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R. D. Laing

R. D. Laing Quotes

Psychiatrist

R. D. Laing was a Scottish psychiatrist known for his unconventional views on schizophrenia and his contributions to psychotherapy. His theories emphasized the role of social and cultural factors in mental illness and had a profound impact on the field of psychiatry.

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Famous R. D. Laing Quotes

“We are all murderers and prostitutes - no matter to what culture, society, class, nation one belongs, no matter how normal, moral, or mature, one takes oneself to be.”

Matter Culture Nations Nature Moral Class Society Normal Oneself Mature Murderer

Book:The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise

Source: The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise

“The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious, of being out of one’s mind, is the condition of the normal man. Society highly values its normal man. It educates children to lose themselves and to become absurd, and thus to be normal. Normal men have killed perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in the last fifty years.”

Source: The Politics of Experience

“What we call "normal" is a product of repression, denial, splitting, projection, introjection, and other forms of destructive actions on experience...It is radically estranged from the structure of being.”

Action Form Products Depression Normal Structure Illness Mental Illness Denial Destructive Projection Repression Splitting

Author:R. D. Laing

“True sanity entails in one way or another the dissolution of the normal ego, that false self competently adjusted to our alienated social reality... and through this death a rebirth and the eventual re-establishment of a new kind of ego-functioning, the ego now being the servant of the divine, no longer its betrayer.”

Way Kind Self Reality Social Divine Ego Normal One Way Servant Sanity Establishment Rebirth Dissolution

Author:R. D. Laing

“Our 'normal' 'adjusted' state is too often the abdication of ecstasy, the betrayal of our true potentialities.”

States Normal Betrayal Ecstasy Abdication

Author:R. D. Laing

“The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious, of being out of one's mind, is the condition of the normal man.”

Men Mind Conditions Normal Unconscious Alienation Schooled Unschooling Problems In School

Book:The Politics of Experience

Source: The Politics of Experience

“Society highly values its normal man. It educates children to lose themselves and to become absurd, and thus to be normal.”

Men Children Values Loses Normal Absurd Educate Schooled Normality Unschooling Educated Man Problems In School

Book:The Politics of Experience

Source: The Politics of Experience

“Normal men have killed perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in the last fifty years.”

Men Years Lasts Normal Fellows Fifty Normality

Book:The Politics of Experience

Source: The Politics of Experience

About the Author

Born: October 7, 1927
Died: August 23, 1989
Known for: Psychiatrist
Quotes: 122

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Books & Sources

The Politics of ExperienceRelated source material

The Politics of Experience and The Bird of ParadiseRelated source material

KnotsRelated source material

SELF AND OTHERSRelated source material

Selected Works of RD Laing: KnotsRelated source material

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