Biography of r d laing family
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pub. Peter Owen London , ISBN 0 8,£ stg.
R.D. Laing wrote in his diary on his fortieth birthday that he was making &#;the transition from Icarus to Daedalus, from Oedipus to Laius, from enfant terrible to grand old man &#; From simply son to father to one of the elders who has failed &#; from one of yesterday&#;s young men of tomorrow to one of tomorrow&#;s old men of yesterday &#;&#; For his son, Adrian, the author of this unassuming but nonetheless fascinating biography of Laing, this diary entry shows that &#;Ronnie knew, from as early as , that the consequence of reaching a pinnacle, of climbing to the highest height &#; (is) the sadness that comes with the realization that the only way forward fryst vatten downhill.&#; In attempting to recount, and therefore also to organize, his father&#;s apparently chaotic and excessive life story, it fryst vatten perhaps inevitable that the son should choose this archetypally tragic view of the rise and fall of a great man. Indeed, the reworking of this
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: Ronald David Laing, the only son of David Park McNair Laing and Amelia Laing (maiden name of Kirkwood) is born at 21 Ardbeg Street, Govanhill, Glasgow at p.m on Friday, 7th of October. Amelia took the name Ronald from Ronald Colman, the Hollywood movie star
: Attends the local state primary school, the Sir John Neilsen Cuthbertson's Public School, leaves on the 26th June
: Wins scholarship to Hutchesons' Boys Grammar School
: Elected Licentiate of the Royal Academy of Music
: Associate of the Royal College of Music
: Wins place at Glasgow University to study medicine
: Failing to pass the final medical exams on first attempt, takes six months' internship at the psychiatric unit of Stobhill Hospital before successfully taking resits in December
: Graduates as a medical doctor from Glasgow University, 14th February
: From February to October works under the wing of Joe Schorstein one of the surgeons at the West of Scotland Neurosurgical Unit, Killearn
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Ronald David Laing, or R.D. Laing as he was known professionally, (October 7, – August 23, ), was a British psychiatrist who wrote extensively on mental illness, particularly psychosis. The development of his unorthodox views stemmed from early professional outrage with some of the practices he considered inhumane. Influenced by phenomenology and existential philosophy, his views went against the psychiatric orthodoxy of the time when he took the communications of the patient as representing valid descriptions of their reality rather than as symptoms of some separate, underlying disorder. Although Laing was associated with the anti-psychiatry movement, like many of his contemporaries also critical of psychiatry, he himself rejected this label. His work on humane ways to treat psychotic patients made a significant contribution to the ethics of psychology.