Selected Works of R.D. Laing, 7 Vols

by R.D. Laing

This set reprints seven of Laing's major works, originally published between 1960 and 1971 and out of print for many years.
Laing was an existential psychiatrist who offered a radical critique of abnormal behaviour and social and medical models for its treatment. He was critical of the extent to which psychoanalytic concepts may conceal or distort human experience and of the tendency to label the patient "sick" as opposed to looking at "sickness" in the patient's family or in society. It was Laing who argued that schizophrenia is not an illness but a label for another kind of problematic experience and behaviour.
Laing's ideas have been particularly popular among those who object to the hypocrisy of society and its treatment of those considered to be abnormal.
Available also as individual volumes, this set offers the ideal opportunity to replace missing or damaged volumes. Laing's works included in this set are:
* Volume One: The Divided Self 0-415-19818-6: 241pp: ?45.00
* Volume Two: Self and Others 0-415-19819-4: 186pp: ?45.00
* Volume Three: Reason and Violence 0-415-19820-8: 184pp: ?45.00
* Volume Four: Sanity and Madness in the Family 0-415-19821-6: 284pp: ?45.00
* Volume Five: The Politics of the Family 0-415-19822-4: 142pp: ?45.00
* Volume Six: Interpersonal Perception 0-415-19823-2: 189pp: ?45.00
* Volume Seven: Knots 0-415-19824-0: 94pp: ?45.00

1324 pages, Hardcover

First published December 3, 1998

About the author

Ronald David Laing was a Scottish psychiatrist who wrote extensively on mental illness – in particular, the subjective experience of psychosis. Laing's views on the causes and treatment of serious mental dysfunction, greatly influenced by existential philosophy, ran counter to the psychiatric orthodoxy of the day by taking the expressed feelings of the individual patient or client as valid descriptions of lived experience rather than simply as symptoms of some separate or underlying disorder.

Laing was associated with the anti-psychiatry movement although he rejected the label.