The Politics of the Family

by R.D. Laing

Using concepts of schizophrenia, R.D. Laing demonstrates that we tend to invalidate the subjective and experiential and accept the proper societal view of what should occur within the family.

A psychoanalyst and psychiatrist, Laing worked at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations. His books include The Self and Others and The Politics of Experience.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Essays, Sociology, Psychoanalysis, Family, Philosophy

64 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

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

[John Brooke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this short book has revealed to me so many feelings I have spent my whole life puzzling over. Tremendous observations on how families unknowilngly affect/invicect the lives of children from their birth. The family influence impacts on all societies not just our western culture. I have read this book through, and I'm set to read it again this weeked.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is made up primarily of essays adapted from talks Laing had given over the years. (I could almost hear the Scottish lilt!)

Though I suspect much of the content worked better in spoken form, I adore R.D. Laing and appreciate his ideas. It's so frustrating that decades later people are as resistant to these insights as they ever were.

(I look forward to the film starring David Tennant!)

[Liam O'Leary · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read The Divided Self instead if you are new to Laing, read this only if you want to read all of his works.
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This was a transcript of a radio broadcast, which is why Laing's genius does not shine so brightly here.

Similar to a few other "idealist" writers like Tim Leary, Carl Jung, David Foster Wallace and Friedrich Nietzsche, he expresses his thoughts in a very abstract, paranoid and polemic way which sometimes trips over itself by getting hung up on recurrences (thinking about thinking about thinking...ad infinitum<\i>), authorial bias (or maybe I am incapable of knowing this from my perspective), or unjustified polarising views (us vs. them).

Laing needs an editor more than most other writers, to ground and cut out some depth and recurrence from his abstractions.

Pros to the essay is that he does try and make a list of psychological coping mechanisms and give examples. Problems with the essay are that it is less focused and strong than any of those in The Politics of Experience and does not bring out any good new frameworks like The Divided Self.
I disagreed with Laing on some points in here. For example, his insistence that disgust for one`s own saliva is socially learned and unreasonable made sense to me, but I disagree that it is parallel to that for faeces which for me seems instead to clearly be an instinctive and rational way to avoid disease.

I think hearing this live would be interesting and seem very complicated, but when you have time to read and dissect it, it just does not hold up with the rest of his work.

[Barnaby · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're going to major in psychology, read this book.

[Dee Michell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pity he doesn't consider non-biological families

[Pam · Rating 3 out of 5]

El cuestionamiento de la familia es un conjunto de conferencias que se centran en La familia como institución que se construye de diferentes formas en distintas sociedades, pero principalmente como fantasía internalizada en el psiquismo durante la infancia, y que después dará forma a las relaciones sociales que se mantendrán durante la adultez.

Aunque no es un análisis a profundidad, Laing en sus conferencias hace una crítica hacia los diagnósticos y tratamientos de las esquizofrenias basadas en modelos médicos, pone de relieve la estructura familiar como fundante, participe, encubridora y resistente de las patologías de uno de sus miembros o bien de la estructura familiar entera.
Según lo que he leído, Laing y Pichón Riviere son contemporáneos, no sé si se influenciaron mutuamente pero al leer a Laing me recordó mucho la teoría del vínculo de Pichón que sostiene la internalización no ya de objetos sino de toda la relación inter/intrafamiliar - la internalización de grupos enteros junto con sus relaciones - como base fundante de la estructura del psiquismo. También me recordó los conceptos de chivo emisario, emergente y depositario - depositante - depositado, en cuanto a las dinámicas familiares y el estudio de las esquizofrenias.

Lo que no me gustó de las conferencias es la última parte donde comienza a hablar sobre la introyección y proyección de los valores sociales y lo reduce a una cuestión individualista. Para alguien que habla sobre la familia y su influencia desde lo social, no le pone nombre a la ética burguesa desde donde se desprenden los valores moralistas así como tampoco a las instituciones ideologizantes del sistema que las crea.

[Farah Fitria Sari · Rating 5 out of 5]

Found this one through the pre-face of Ackoff's book, The Art of Problem Solving.

This was a short read as it only has ~120 pages, but a totally mind-blowing one. Laing tried to review social vs medical diagnosis of mental illness, particularly schizophrenia--and tended to side to the former. He analyzed through several case studies of patients who were often teenagers or young adults that unsurprisingly had rough situations with their families (which could involve more than 2 generations). He argued that it would serve the patients better if we could focus on fixing their broken family ties instead of giving them drugs or electroshocking them. The means of the fixing could be found from ancient rituals which equal to letting intergenerational communication to happen clearly without hindrance.

His explanation on a kind of hypnosis happening in families through generations sounds like bad prayers or curses imbued unknowingly by older generations to younger ones (in his words, for example: "He's so naughty, he never does what I tell him. Do you?", "I'm always trying to get him to make more friends but he's so self-conscious. Isn't that right, dear?", etc)... something that I sadly can relate to, as I have seen the examples in real life.

Overall, this gives me a rather jarring, unconventional, new perspective on how to view my own family. I recommend this to people who would want to start a family or is just curious about different approach to observation of dynamics in a family.

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

So this was the 1969 Massey Lecture and is valuable as a snapshot in time of many things. Even as late as the end of the 60s public intellectuals still didn't shy away from asking big questions and trying to devise new frameworks for thinking about social issues. Nowadays analysis of the everyday has been fettered away into high philosophy, disguised by indirect continental language thus able to speak about everyday truths that we no longer tolerate being spoke of directly. Ironically, Laing repeatedly takes recourse to mathematical language and styling, giving elements in his theory of psychology identifiers like x or y and offering preliminary formulae using these variables. It is precisely this fetishisation of science and rationality that led in the 90s to books like No Logo with the majority of its pages taken up by footnotes and references. Now, in the new millenium, even that kind of an approach is wearying. Now we will only tolerate commentary extremely narrow in scope and of rather marginal novelty.

I did also learn a few things, but even as an introduction to object relations theory, resistance in psychotherapy, or any of the other themes he touches on, in this book at least Laing just glosses over everything and there will surely be much better introductory texts to choose from.

[Siddiq Khan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Astounding, hilarious, penetrating, familiar, terrifying.

Laing reads uncannily like Samuel Beckett. On closer inspection, this is not surprising, as it turns out he was influenced by existential philosophy, just like his Irish fellow traveller in the absurd tragicomic realms territory that undergirds the shadowplay of the human condition.

In other ways, he reads like Jiddu Krishnamurti, Max Stirner or David Bohm. As a matter of fact, his analysis of the depths to which external conditioning shape individual identity and experience is unparalleled in its precision and incision. Unlike these others, he is by no means sanguine about the possibility of escaping the labyrinth. He offers no solutions. He simply poses the question, points out the problem, and leaves it up to the reader to ponder the implications.

[Dõxi Xiū · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una crítica a la psiquiatría que encuentra también el germen de toda desviación en la familia tradicional. No hizo falta ahondar en contextos históricos, tan sólo hace falta ver en nuestras propias casa las contradicciones y la disfunción encarnada en una institución que posa como indestructible y nuclear. Me pone a pensar que quizá esa individualidad que nos trajo la modernidad lejos de establecer un orden, más bien intentó reprimir los deseos de vivir en comunidades grandes y unidas, y no en núcleos separados del resto. Son claros los estragos que la familia ha dejado en la humanidad reciente, y las enfermedades mentales me parece son tan solo la punta del iceberg.

[Mayfly · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is some wisdom here, and what appears to me to be some technical obfuscation but is probably just the language of logicians. Most remarkable is how familiar and obvious much of it feels, and the astonishing thing is that this was revolutionary at the time. While Laing's approach has been discredited by the medical mainstream his influence remains. Of particular interest to me was the distinction between what is personally experienced and what society agrees / declares has been experienced and the tensions that arise when they don't match.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

This work excels at taking apart and diagraming psychosocial interaction among families in one or more generations. It's kinda like a forerunner to family systems mixed with social psychiatry. The downside is he can go a little deep to prove his point. Also, I believe his views on Christ and Christianity do not reflect the truth contained in them and I could easily guess why he may hold those views. Still a worthwhile read.

[Daniel Polansky]

Oof. I'd forgotten how unreadable existential philosophy/thought can be. Mundane, even banal truths obscured by unreadable academic language. Did you know that we often internalize the teachings of our elders without realizing it? If not, you'll struggle to learn from these ludicrously opaque writings.

[Bruce Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is pain here, there is also kernels of thought. Questions societal methods for dealing with mental illness. Rightly describes the chemicalization of the restraining cages we are held in. The better the pills, the fewer bars we need. Although short, it provides lots to think about.

[Dr. Chad Newton, PhD-HRD · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed the first section which described Dr. Laing's model of family politics. But, the remaining essays failed to provide additional or usable information for me. I wanted more explanation and examples of family politics in practice.

[Andrew Barnett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Does anyone describe families better than Laing? If there is someone, I can't find them.

[Aaron Schuschu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Family dynamics of supposed schizophrenics. Can identify with it all too well.

[Emmeline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perfectly ingestible with a grain of salt. Laing plays the devil's advocate-- which is, decades later, still necessary in the medicalized and inexact field of psychiatry.

[Saul Walt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone needs to read this, because it is simple and it teaches you very clearly about the nature of the maya you live in, and how you can "wake up" from realism about doxa.

[Malcolm Gorman · Rating 5 out of 5]

The example of the mother talking to the evil/pretty daughter is chilling and oh-so-common in almost all family contexts: they are totally convinced they know you better.

[Cordelia McConnell · Rating 5 out of 5]

phenomenal!

[Jack · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining talks on family relationships and processes.

[Ryan MacInnes · Rating 2 out of 5]

The title and topic of this made me really excited to read it but I’m not sure I learned anything? It felt like a combination of common sense and long since rejected psychological theory.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short, interesting ideas, some good points, some outdated ones.

[Macy · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Man does not always need bars for cages. Ideas can be cages too"

[paula agrelo · Rating 5 out of 5]

todo cuestionamiento a familia é benvido nas miñas lecturas..sobre todo si vai unido a un psiquiatra que critica a psiquiatria

[Tanya Lovrich · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I'm really going to like Laing's work: "Psychiatry is concerned with politics, with who makes the law. Who defines the situation. What is in fact the situation. What is in fact the case, and what is not the case."

[Lydia St Giles · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of short pieces was originally published more than forty years ago but is still relevant today. At a time when public policy treats Cognitive Behavioural Therapy as the preferred method of tackling non-psychotic mental illness, an approach which looks at the individual in the context of a social unit would be welcome.
It is not an easy read, compressing the idea of “family as system” and referring to concepts such as projection and regression. Some sections read like a mathematical equation - elegant and demanding of the reader.
Very highly recommended.

[Vicky · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second classic RD Laing I've actually bothered to read! Pretty unintelligible in first essay, but then really quite bang on the button in my opinion with lots of things. I didn't read this as an attack on the parents of those diagnosed with schizophrenia, rather a critique of the institution of the family as a whole. Interesting stuff, especially to read 50 years on and realise in many ways lots hasn't changed. Of course the man had many faults also.

[Melanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed some of Laing's perspectives in the first part of the book. Like the emphasis of not assuming what the family say's about an individual as true and that these perspectives should not influence whether an individual has a mental illness or not. I did'nt agree with some of the ideas presented by Laing especially the more deeper Freudian ideas and felt at times a hard read.