The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise

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The work was inspired in part by Laing’s extensive experimentation with LSD;[2] but also owes a debt (among others) to Gregory Bateson and J. P. Sartre.[3]

Summary

Laing examines the nature of human experience from a phenomenological point of view, as well as the possibilities for psychotherapy in an existentially distorted world. He challenges the idea of normality in modern society, and argues that it is not merely people who are mad, but the world as well.[4][5] He presents psychosis as "a psychedelic voyage of discovery in which the boundaries of perception were widened, and consciousness expanded".[2]

While accepting in principle that “There is no need to idealize someone just because he is labelled 'out of formation'”[6] (or mad), Laing tended to confirm a view of the mad as explorers of the inner world.[7]

Influence

The Politics of Experience is Laing's best-known book,[4] its literary influence being especially apparent in Doris Lessing's novel, Briefing for a Descent into Hell.[8]

See also

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References

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  1. R. D. Laing, The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise (1984) p. 9-10
  2. 2.0 2.1 Tom Burns (2006). Psychiatry: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, pp. 96-98.
  3. R. D. Laing, The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise (1984) p. 94 and p. 83n
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  6. R. D. Laing, The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise (1984) p. 98
  7. Jenny Diski, The Sixties (2009) p. 127-9
  8. Harold Bloom, Doris Lessing (2003) p. 230