We all live under the constant threat of our own annihilation. Only by the most outrageous violation of ourselves have we achieved our capacity to live in relative adjustment to a civilization apparently driven to its own destruction. R. D. Laing More Quotes by R. D. Laing More Quotes From R. D. Laing We are bemused and crazed creatures, strangers to our true selves, to one another, and to the spiritual and material world - mad, even, from an ideal standpoint we can glimpse but not adopt. R. D. Laing mad self spiritual What we take anything to be profoundly affects how we go about describing it, and how we describe something profoundly affects how we go about explaining, accounting for, or understanding what is what we are, in a sense, defining, by our description. R. D. Laing description defining understanding No one has schizophrenia, like having a cold. The patient has not "got" schizophrenia. He is schizophrenic. R. D. Laing schizophrenia cold patient In describing one way of going mad, I shall try to show that there is a comprehensible transition from the sane schizoid way of being-in-the-world to a psychotic way of being-in-the-world. R. D. Laing mad trying insanity A lot of the time I'm in the present, and I'm thinking about the past or scheming about the future and missing every present moment, instead of actually partaking of the sacrament of every present moment. R. D. Laing missing past thinking The dynamics and structures found in those groups called families in our society may not be evident in those groups called families in other places and times. R. D. Laing dynamics groups may I cannot experience your experience. You cannot experience my experience. We are both invisible men. R. D. Laing invisible experience men The experience and behavior that gets labeled schizophrenic is a special strategy that a person invents in order to live in an unlivable situation. R. D. Laing life order science Our time has been distinguished, more than by anything else, by a mastery, a control, of the external world, and by an almost total forgetfulness of the internal world. If one estimates human evolution from the point of view of knowledge of the external world, then we are in many respects progressing. If our estimate is from the point of view of the internal world, and of oneness of internal and external, then the judgment must be very different. R. D. Laing oneness progress views The square root of nothing. R. D. Laing square-roots squares roots 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 break-through diversity may A psychiatrist who professes to be a healer of souls, but who keeps people asleep, treats them for waking up, and drugs them asleep again (increasingly effectively as this field of technology sharpens its weapons), helps to drive them crazy. R. D. Laing technology crazy people How do we define, how do we describe, how do we explain and/or understand ourselves? What sort of creatures do we take ourselves to be? What are we? Who are we? Why are we? How do we come to be what or who we are or take ourselves to be? How do we give an account of ourselves? How do we account for ourselves, our actions, interactions, transactions (praxis), our biologic processes? Our specific human existence? R. D. Laing who-we-are our-actions giving Experience is mad when it steps beyond the horizons of our common, that is, our communal sense. R. D. Laing horizon mad steps The individual in the ordinary circumstances of living may feel more unreal than real; in a literal sense, more dead than alive; precariously differentiated from the rest of the world, so that his identity and autonomy are always in question.... He may not possess an over-riding sense of personal consistency or cohesiveness. He may feel more insubstantial than substantial, and unable to assume that the stuff he is made of is genuine, good, valuable. And he may feel his self as partially divorced from his body. R. D. Laing consistency real self No one acts or experiences in a vacuum. R. D. Laing vacuums The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious, of being out of one's mind, is the condition of the normal man. R. D. Laing normal mind men When I go beyond a certain range it's outside of my direct horizon therefore I've got to rely on the writings and personal communications given to me by other people that I know.... I've got to try to piece together some tentative information picture of what the whole thing is like, but I'm aware that it becomes more and more speculative as it becomes more and more second, third, fourth hand. And this applies to absolutely everyone. R. D. Laing communication writing hands Schizophrenia is a successful attempt not to adapt to pseudo- social realities. R. D. Laing pseudo successful reality The schizophrenic may indeed be mad. He is mad. He is not ill. I have been told by people who have been through the mad experience how what was then revealed to them was veritable manna from Heaven. The person's whole life may be changed, but it is difficult not to doubt the validity of such vision. Also, not everyone comes back to us again. R. D. Laing mad heaven people
