I first heard of R.D. Laing in the late 1960s, when he was known as an 'anti-psychiatrist.' He was thought to have a kinder view of people with disordered mental states. In those days, ordinary people sometimes took mescaline or LSD in order to experience unusual experiences in their minds. I believe Laing set up communities in which doctors and patients lived together, but I don't think he ever found a satisfactory way of healing the sick. He characterized psychotic people as having splits in their mental organization.
I couldn't help but notice hints of contempt in his writing, such as on page 148, where he writes: "I am quite sure that a good number of 'cures' of psychotics consist in the fact that the patient has decided, for one reason or other, once more to play at being sane."
Laing goes on to say that the schizophrenic uses obscurity and complexity deliberately "as a smokescreen to hide behind. This creates the ironical situation that the schizophrenic is often playing at being psychotic, or pretending to be so. In fact, as we have said, pretence and equivocation are greatly used by schizophrenics." (p. 163)
And further: "A good deal of schizophrenia is simply nonsense, red-herring speech, prolonged filibustering to throw dangerous people off the scent, to create boredom and futility in others. The schizophrenic is often making a fool of himself and the doctor. He is playing at being mad to avoid at all costs the possibility of being held responsible for a single coherent idea, or intention." (p. 164) Quite possibly the patient is not cooperating with the doctor to avoid the stigma of mental illness.
Personally, I don't think everybody is so articulate as to be able to say what is plaguing them. That would take a great deal of insight, and everybody is not graced with insight. In what other field of medicine do we expect the patient to figure out and speak up about his or her own disease?
These days, almost 60 years later, psychiatrists do not talk much to patients. They prescribe medications which quell 'voices' and help keep patients from becoming unglued. Sad to say, doctors still regard all psychoses as being chronic and incurable.
