Zone of the interior

by Clancy Sigal

The hero and narrator of this warm, hilarious, and satiric odyssey into the hospital cor- ridors and mentalities of established madness, is a Chicago writer fed up with America and exiled in London. Urged by his friends to seek psycho- therapy to break his writer's block. Bell begins the journey into his zone of the interior" and the world of the charismatic, miracle-making Scottish guru Dr. Willie Last, who deliberately thrusts him over the edge into schizophrenia. Willie Last is also a Western lm fan, and needs Sid Bell to be his sidekick in the Gun ght at OK Corral" fantasies he indulges in. At Meditation Manor. A free-for-all schizophrenic circus, Bell finally penetrates the spiritual ionosphere of Fashionable lunacy with some of the goo er sorts of mysticism Su sm. Gypsy palm reading. And even as an urban shaman" with healing powers. In practice. It is overrun by zany Americans who turn the church into a mixture of Laugh ln" and HeIlzapoppin'.

277 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Clancy Sigal was the child of a love affair between two idealists. His parents Jennie Persily and Leo Sigal were labor organizers. Jennie, a single mother, raised Clancy on her own. Chicago-born, he was an ordinary street kid until the army sent him overseas. He attended the Nuremberg war crimes trial, and then enrolled at UCLA where his classmates included the later Watergate conspirators, Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman. Blacklisted by a movie studio, and chased by the FBI, he lucked into a job as a Hollywood talent agent for clients like Humphrey Bogart. He slipped into Great Britain as an illegal immigrant and had a years-long affair with the writer Doris Lessing. Intending only a tourist weekend, he stayed in London for 30 years where, as well as broadcasting for BBC, he collaborated with the ‘anti psychiatrist’ R.D. Laing in the care and feeding of “incurable” schizophrenics. Relocating to Hollywood, he co-wrote “Frida” (Kahlo) and the Hemingway love story “In Love and War”.

Reviews

[Ade Bailey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sigal was one of R.D.Laing's 'brotherhood' in the 60s projects of reconceptualising madness and the practical approaches to schizophrenia. An ex-patient of Laing, he went on to write a barely veiled autobiography of those years. The book was not published in the UK until 2005. In Adrian Laing's biography of his father, Adrian says this was 'partly because Ronnie took steps to prevent it.' And 'In June 1989, just weeks before his death, Ronie wrote to Joe Berke: "The Free Association Press wrote to me about the Sigal book. I said I would have to contact the Medical Defence Union. I haven't read it, but I've been told it's fairly malicious.'"
It is a rollicking and scathing act of acid skepticism applied to the 60s revolutionaries of every description. For me it is like being tickled as a form of torture as it's not Laing but myself I feel in the acid bath. I just hadn't realised how much I had taken on of what is expressed here. Mind you, an acid bath of cynicism is only 'useful' if it burns off the rubbish. Something good is still left, the skeletal key. I'm still proud of a dissertation I wrote inspired by craziness as a hobby and Laing as a guru: LSD and Mescaline experiences: towards a modelling of the neuropsychological bases of the psychotic experience.



It took me a while to finish. Could only take it in small chunks. I am glad beyond words to have finished. Not that it's badly written. Adrian Laing refers to it in his biography of his father as 'hilarious'. I suppose it is. In places it is grotesquely and absurdly 'hilarious'. The taste it leaves with me is bitter. It is an account of bad people who are 'into' all sorts of pseudo-mystical nonsense, self-righteous opposition to just about everything, virulently self-centred egotists, and the tragic victims of their 'alternavism'. Clancy gets it spot on when, in describing what is the actual account of his own 'capture' by the Laingian mob after he attempts to leave 'the Brotherhood', he says their eyes were full of 'compassion and hatred'. What a perfect phrase for those harbingers of psychic violence, those creeping thugs and gurus.

[PJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a very interesting book, I would say more but I didn’t really understand it so that’s it.

[Durakov · Rating 3 out of 5]

A deeply unpleasant and, at times, quite nasty evisceration of the romantic-mystical antipsychiatric sects that gravitated around figures like David Cooper and R.D. Laing in the US and UK in the 1960s and 70s. Despite having a fondness for both of them, Zone of the Interior highlights and magnifies their less savory aspects until they are screaming in your face.

A single quote about a scuffle between the two ideological father figures brings out nearly all of them at once: "In their loud wrangle over the precise nature of the Soviet-was it a deformed workers' dictatorship, or bureaucratic state capitalism?-Anna got forgotten. Most residents were too hyped on dope or their own miseries to follow the Talmudic ins and outs of the doctors' slanging matches replete with opaque quotes from Marx and Sartre, so in the end what counted was which man you were emotionally hooked on. I, of course, was a Lastian because, among other things, he had the LSD." (p. 212) One can recognize many typical Laingian features here: the shallow orientalism that is vaguely interested in "the East;" the abstraction of political concepts to mere slogans depleted of their original intent or context; the naive faith in psychedelics and "mystical" experiences as therapeutic practices; and the sidelining of practical concerns and daily miseries.

Despite agreeing basically with that characterization, I found Sigal's portrayal to be (intentionally, I'm sure) mean-spirited and written in bad faith or even as a humorous character assassination. Laing was foolish in many ways, but he introduced a lot of great ideas; there's plenty to commend him for. But that's lost here when Sigal makes his methods almost singularly responsible for strings of death, communal decay, and interpersonal violence. Further, in his desire to lambast and skewer the tropes of 60s psychedelic counter-cultural movements, Sigal largely reproduces them more or less faithfully, with the humorous twist that they are wholly unpleasant and often a cover for racist and patriarchal impulses that are not at all "far-out" from anything. Worth a read if you are interested in the era and actors of the segments of the New Left that sought "personal discovery" in simulated madness and psychedelic experiences, or in seeing them get mercilessly torn apart by a former (and embittered) participant.

[Fahad Khan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was undecided between giving this a three or a four because as self-indulgent as it is, it's still full of fascinating period detail from the mid 60s and particularly its mental institutions (a time period which also happened to be very self-indulgent). (I gave it a three in the end because as well observed as the book happens to be, Sigal really does come across as a narcissistic creep)

[Paulette Illmann · Rating 3 out of 5]

I just couldn't follow this very well, and though it had moments of promise, they always seemed to go nowhere. An interesting setting, but just not enough to hold me.

[Richy Campbell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Slightly disingenuous review as I only read some of it. But I found the prose and plot quite plodding.

[Martinxo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating insider account of the anti-psychiatry movement of the 1960s, a semi fictional work based on Ronnie Laing's crew. Recommended.

[Lesley]

A certain amount of skimming to get to the end.