The Voice of Experience

by R.D. Laing

Discusses our ability to feel emotions & to understand & accept those feelings, & compares subjective, objective & diagnostic observation.AcknowledgementsExperience & scienceThe objective lookThe diagnostic lookThe possibility of experienceBirth & beforeThe prenatal bondEmbryologems, psychologems, mythologemsDual unityThe tie & the cut-offEntryEgg, sphere & selfRecessions & regressionsCodaBibliography

Genres: Psychology, Psychiatry, Philosophy

192 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 1982

About the author

Ronald David Laing was a Scottish psychiatrist who wrote extensively on mental illness – in particular, the subjective experience of psychosis. Laing's views on the causes and treatment of serious mental dysfunction, greatly influenced by existential philosophy, ran counter to the psychiatric orthodoxy of the day by taking the expressed feelings of the individual patient or client as valid descriptions of lived experience rather than simply as symptoms of some separate or underlying disorder.

Laing was associated with the anti-psychiatry movement although he rejected the label.

Reviews

[Rowan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first section of the book, regarding how scientists view the world outside the laboratory, is invaluable for anyone who has ever set foot on a university campus. The second part... I still hate babies. Otherwise it would be worth five stars.

[Χρήστος Δούκας · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pantheon Books, New York, 1982. Hard Cover. Book Condition: Near Fine. Stated First American Edition.