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Originally Posted by notyourfiend
Demonrail - I actually initially majored in psychology because my goal was to somehow work in the anti-psychiatry field. I wanted to do human rights law or community organizing. The college I went to had a strong humanistic psychology program and even offered a Laing seminar. I am somewhat involved with the Icarus Project - some stuff I did is being sold this weekend at their fundraiser in NYC. Are you familiar with the Icarus Project? They are less political and more discussion/outreach based.
I've never read The Divided Self specifically but my gf/many of my other friends have. My gf did some very intensive independent work on his material. I never got as involved because the professor who was an expert on his work started hating me after she found out that I was reading Foucualt. She was hyper-critical about anything remotely post-modern and distributed by Foucault's proposal of our notions of the soul being something that is construction. I'm pretty sure that she read his work as claiming that there is no such thing as a soul which is inaccurate. Laing apparently tried to approach Foucault because he felt their work was similar (analysises of madness and such) but Foucault claimed that they were nothing alike.
Anywho, if I go back to grad school for something academic, I want to study the intersections between science, normalization, micropolitics and gender. How pretentious is that?
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happily suprised to see laing mentioned. bought the divided self in a charity shop on a whim and started reading it on the way home on the train. had a moment of terrifying epiphany. when i was an inpatient i was disappointed that none of the staff had read him. it was my impression that he has been basically ignored by the contemporary mental health service so it's encouraging to see some people are still studying him. there is a channel 4 documentary on him in his later years, i had a torrent of it once, he demonstrates a few techniques that didn't impress me and made me wonder how much fidelity he still held to his 60's ideals at that point. there is also the film asylum which is a documentary filmed in one of his experimental communes were the doctors and patients lived amongst each other. anyway since the divided self and politics of experience have already been mentioned i'll choose sanity madness and the family. its essential laing. one of the most unsettling and disturbing books i've ever read. there are about 10 families who each get a chapter comprised of interviews and historys of the child that has been having the problems. what you are basically reading are accounts of families mystifying thier kids into pyschosis. The kid is being manipulated into having to deny thier own perceptions of reality as false. the parents seem only to dimly realise what they are doing. If you haven't already read it you should definitly pick it up demonrail.