The Divided Self

PENGUIN BOOKS

THE DIVIDED SELF

R. D. Laing, one of the best-known psychiatrists of modern times, was born in Glasgow in 1927 and graduated from Glasgow University as a doctor of medicine. In the 1960s he developed the argument that there may be a benefit in allowing acute mental and emotional turmoil in depth to go on and have its way, and that the outcome of such turmoil could have apositive value. He was the first to put such a stand to the test by establishing, with others, residences where persons could live and be free to let happen what will when the acute psychosis is given free rein, or where, at the very least, they receive no treatment they do not want. This work with the Philadelphia Association since 1964, together with his focus on disturbed and disturbing types ofinteraction in institutions, groups and families, has been both influential and continually controversial. R. D. Laing's writings range from books on social theory to verse, as well as numerous articles and reviews in scientific journals and the popular press. His publications are: The Divided Self, Self and Others, Interpersonal Perception (with H. Phillipson and A. Robin Lee), Reason and Violence(introduced by Jean-Paul Sartre), Sanity, Madness and the Family (with A. Esterson), The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise, Knots, The Politics of the Family, The Facts of Life, Do You Love Me?, Conversations with Children, Sonnets, The Voice of Experience and Wisdom, Madness and Folly. R. D. Laing died in 1989. Anthony Clare, writing in the Guardian, said of him: 'His majorachievement was that he dragged the isolated and neglected inner world of the severely psychotic individual out of the back ward of the large gloomy mental hospital and on to the front pages of influential newspapers, journals and literary magazines . . . Everyone in contemporary psychiatry owes something to R. D. Laing.'

R. D. Laing

The Divided Self
An Existential Study in Sanity and MadnessPenguin Books

PENGUIN BOOKS Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England Penguin Books USA Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcom Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New ZealandPenguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England First published by Tavistock Publications (1959) Ltd 1960 First published in the USA by Pantheon Books Inc 1962 Published in Pelican Books 1965 Reprinted in Penguin Books 1990 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 Copyright © Tavistock Publications (1959) Ltd, 1960 Preface to Pelican edition copyright © R. D. Laing, 1965 Copyright © R. D. Laing,1969 All rights reserved Printed in England by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc Set in Monotype Times Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and withouta similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

To my mother and father

Contents

Preface to the Original Edition 9 Preface to the Pelican Edition 11 Acknowledgements 13 Part One 1 The existential-phenomenological foundations for a science of persons 17 2 The existential-phenomenological foundations for the understanding of psychosis 27 3Ontological insecurity 39 Part Two The embodied and unembodied self 65 The inner self in the schizoid condition 78 The false-self system 94 Self-consciousness 106 The case of Peter 120

4 5 6 7 8

Part Three 9 Psychotic developments 137 10 The self and the false self in a schizophrenic 160 11 The ghost of the weed garden: a study of a chronic schizophrenic 178 References 207 Index 211

Preface...