psychology is one I am extremely sceptical of.

It left me with many questions however, so in that respect it was a brilliant book, because any book, especially a "non-fiction" book should always leave the reader desperatly curious about the topic. On that front it did well.

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