R. D. Laing Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

• There is no such condition as 'schizophrenia,' but the label is a social fact and the social fact a political event.

  R. D. Laing

  Diversity, Political, Facts

  R.D Laing (1967). “The Politics of Experience”

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• No one acts or experiences in a vacuum.

  R. D. Laing

  Vacuums

  R.D. LAING (1969). “SELF AND OTHERS”

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• We are bemused and crazed creatures, strangers to our true selves, to one another, and to the spiritual and material world - mad, even, from an ideal standpoint we can glimpse but not adopt.

  R. D. Laing

  Spiritual, Self, Mad

  R.D Laing (1967). “The Politics of Experience”

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

  R. D. Laing

  Men, Years, Fifty

  R.D Laing (1967). “The Politics of Experience”

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• Freud was a hero. He descended to the "Underworld" and met there stark terrors. He carried with him his theory as a Medusa's head which turned these terrors to stone. We who follow Freud have the benefit of the knowledge he brought back with him and conveyed to us. He survived. We must see of we now can survive without using a theory that is in some measure an instrument of defence.

  R. D. Laing

  Hero, Medusa, Benefits

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• Beauty is almost no longer possible if it is not a lie.

  R. D. Laing

  Beauty, Lying, Ifs

  R.D Laing (1967). “The Politics of Experience”

  12 Copy quote

• What we take anything to be profoundly affects how we go about describing it, and how we describe something profoundly affects how we go about explaining, accounting for, or understanding what is what we are, in a sense, defining, by our description.

  R. D. Laing

  Understanding, Defining, Description

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• We are effectively destroying ourselves by violence masquerading as love. I am a specialist, God help me, in events in inner space and time, in experiences called thoughts, images, reveries, dreams, visions, hallucinations, dreams of memories, memories of dreams, memories of visions, dreams of hallucinations, refractions of refractions of refractions of that original Alpha and Omega of experience and reality, that Reality on whose repression, denial, splitting, projection, falsification, and general desecration and profanation our civilisation as much as anything is based.

  R. D. Laing

  Dream, Memories, Reality

  R.D Laing (1967). “The Politics of Experience”

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• Children do not give up their innate imagination, curiosity, dreaminess easily. You have to love them to get them to do that.

  R. D. Laing

  Children, Giving Up, Imagination

  The Politics of Experience Ch. 3

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• Schizophrenia is a successful attempt not to adapt to pseudo- social realities.

  R. D. Laing

  Successful, Reality, Pseudo

  R.D Laing (1967). “The Politics of Experience”

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• We are born into a world where alienation awaits us. We are potentially men, but are in an alienated state, and this state is not simply a natural system. Alienation as our present destiny is achieved only by outrageous violence perpetrated by human beings on human beings.

  R. D. Laing

  Destiny, Men, World

  R.D Laing (1967). “The Politics of Experience”

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• Our time has been distinguished, more than by anything else, by a mastery, a control, of the external world, and by an almost total forgetfulness of the internal world. If one estimates human evolution from the point of view of knowledge of the external world, then we are in many respects progressing. If our estimate is from the point of view of the internal world, and of oneness of internal and external, then the judgment must be very different.

  R. D. Laing

  Views, Oneness, Progress

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• The brotherhood of man is evoked by particular men according to their circumstances. But it seldom extends to all men. In the name of our freedom and our brotherhood we are prepared to blow up the other half of mankind and to be blown up in our turn.

  R. D. Laing

  Freedom, Blow, Men

  Politics of Experience (1967) ch. 4

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• The 'data' (given) of research are not so much given as taken out of a constantly elusive matrix of happenings. We should speak of capta rather than data.

  R. D. Laing

  Taken, Data, Research

  R.D Laing (1967). “The Politics of Experience”

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• From the alienated starting point of our pseudo-sanity, everything is equivocal. Our sanity is not "true" sanity. Their madness is not "true" madness. The madness of our patients is an artifact of the destruction wreaked on them by us, and by them on themselves.

  R. D. Laing

  Pseudo, Patient, Madness

  R.D Laing (1967). “The Politics of Experience”

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• A lot of the time I'm in the present, and I'm thinking about the past or scheming about the future and missing every present moment, instead of actually partaking of the sacrament of every present moment.

  R. D. Laing

  Past, Thinking, Missing

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• How do we define, how do we describe, how do we explain and/or understand ourselves? What sort of creatures do we take ourselves to be? What are we? Who are we? Why are we? How do we come to be what or who we are or take ourselves to be? How do we give an account of ourselves? How do we account for ourselves, our actions, interactions, transactions (praxis), our biologic processes? Our specific human existence?

  R. D. Laing

  Giving, Our Actions, Who We Are

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• I'm ridiculous to feel ridiculous when I'm not.

  R. D. Laing

  Ridiculous, Feels

  R. D. Laing (2008). “Knots”, p.68, Marbot Ediciones

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• Alienation as our present destiny is achieved only by outrageous violence perpetrated by human beings on human beings.

  R. D. Laing

  Fate, Destiny, Diversity

  R.D Laing (1967). “The Politics of Experience”

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• Perfection is something we should all strive for. It's a duty and a joy to perfect one's nature... The most difficult thing is love. A loveless, driving person that just competes in the rat race is far from perfection in my book.

  R. D. Laing

  Book, Perfect One, Race

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• Here we have the paradox, the potentially tragic paradox, that our relatedness to others is an essential aspect of our being, as is our separateness, but any particular person is not a necessary part of our being.

  R. D. Laing

  Essentials, Paradox, Aspect

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• We must remember that we are living in an age in which the ground is shifting and the foundations are shaking. I cannot answer for other times and places. Perhaps it has always been so. We know it is true today.

  R. D. Laing

  Age, Foundation, Answers

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• The schizophrenic may indeed be mad. He is mad. He is not ill. I have been told by people who have been through the mad experience how what was then revealed to them was veritable manna from Heaven. The person's whole life may be changed, but it is difficult not to doubt the validity of such vision. Also, not everyone comes back to us again.

  R. D. Laing

  People, Mad, Heaven

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• No one has schizophrenia, like having a cold. The patient has not "got" schizophrenia. He is schizophrenic.

  R. D. Laing

  Patient, Cold, Schizophrenia

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• Each time a new baby is born there is a possibility of reprieve. Each child is a new being, a potential prophet, a new spiritual prince, a new spark of light precipitated into the outer darkness.

  R. D. Laing

  Family, Spiritual, Baby

  R.D Laing (1967). “The Politics of Experience”

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