A science of persons: Exploring the impact of R. D. Laing's The Divided Self on psychology.

Abstract

ter-informed dialogue with works that diverge from the dominant, mainstream approach. PSYCHOLOGY FROM THE STANDPOINT OF THE DIVIDED SELFAlthough the topic of Laing's (1960) book is schizophrenia, the focus is even more narrow and the ambition more broad. Laing presented a psychological study of one way that some people become "schizophrenic." He does not indicate what other ways involve, let alone suggest any universal description or etiology. Because Laing's greater aim was to propose and demonstrate a special way of researching the lives of people, his approach was not limited to "one way of becoming schizophrenic," to other forms of schizophrenia, or even to the broad field of psychopathology. It could be applied to all subject matter in psychology, for it provides the unique scientific foundation that in Laing's view psychology is lacking.By 1960, the existential-phenomenological approach used by Laing had a long and distinguished history in psychology, but it had only recently been introduced in the United States through difficult works that use philosophically derived language. Laing claimed that this approach makes possible the achievement of a most difficult goal, that of understanding "schizophrenics." Although volumes of studies have provided us with knowledge of their neurophysiology and brain anatomy, of their hereditary and social etiological factors, and of their demographics, these works have provided only information about the organism, decontextualized factors, and impersonal figures. One could master all this knowledge without being able to understand one single schizophrenic person. Understanding requires different methods, different concepts, and, moreover, a different kind of relationship with the people being studied.For Laing, a person is an original center of experience and of action in the world. We understand a person when we are able to grasp particular expressions, such as nonverbal conduct and speech, in the context of that individual's being-in-the-world. This means grasping how the person experiences and comports himself or herself with other people, how a given moment of a person's life follows from his or her past and aims to bring about an intended future. In schizophrenic persons, we must come to know the place of "hallucinations" and "delusions" in the overall context of the person's being-in-the-world.Laing asserted that we must empathically enter into the other person's life and grasp the meanings of situations for him or her. This work requires a special social-emotional attitude which, mincing no words, Laing called love. Love is the basic requirement of all research that aims to understand people, especially when it involves a person-to-person relationship. People more readily disclose their meaningful experiences when they feel genuinely cared

De-othering “schizophrenia”

“…Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing (1960), for example, posited that schizophrenia might arise from a position of “ontological insecurity,” or a sense of insecure being-in-the-world that results in a split between a hidden, “true” self and a “false” self that is extended as a proxy to interact with reality (see also Wertz & Alcee, 2003). According to Laing, the experience called “psychosis” is sometimes simply the “sudden removal of the veil of the false self” (p. 99), revealing a “true” self that has developed in isolation from the social world.…”