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In the 1960s and 1970s, the radical and visionary ideas of R. D. Laing revolutionized thinking about psychiatric practice and the meaning of madness. His work, from <EM>The Divided Self to <EM>Knots, and his therapeutic community at Kingsley Hall, made him a household name. But after little more than a decade he faded from prominence as quickly as he had attained it. <EM>R.D.Laing and the Paths of Anti-Psychiatry re-examines Laing's work in the context of the anti-psychiatry movement. Concentrating on his most productive decade, the author provides a reasoned critique of Laing's theoretical writings, investigates the influences on his thinking such as phenomenology, existentialism and American family interaction research, and considers the experimental Kingsley Hall therapeutic community in comparison with anti-psychiatry experiments in Germany and Italy. The book provides a much needed reassessment and re-evaluation of Laing's work and its significance for psychotherapy and psychiatry today.
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R.D. and the Paths of Anti-Psychiatry In the 1960s and 1970s, the radical and visionary ideas of R.D.Laing and others associated with the anti-psychiatry movement challenged the psychiatric establishment, claiming that diagnosis was scientifically meaningless—that it was simply a way of labelling socially undesirable behaviour. These ideas revolutionized thinking about psychiatric practice and the meaning of madness. Laing’s work, from The Divided Self to Knots, and his therapeutic community at Kingsley Hall, made him a household name. But after little more than a decade he faded from prominence as quickly as he had attained it. R.D.Laing and the Paths of Anti-Psychiatry provides a thorough reexamination of Laing’s work from a contemporary perspective. Concentrating on his most productive decade, the author provides a reasoned critique of Laing’s theoretical writings and investigates the influences on his thinking including phenomenology and existentialism in his earlier work, and American family interaction research and Sartre in his work on interpersonal communication. The book also considers the experimental Kingsley Hall therapeutic community in parallel with other anti-psychiatry experiments such as the Socialist Patients’ Collective in Germany and the restructuring of the entire psychiatric system in Italy. Zbigniew Kotowicz also focuses on Laing’s contemporary commentators, from the political right and left, and from feminism, whose responses were as much a part of the Laing ‘phenomenon’ as he was himself. Setting Laing’s work in context, he provides a new and much needed reassessment of its significance for psychotherapy and psychiatry today. Zbigniew Kotowicz trained as a psychotherapist with The Philadelphia Association and has worked as a community therapist and in private practice. He is now a freelance writer and is also the author of Fernando Pessoa: Voices of a Nomadic Soul. The Makers of Modern Psychotherapy Series editor: Laurence Spurling This series of introductory, critical texts looks at the work and thought of key contributors to the development of psychodynamic psychother apy. Each book shows how the theories examined affect clinical practice, and includes biographical material as well as a comprehen sive bibliography of the contributor’s work. The field of psychodynamic psychotherapy is today more fertile but also more diverse than ever before. Competing schools have been set up, rival theories and clinical ideas circulate. These different and sometimes competing strains are held together by a canon of fundamental concepts, guiding assumptions and principles of practice. This canon has a history, and the way we now understand and use the ideas that frame our thinking and practice is palpably marked by how they came down to us, by the temperament and experiences of their authors