Can I read The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness (Penguin Modern Classics) on EtoBox?

The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness (Penguin Modern Classics) by Laing, R. D. is a nonfiction available to read on EtoBox.

What is The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness (Penguin Modern Classics) about?

In The Divided Self (1960), Laing contrasted the experience of the "ontologically secure" person with that of a person who "cannot take the realness, aliveness, autonomy and identity of himself and others for granted" and who consequently contrives strategies to avoid "losing his self". Laing explains how we all exist in the world as beings, defined by others who carry a model of us in their heads, just as we carry models of them in our heads. In later writings he often takes this to deeper levels, laboriously spelling out how "A knows that B knows that A knows that B knows..."! Our feelings and motivations derive very much from this condition of "being in the world" in the sense of existing for others, who exist for us. Without this we suffer "ontological insecurity", a condition often expressed in terms of "being dead" by people who are clearly still physically alive. This watershed work aimed to make madness comprehensible, and in doing so revolutionized the way we perceive mental illness. Using case studies of patients he had worked with, psychiatrist R. D. Laing argued that psychosis is not a medical condition, but an outcome of the 'divided self', or the tension between the t

Who reads The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness (Penguin Modern Classics)?

Author

Laing, R. D.

Publisher

Penguin Group UK

Published

1960

Language

EN

ISBN

9780141962085

Category

nonfiction

Subjects

Psychology, Psychopathy, Social_sciences