Reason & Violence: A Decade of Sartre's Philosophy 1950-1960

by R.D. Laing, D. G. Cooper, Jean-Paul Sartre (Foreword)

This work is available on its own or as part of the 7 volume set Selected Works of R.D. Laing.

Genres: Philosophy, Psychology

184 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1964

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

[v · Rating 3 out of 5]

If Sartre is the first philosopher we read, must he also be the first we forget?
Giving another gander at his belligerent Marxist masterpiece Critique of Dialectical Reason, Vol 1: Theory of Practical Ensembles (which received a flurry of praiseful books such as this one, and was then totally abandoned in favor of his more peevish descendants' works), one finds plenty -- forgotten or not, compelling or merely wistful -- that engages: Sartre's sweeping argument finds a "region of reality" for every discourse, yet he finds nothing whatsoever to say about Heidegger anymore; he lays down Marxism as the unequivocal "horizon" of thought, but without much more justification than his claim to have felt the working class' group feeling for it; communism informed by existentialist understanding of individual particularity still promises to be rather particular about how it will crush individual esophagi. Troubles like these sift down to today.
The noted anti-psychiatrists Laing and Cooper capably gloss this period of Sartre's thought in this volume -- for one thing, they save you from actually having to read the aforementioned masterpiece. What ever use they make of Sartre's work for psychoanalysis is undeveloped here.

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this upon returning from one year's absence from Grinnell College during the course of which I'd become very interested in psychology, particularly Laing's branch of existential psychology and Jung's analytical psychology. Although I'd read one book of essays about Sartre and psychoanalysis, I had not read enough Sartre to truly appreciate this book. Indeed, I've never much liked Sartre, particularly after reading his Being and Nothingness and trying to read his Nausea.

[J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

An underappreciated scholarly achievement.

[Jay Rothermel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jameson mentioned this "Cliff Notes" of Sartre circa 1950 to 1960 in one of his books I read earlier this year. Worth reading for anyone defeated by Saint Genet and Critique of Dialectical Reason.

Best way to understand and critique Sartre?
Glad you asked:

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