In a recent issue of Existential Analysis, "Debunking Antipsychiatry: Laing, Law, and Largactil," Thomas Szasz (2008) has nothing to express but acrimony toward R.D. Laing.
Most of Szasz's bitterness toward Laing appears to stem from David Cooper's (1967) use of the term "anti-psychiatry" in the book Psychiatry and Anti-Psychiatry. The term "anti-psychiatry" became a label to describe the cohort in which Laing was the figure-head, including Cooper, Joseph Berke, Leon Redler, and others. Even though Laing rejected the term "anti-psychiatry," Szasz argues that Laing's rejection was inauthentic. Szasz strongly resents the term "anti-psychiatry" because it tends to be a label that is now applied to him, in addition to Laing, Foucault and other voices who Szasz--to put it mildly--would prefer not be associated with. In practice, the prejorative tone of the term "anti-psychiatry" has often become a way to stigmatize and ridicule any critical voice in the medical field who raises legitimate questions about some of the founding assumptions of psychiatric diagnosis and treatment.
While Szasz rejects the term "anti-psychiatry," he clearly and without any ambiguity has persistently argued over the years that mental illness does not exist -- that psychiatric diagnostic categories are, in essence, fictional entitites -- and that medical treatment of mental illness is a form of coercion and control. These are sentiments that many also attribute to Laing in addition to the French social critic Michel Foucault, for example. Szasz however insists that he differs from Laing and continental thinkers such as Foucault because he sees them as pushing a Leftist political agenda that he rejects, from within a more Libertarian perspective, as just another assault on personal liberty.
But more interesting, Szasz's article in Existential Analysis can be read as nothing other than a full-frontal assault on R.D. Laing's character and, by implication, his credibility as a clinician and scholar. He paints him to be an irresponsible, reckless and power-hungry monster. For example, Szasz writes that Laing:
"...had no touble abandonding women and children and breaking his promises to patients. We can 'detach' ourselves from certain unwanted experiences, for example threatening erotic feelings, but we cannot, properly speaking, 'detach' ourselves from our responsibilities. When we do so, we are irresponsible, not detached. In my view, Laing was pervasively irresponsible, systematically refusing to accept responsibility for his actions and their consequences" (p. 320).
Szasz reserves his harshest criticisms for Laing' role in serving as an expert witness in the case of John Thomson Stonehouse, who after faking his own death was charged with fraud and plead not guilty by reason of insanity. Laing testified under oath that Stonehouse was insane at the time of the crime. Szasz responds by saying, "Laing and Stonehouse were both liars, plain and simple" (p. 323).
Szasz is also highly critical of what he perceives to have been Laing's hypocrisy regarding non-coercive approaches to treatment. He was critical of medical interventions in some places, Szasz argues, but then advocated the use of LSD for the treatment of mental illness and used Thorazine on one of his patients in Kingsley Hall, according to Szasz account, which is apparently documented by both the victim (Sigal) and a surviving witness (Berke). As a result, Szasz says that Laing was little more than a "successful psychiatric con-man" (p. 332)
Do Szasz's charges amount to little more than a personal rant? Or does Laing's character make a difference when it comes to the serious assessment of the value of his work for the field? Personally, I think Szasz lowers himself by performing character assassination on a man who is deceased and therefore unable to defend himself -- as much as what he says about Laing may indeed be true and well-documented. Laing may have been a son-of-a-bitch at least some of the time, but what business does this gossip have in a peer-reviewed journal? Are we not, as professionals, above fallacious, ad hominem styles of argumentation? Even a broken clock is right twice a day, and few without prejudice would deny that Laing's work has a timeless quality that will demand serious consideration for some time to come. With that said, I agree David Cooper made a grave err in judgment with the introduction of the term "anti-psychiatry" into the lexicon -- a term that today amounts to the label of "Scientologist" for any one who dares question the ruling elite of psychiatric medicine.
References
Szasz, T. (2008). Debunking antipsychiatry: Laing, law, and largactil. Existential Analysis, 19(2), 316-343.
Szasz's critique of psychiatry has always focussed on its two paradigmatic activities: (a) coercing the innocent; (b) excusing the guilty. Szasz insists that both these activities are illegitimate. His critique of Laing focusses on two well-substantiated events, in which Laing practised (a) and (b) respectively. He points to these events as evidence that Laing did not renounce these two paradigmatic activities of psychiatry. He also points out that Laing did not repudiate these activities even in theory. To dismiss Szasz's searching critique of Laing's professional practice and theory as ad hominem "gossip" is absurd.
ReplyDeleteRobbins’s ad hominem comment (“Szasz Hates Laing”) suggests that he is unfamiliar with Szasz’s vast corpus and, specifically, with his critique of antipsychiatry in “Schizophrenia: The Sacred Symbol of Psychiatry” (1976). Szasz writes:
ReplyDelete“Psychiatry and antipsychiatry resemble one another, not only as opposites usually do, but also in their shared obsession with ‘schizophrenia’ and its management.” After describing the symmetrical psychiatric-antipsychiatric models of schizophrenia, Szasz – in an often quoted passage – continues: “What both of these models obscure are the simplest and most ancient of human truths: namely, that life is an arduous and tragic struggle; that what we call 'sanity' – what we mean by 'not being schizophrenic' – has a great deal to do with competence, earned by struggling for excellence; with compassion, hard won by confronting conflict; and with modesty and patience, acquired through silence and suffering" (pp. 82-83).
Robbins acknowledges, “Much as what he [Szasz] says about Laing may indeed be true and well-documented. Laing may have been a son-of-a-bitch at least some of the time, but what business does this gossip have in a peer-reviewed journal?”
Nevertheless, Robbins dismisses Szasz’s important documentation as “gossip,” “rant,” and “character assassination.” And he laments its publication.
Actions speak louder than words. That R. D. Laing – the leading representative of the antipsychiatry movement – was a shameless practitioner of psychiatric coercions and excuses is fact, not gossip. Robbins’s attempt to obstruct the recognition of this fact supports Szasz’s contention that psychiatry and antipsychiatry are cognate competing cults.
Jeffrey A. Schaler
schaler@american.edu
As for Szasz, my thoughts--like his own---have not really changed in quite some time. He is, essentially, a one-trick pony who has been saying exactly the same things now for many years. An important and partial truth. Laing, of course, was severely alcoholic and, oftentimes, wildly inappropriate. The quality of his writing, thought, and, indeed, demeanor vacillated wildly. Still, there is a brilliance in the best of his work that Szasz (and we, too, for that matter) simply cannot touch. If Laing was guilty of romanticizing schizophrenia, Szasz similarly turns mountains into molehills by eradicating the phenomenon (or, rather, a grouping of phenomena) outright. The first half of Laing's Voice of Experience (a final great work) expresses Szasz's essential agenda with a perspicacity and depth and feeling for the humanities of which Szasz, in my experience, is incapable. To dismiss Laing outright is, for the sensitive student of the literature, as philistine as all the hagiography--why profound souls like Robert Coles and Rollo May paid him such thoughtful tribute.
ReplyDeleteThis particular blog posting, while interesting and even quaint, impresses me as reductionist and somewhat passe just as well. Szasz vs. Laing, one overweening ego relentlessly pursuing an oftentimes recklessly brilliant psychoanalyst and writer who is now dead. The real discussion, with the publication of Louis Sass's Madness and Modernism in 1992, takes place on far more rarefied ground. Sass's work is a terribly erudite study of schizophrenia and modernism that leaves the old debate more-or-less in the dust. It is high time that we humanistic psychologists get off the old shibboleths and get on with things ourselves. Nonetheless, it is a thoughtful and articulate piece by Brent (I am glad to see that he is capable of this), and (he is right) the problem with what we may call "corporate occupation" of the human heart and mind remains both prodigious and unabated: consider the political/economic upheaval we currently witness on all sides. Even here, however, there is the plaintive wisdom of Kafka: 'Only in the chorus may be found a certain truth.'- Ed Mendelowitz
For those who criticize me for pointing out Szasz's criticisms of Laing as fallacious, ad hominem attacks: You're obviously wrong, because you are so morally depraved, irresponsible and stupid you wouldn't know the truth if it bit you in the arse. Even if you disagree with me, I'll just wait until you're dead and can't defend yourself, then I'll smear your name and character through the mud and declare victory over your worm-eaten corpse. /irony
ReplyDeleteSeriously, though: Szasz style of argumentation is inflammatory because he claims to discredit Laing's ideas by attacking his character. That's ad hominem. Even if Laing failed to live up to his own ideals, it doesn't invalidate the ideals themselves.
Actions may speak louder than words. But they are irrelevant to the validity of a person's theoretical arguments. To believe that they are relevant, is to fall prey to the ad hominem fallacy. Simple as that.
Alright, Szasz hates Laing. He thinks he's a goddamn liar and a no-good son-of-a-bitch. But so fucking what? It doesn't make Laing wrong.
All of those (a few dozen?) 'mental health professionals" who reject the disease model of psychology/psychiatry are indebted to Thomas Szasz who was the first to demonstrate that this model was epistemologically and morally inadequate as a paradigm. R. D. Laing was among the first to acknowledge his intellectual debt to Szasz. He never attacked Szasz in his writings.
ReplyDeleteAlthough there were substantive differences between Laing and Szasz on the issue of madness, e.g., "schizophrenia," Laing saw Szasz as an ally
and made efforts to meet with Szasz and explore their differences(see Mad to Be Normal, Conversations with R D Laing, p.201 ff) But Szasz attacked Laing with venom--e.g at the Evolution of Psychotherapy Conference, 1985.Even today he refers to Laing--tellingly--as "Robespierre." There could have been a fruitful dialogue but Szasz was adversarial to Laing--largely because of Szasz's antipathy to the counter-culture and New Left with which Laing was affiliated.
While Szasz has accurately identified some of Laing's moral shortcomings. he has never been willing to give him his due as a man who had unusual empathy for the mad and devoted his life
to efforts to alleviate their social oppression.
Although Szasz was more consistent than Laing in opposing involuntary treatment, there were questions raised even from Szasz's allies about some of his own moral failings.To wit, he was often criticized--by allies, I mean-- for a lack of sympathy for the mad.Jeffrey Schaler's quote is revealing. It states that what we call "sanity" must be acquired through "silence and suffering." Those of us on the left suspect that these kind of formulations reflect a neo-social Darwinist view --and are used as justification for policies that deny help to those in crisis. They reify the current socisal orderm of corporate capitalism, and reflect the individualistic ethos--every man/woman for himself-- which is common among right-wing Libertarians.
Considering their conservative political views, it is not surprising that Schaler and Szasz give Laing NO credit for his Promethean effort over decades to help create alternative non-coercive asylums (e.g. Laing invioolvement in the Phlkasdelpia Association), for his advocacy for the mad at the cost of his own career. Szasz reviles in Laing what those of us whoi are not acolytes of Milton Friedman, see as one of Laing's saving graces:Laing had unusual empathy for the mad and made it his life's crusade to oppose their "invalidation." He consistently decried the absence of alternative asylums for
healing, and he did not think "suffering in silence" was the solution for a spiritual crisis
To finish
ReplyDeleteLaing's own Kingley Hall may not have been successful but it provided a model for alternatives like Soteria that did help young people to successfully resolve the crises of madness. Instead of praising Laing and others for efforts to get funding for alternatives for the mad, Szasz carped, "If it's not an illness, the public should not have to pay money to treat it.
While Szasz's original ideas on madness were protean he has increasingly come to define it purely as self-deception and deception, malingering and existential bad faith. From this perspective Laing was a bad guy-trying to take public funds to create asylums for social delinquents. Laing's view of the mad were far more sympathetic and more multivalent. One of his most provocative ideas was that schizophrenia was a visionary experience, a death-rebirth crisis, a view shared by psychiatrist John Weir Perry As a rationalist one would not expect Szasz to appreciate such mystical ideas. Szasz's libertarian and rationalistic view leads him to create a one- sided portrait of Laing that captures some of his character weaknesses, but overlook his strengths as a human being and as a thinker.
Seth Farber, Ph.D.
I had Laing as a teacher in London very late in his life. I think it was in 1985-86. I also attended some group supervisions in his house. I was then in my late thirties, with degrees in Philosophy and Psychology from Spain and already Ireland and had my own ideas.
ReplyDeleteI have enjoyed both Szasz and Laing´s writings in what are still valid criticisms of medical psychiatry, but I feel I would disagree with both of them in the area of childhood and its relation to "mental illness". I am close in this respect to Alice Miller, whose writings echoed my own formed convictions when I discovered them in the eighties.
Back to Laing: Though it has been asserted otherwise, the late Laing was as hostile to medical psychiatry as the young one. I recall him yelling at a student for daring to suggest that some medical drugs might help patients. He was sarcastic of the official Psychiatric Manual etc...
As a person and as a teacher, though, Laing was unbearable and destructive. He intimidated through scorn and contempt, he had no time for anything except his own need to feel uniquely talented, he was aggressive for no reason, he could arrive at a seminar totally drunk etc...
As for his mind I found him muddled and confused in some respects. He could lead credence to childish parapsychological theories, to the crazy theories of Shelldrake on "morphic resonance" etc...
I didn´t share either what sounded like a pessimistic view of the innate tendency to evil in man, a pessimism which existed in spite of his contempt for Melanie Klein´s ideas.
He certainly had some insight into the interpersonal goings on in families that damaged some of its members, but he could have been much more articulate and clear on childhood.But I value his genuine concern with the treatment of the newborn. I also regret that he didn´t carry this compassion-nor does Alice Miller, by the way- into the lives of the unborn and the present infamous social and legal tolerance of abortion.
I am prepared to believe he was compassionate and insightful with clients, though he certainly was not with students.
Juan Campos
Laing's ability to relate sympathetically as equals to so-called psychotics is captured on video in his dialogue with "Christy" which I witnessed at The Evolution of Psychotherapy conference in 1985. The transcript is reproduced in a book called Lourdes of Arizona by Carlos Amateo which is still available on Amazon. Also incidents in Laing's memoirs Wisdom, Madness and Folly reveal Laing's refusal to objectify the mad--he consistently witnessed their capacity for I-Thou relationships. I think this is well attested to by Laing's peers.For example, both Carl Whitaker and Salvadsor Minuchin were impressed with Laing's ability to establish a rapport with even the most troublled "psychotic."
ReplyDeleteI asttended a number of lectures by Laing in the 70s and 80s and I took two weekend workshops. So I know he could be impatient and irritable as a teacher. However--Juan's own biases seem to be strong
--I am skeptical of the characterization of Laing's teaching as "destructive."
Rupert Sheldrake is a leading new paradigm biologist whose engaged in dialogues with the leading new partadigm thinkers of our age, e.g. Terrence McKenna, Ralph Abraham. Juan dismissal of his ideas as "crazy" and his claim that Laing was often "muddled and confused" (I never found Laing to be muddled in the times I heard him) is not persuasive: I tend to think Juan's characterization has more to do with his own antipathy to ideas that transcend the Newtonian neo-Darwinian paradigm.
I agree with Juan that Laing remained as critical of Psychiatry in his last years as he was in his youth--but he did distance himself (unfoirtunatekly I think) from some of the ideas he expressed in The Politics of Experience. Both Laing AND Szasz correctly compared the DSM to the Malleus Maleficarum--boith realized they were a monument to human superstition.
I think Ed Mendelowitz is right: The first half (NOT the last chapters)of The Voice of Experience (published in 1983)is one of the most trenchant exposes of the violence endemic in psychiatric theory, scientific epistemology--and in the society they reflects-- that I have ever read. Those who dismiss Laing lightly--or engage in ad hominem arguments--ought to grapple with that work.
SF Ph.D.
I think it is a bit patronising and dialectically smart to characterise my memories and experiences of Laing the man as "biases". You may not like them or you might have had better ones, Seth, but they are real memories.
ReplyDeleteLaing was muddled in that, as many others have pointed out, there are several incompatible visions of "schizophrenia" and " mental illness" in his works. Sometimes people so labelled were sen as showing the scars of interpersonal victimasitaion. When he came to see birth experience as a desructive factor he could say extreme things like these people had been "damaged" for life. yet at other times, in line with a romantic tradition he was in line with, the mad were seen as insightful and close to genius. At other times there was the idea of madness as some kind of spontaneous journey of recovery...
As for his view of the sources of destructiveness in human nature he was muddled and never came near to see, as for example Alice miller does, that destructiveness has its roots in the violence and manipulation against children.
As for Rupert Sheldrake's theories, you are welcome to dignify them as challenges to the "newtonian neo-darwinian" paradigm. (Why not to the aristotelian-galilean-einstenian one, for example, as well?) I think there isn´t a speck of evidence, and I have read of some controlled trials, that such a mind-boggling discovery as "morphic resonance" would be is based on any facts.
I remember an experiment done with language learning and human beings trying to reproduce Shelldrake´s wondrous speculations and the results proved that there was no basis and if anything, the effect seemed to be in the opposite direction, that the "resonance" interfered with learning!
Laing was EXTREMELY naive in taking for granted that a so called medium he had seeen somewhere could have guessed without some trick or cheat, the phone number his friend, attending the act with him, had written in a paper in his pocket. He didn´t seem capable or willing to consider that as some experienced professional magicians have shown, such "paranormal" abilities are due to very clever fooling of the audience. At least he didn´t seem to show a MINIMAL scepticism about such things that seem to be the trademark in these issues of a rational and clear mind.
Juan,
ReplyDeleteI do not see why you expect me to accept as objective truth your contention that Laing was "unbearable and destructive," as a teacher. I met a number of people who studied with Laing BTW who would strongly disagree.I often witnessed Laing clash with students or questioners at one of his events, including me at one point in my youth. As I said Laing was not a patient teacher. One might say in some ways he was lacking in wisdom.
I am not surprised you clashed with Laing. I would bet that you have and had a rationalistic anti-mystical world-view--and thus I would have expected Laing would have clashed with you because of his impatience with this orientation. Perhaps you would use different terms to characterize your orientation--so I'll leave it to you to correct my terminology. Nevertheless my basic point is reinforced by your second posting.
You write in first post:"He could lead credence to childish parapsychological theories, to the crazy theories of Shelldrake on "morphic resonance" etc..." You back that up later with the allegation that Laing was deceived by a medium. Then you write, "He didn´t seem capable or willing to consider that as some experienced professional magicians have shown, such "paranormal" abilities are due to very clever fooling of the audience." I suppose you are referring to the "amazing Randi." You and Laing were like oil and water.
I have read all of Laing's books and heard him talk and I don't recall him ever saying any so-called "schizoiphrenic" was "damaged" for life. I think Laing would argue that often schizophrenics had virtually no chance of getting their lives together--due to their treatment they
received and could expect to receive from the mental health system. Laing hoped all his life to change this by opening up alternatives. Loren Mosher --Soteria Project--believed as did Laing that it was important to intervene in the beginning--early adulthood usually, before the person had been inducted into a career as a patient.
I was uninspired by Laing's interest in re-birthing, so I ignored it.
I think Alice Miller is indeed a pessimistic thinker--with her typical psychoanalytic insistence that one's life program is virtually set in stone in the first few yearts of one's life. This psychoanalytic position has aptly been termed "the stability orientation" by Kenneth Gergen and life span developmental researchers as it underestimated the protean nature of human beings, the capacity for patients to change--without undergoing years of psychoanalysis.(See discission of Gergen et al at Farber at http://www.academyanalyticarts.org/farber.htm>
You are wrong about Laing positing innate tendency to evil in man. You cannot find such a statement. He was critical of the current social order--and those who tended to conform to it--not of man's biology.
There was a tension between various models of madness Laing presented. You claim these views were incompatibler and was evidence of his "muddled thinking." Daniel Burston saw this tension between models as a source and product of Laing's creativity and originality as a thinker. I agree with Burston.
You imply you had no biases against Laing the man or the thinker.Perhaps you originally were open to Laing as a person.I would not know. But your characterization of him now is extremely pejorative- as a person and as a thinker. You even claim he did not have a "rational and clear mind." Do you expect me to assume that your orientation (and Laing's ) did not influence your interaction with him years ago--and that it does not color your denigrating depiction of him today? And you call Laing naive.
Nice to meet you, Seth
Well Seth, that he was destructive as a teacher doesn´t preclude his being wise at times.
ReplyDeleteBut I saw him often drive students to silence, to feel inferior and stupid, scared, angry ,even to tears, all the negative qualities I loathe in an educator.He reduced, or tried to, student´s selfesteem and was MAINLY concerned with building his own narcissistic needs. He struck me as the typical hurt child forever pouring out and projecting his anger and his need to compensate for his early lacks and traumas.
And I didn´t clash with him: I was scared of him.I saw how he dealt with the slightest dissent and had no stomach for a dose of it.
And yet,at least in relation to his ideas about families and mental illness I arrived with quite a lot of sympathy for him. If anything my biases were in his favour.
As for the paranormal, I insist he was naive. But then people want to believe weird and wonderful things. Good luck to them and to Ronnie.
You are very wrong about Alice Miller since she believes we can undo the damage of childhood violence and manipulation. And Laing had clearly a pessimistic view of human nature. He didn´t expound it at length in his writings but it was there in everything he said about certain types of destructive behaviour.I often herad him telling such and such piece of sadistic behaviour and link it EXPLICITELY to the existence of Evil, with a big "E", and he derided more benevolent views of human nature as a "middle class fairy tale"(!?)After all he took a lot from Sartre who wrote "hell is the others". A statement which can be true at times, but it is NOT necessarily true. I don´t think he ever got rid of his early severe presbyterian view of the sinfulness of man. and I never heard him question Freud´s pessimistic death instinct theory. In fact he rambled approvingly a lot in one lecture about a scottish thinker Robertson, who in his opinion had seen that evil before Freud. As i didn´t take notes at his rambling and disjointed, though ocasionally right on. lectures I am afraid I cannot substantiate these points more precisely.
Let me add for your illustration that though I persisted in attending his talks, quite a few of my fellow students stopped attending them disgusted at his contemptuous and aggressive manner.Is that not being "destructive" enough?
Juan,
ReplyDeleteYour description of Laing is "thicker" now and more convincing except for the fact that I've have never heard or read such an unflattering account before. His son was one of his strongest critics and he described him as impulsive and short tempered. But you depict him as an in- tellectually insecure sadistic martinet. I met Joe Berke who disliked him but his view was considerably more favorable than yours--as were those of others whom I met who liked him as a teacher.Also I spent ten hours with him in a seminar in 1986 and 10 hours in 87. I did not see a man who was threatened by dissident views. To the contrary he seemed to enjoy banter, and being challenged.
So I do not how to account for the Laing you described. Maybe it was a different phase in his life. He was shattered when Jutta stsarted having affairs.
Also you are basically saying Laing had a strong, Calvinistic, sense that humanity had been damaged by original sin. Again I NEVER heard or read anything of this nature. But it was not the EARLY Sartre who had ythe most influence upon Laing. It was Sartre in his Marxist phase. Rather than seeing man as captrive to original sin, Laing ewmphasized man's freedom not to sin. He objected to the reification of human actions--of treating praxis as it was a process over which tyhe individual had no control. It was society, the social order, that was the product of his scorn--and also normal people wsho persecuted the outsiders.
I do not know how to account for these discrepancies--other than by positing that he was
on the edge when he felt betrayed by Jutta.
Seth
PS I never found him disjointed. He would go off on long digressions but would always circle back
to the point. But I know others claimed he was disjointed. Perhaps they did not feel as comfortable with Laing's peripatetic leisurely style as I did...
Well, Joe Berke, with whom my then wife was studying at the time, for one,went on to become a faithful follower of Klein,though he was more aware than Melanie of the family environment, the psychoanalist with the darkest view of children´s nature in the field, so I doubt he would have much to question Ronnie on this issue.
ReplyDelete"Insecure" intelectually is not the term,he was quite dogmatic and full of himself. But "muddled", at least in my vew, yes.
I wouldn´t account for these theoretical views merely in terms of his personal troubles, though no doubt they account partially for his personal nastyness at this period. Partially, because I never felt he had really dealt properly with his anger towards his mother. If he had he wouldn´t have been so narcissistic and angry a man.
I think the original sin view was always there,lurking in the background, definitely.
As for Thomas Szasz, by the way, his views on how to deal with small children are probably also quite influenced by what Alice Miller calls "poisonous pedagogy".An enlightened psychiatrist, Woodmansey, who had heard him talk about child rearing, thought so and wrote to me along that line."Let children cry and don´t let them manipulate you" seemed to be the message.
Neither conventional psychiatry and psychology, nor some of their critics are very lucid when it comes to childhood.And not even Alice Miller is lucid when it comes to the unborn, but I won´t expand or I will never cease writing here.
Anyway, it was interesting reading this blog.
Juan,
ReplyDeleteFrankly I don't know what to make of this. You have presented information that makes Laing appear sadistic. Since I never witnessed that, nor heard any such allegations but don't think you fabricated it, my guess is that he was displacing his anger at Jutta who betrayed him.I also think this may explain his uncharacteristic view of humans as "innately depraved"_-as Calvin put it/ I do not accept your Alice Miller Freudian explanation--although I don't discount his anger at his mother.
On other issues it seem obvious to me that our different respective views of Laing lead us to different conclusions. I told you that I had heard Laing talk about 8 times ands spent 20 hours at workshops with him. You claim he was "full of himself" and "muddled." I don't accept this. I think our different viewpoints lead us to completely different conclusions. Since you view Sheldrake as a flake and do not accept parapsychology as legitmate discipline, you are bound to be skeptical of Laing. Your claim that he was "full of himself" is likely to be based on your low asessment of his intellectual acuity.
I think he was a brilliant and profound thinker. You do not, do you? Can't you see how that would
lead you to interpret the same behavior in an entirely different way??For example I think it made sense for him to take himself very seriously.You think he is being "full of himself"?
In my own anti-Freudian books I have argued that Freudianism and psychoanalytic thought is a secularized version of the myth of original sin. I discussed this in an interview http://societyforhumanisticpsychology.blogspot.com/search?q=farber>
You keep mentioning the unborn. What did you want Laing to do? Become a "pro-life" activist?
Good luck to you,
Seth
Yes I would have liked to see Laing become a prolife activist, as I would have liked Alice Miller. Apart from many more serious reasons it would appear to me the prolife position would have been the only one consistent with Laing´s view of prenatal experience or Alice Miller´s fight against all forms of cruelty or neglect of children.
ReplyDeleteMay I say that there were some aspects of Laing´s writing and attitudes that I value and respect. I just didn´t like his person, that is all. And, believe me, I was very well disposed towards him initially.
I have recently bought and read Szasz's latest book. At the risk of coming off sycophantic, I think, personal feelings of rancor aside, that Dr. Szasz is spot on with his moral, ethical, and professional assessment of R.D. Laing. There is no place in hypocritical self-promotion in science and medicine. However, psychiatry being principally a moral-legalistic enterprise (certainly within the mainstay of institutional and forensic psychiatry)and, perforce, this reality makes for some rather interesting ideological infighting. Was Szasz perhaps a bit harsh of Laing's memory? That all depends on one's point of view, but personally, I feel it important that Szasz set the record straight!
ReplyDeleteSzasz's "searching critique of Laing" is always carried out under the relativly circumscribed pool of light made of his "anti-statist", right wing, libertarian, ideology. This, in my opinion, is the source of the main, and mainly concealed, grudge that Szasz holds against Left-aligned Laing. In much of Szasz's writings, along the repeated claims of concern over the importance of "respect" for patients, is thinly-veiled, consistent thread of social Darwinism, that seems only capable of viewing relationship within a frame work of competition, manipulation and struggle for dominance. So that the patient, who others might see as one struggling for life and a meaningful place in the world, is more-often than-not characterized by Szasz as one simply out to manipulatively and underhandedly express his will to power and dominance in the only way he knows how. Hence Szasz'z repeatedly mentioned affinity for Nietzsche, Menken and Bierce. And the ones who fail in this hyper-competitive war of all against are, according to Szasz, not so much the suffering and in distress, but are more accurately described, in Szasz's "reclamation of language" project, as "the stupid", "the incompetent" and "the malingerers". True, Szasz likes to talk about how mental patients, under the guise of care, are punished and imprisoned, but more often than not, when reading him I find myself expecting him to say in the next sentence "and if they're not, they oughta' be". You have to be straight to set the record straight, and this lasse faire, Cold Warrior cynic with the Dickensian undertaker's smile isn't the man to do it, imo.
ReplyDeleteRIP Ronald.
There is an element of truth in the claim by Anonymous above (why don't you sign your name?) that Szasz's Libertarian ideology burdened as it often is with a social darwinist ideological grudge has increasingly jaundiced Szasz's ability to respect the mad. It explains Szasz's hatred for Laing and his refusal to accord any value to Laing's intellectual contribution.
ReplyDeleteHowever this was not the case in the first few decades of Szasz's writing career. His attack on the idea of mental illness was inspired by the conviction that all citizens should be treated with respect as moral agents, one of the persistent themes of Laing also who drew upon French existentialism for the philosophical support for the idea that the actions of the mad are expressions of an intelligible praxis, not mere epiphenomena of pathological processes. Szasz rooted his conviction that the mad were moral agents in the philosophical tradition
of the American revolution. Szasz became the greatest defender in the 1960s and 1970s of the right of mental patients to resist unwanted psychiatric treatment, and thus to their constitutional right to autonomy, like every other citizen. In those days Szasz was defensive about being accused of a lack of compassion, and indeed his book The Manufacture of Madness is one of the most profound and compassionate critiques of the treatment of the mad ever written/.
But Szasz was trapped by his own rigid rationalism and secularism and over the years his defense of the mad has become to sound increasingly like an ideological screed against them. Without at least a touch of mysticism or at least an ability to tolerate ambiguity and paradox this is inevitable when dealing with the mad.. Szasz has decided that the mad are not suffering in any way beyond their control, that their apparent madness is entirely deception, bad faith and malingering. Since Laing as a mystic and a polyvalent thinker had a more nuanced view of madness as e.g., spiritual crisis, he believed the mad should be offered humane forms of support to help them through their crises.
Szasz went to war against Laing, as if he was seeking to exorcise some tendency within himself
that had led the younger Szasz to make statements that might justify the use of public funds to provide genuine assistance to the mad -- a position advocated by Laing, Loren Mosher, John Weir Perry, Peter Breggin, Jay Haley, Ron Leifer and all the other critics of traditional psychiatry..Szasz even blames Laing in his book on Laing for the failure of the movement against coercive psychiatry.
Once one has opposed the idea that no adult is entitled to public assistance (more taxes!) one might still assert their formal dignity as moral agents, but one has no rationale for any efforts to help ease their suffering.. In my mind the problem of reconciling the right to resist treatment with the right to public assistance (today there is no genuine assistance for the mad, as Robert Whitaker shows) is based on the idea that a democratic society has an obligation to help citizens reach spiritual and political maturity. Libertarianism does not recognize that right --though Christopher Lasch argued it is inherent in the idea of political equality necessary for a republican democratic government--and so Szasz the Libertarian has made a trajectory from demanding justice for the mad to arguing now that they have no right to any public assistance. After all if they are suffering it must be their fault. Thus Szasz's position does indeed sound like Social Darwinism/
Seth
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