9 Quotes & Sayings By R D Laing

R. D. Laing was a British psychiatrist who was also a poet, playwright, and novelist. As a psychiatrist, Laing spent the years from 1950 to 1960 at the Maudsley Hospital in London and began to develop his ideas on human communication as a basis for psychotherapy Read more

In 1961 he published The Divided Self, which is often considered to be the first of his major works of applied philosophy. His early works had been centered on his clinical work as a psychiatrist but he began to explore the wider issues of society from this same perspective in a series of books which were published between 1961 and 1976.

1
What we call 'normal' is a product of repression, denial, splitting, projection, introjection and other forms of destructive action on experience. R. D. Laing
2
When family relations are no longer harmonious we have filial children and devoted parents. R. D. Laing
3
Each time a new baby is born there is a possibility of reprieve. Each child is a new being a potential prophet a new spiritual prince a new spark of light precipitated into the outer darkness. R. D. Laing
4
Schizophrenic behaviour is a special strategy that a person invents in order to live in an unlivable situation. R. D. Laing
5
The psychiatrist must become a fellow traveller with his patient. R. D. Laing
6
Children do not give up their innate imagination, curiosity, dreaminess easily. You have to love them to get them to do that. R. D. Laing
7
The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change; until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds. R. D. Laing
8
We are all murderers and prostitutes - no matter to what culture, society, class, nation one belongs, no matter how normal, moral, or mature, one takes oneself to be. R. D. Laing