R D Laing Quotes

“Whether life is worth living depends on whether there is love in life.”
― R.D. Laing

“If I could turn you on, if I could drive you out of your wretched mind, if I could tell you I would let you know.”
― R.D. Laing, The Politics of Experience/The Bird of Paradise

“You don't love me.. Believe me! You don't love anyone. How could you? And no one loves you. How could they? Except me, it's only because I love you that I'm telling you all this. I Love you.. R. D. Laing.”
― R. D. Laing

“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

“The original sense of the word 'therapist' in its Greek form therapuetes, was that of an attendant. A therapist, Laing maintained, should therefore be a specialist in attentiveness and awareness.”
― Fritjof Capra, Uncommon Wisdom : Conversations With Remarkable People

“[...] 'other people provide me with my existence'. On his own, he feels that he is empty and nobody. 'I can't feel real unless there is someone there.... ' Nevertheless, he cannot feel at ease with another person, because he feels as 'in danger' with others as by himself. He is, therefore, driven compulsively to seek company, but never allows himself to 'be himself in the presence of anyone else. He avoids social anxiety by never really being with others. He never quite says what he means or means what he says. The part he plays is always not quite himself. He takes care to laugh when he thinks a joke is not funny, and look bored when he is amused. He makes friends with people he does not really like and is rather cool to those with whom he would 'really' like to be friends. No one, therefore, really knows him, or understands him. He can be himself in safety only in isolation, albeit with a sense of emptiness and unreality. With others, he plays an elaborate game of pretence and equivocation. His social self is felt to be false and futile. What he longs for most is the possibility of 'a moment of recognition', but whenever this by chance occurs, when he has by accident 'given himself away', he is covered in confusion and suffused with panic.”
― R.D.Laing, The Divided Self( An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness)[DIVIDED SELF REV/E][Paperback]

“This credo of youth is engulfed in a chorus of other voices: pilot-plans, social models, manifestos, concrete poetry, sound poetry, Happenings - new models of order in spaces of doubt. But what followed? The epitome of youthful rebellion is a thunderbolt; its aftermath so much charred earth. Re-reading Tom McGrath's Riverside Interview, I was struck by the characterisations of Alex Trocchi and R.D. Laing as justified sinners, strewing psychic chaos, inspiring a thunderous mixed-up scene. Their adventures in consciousness spiralled into drugs, alcoholism, broken relationships and early graves. Tom describes them as prototypes of evil but, while admitting their darkness, pledges himself again to the rebel party.”
― Alec Finlay, Justified Sinners: An Archaeology of Scottish Counter Culture, 1960 - 2000