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R. D. Laing
(7 Oct 1927 - 23 Aug 1989)
British psychiatrist.
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Science Quotes by R. D. Laing (4 quotes)
Doctors in all ages have made fortunes by killing their patients by means of their cures. The difference in psychiatry is that is the death of the soul.
— R. D. Laing
From Address (Jul 1967), 'The Obvious', to the Congress on the Dialectics of Liberation, London, collected in David Cooper, The Dialectics of Liberation (2015), 19.
I would “like” to be positivistic, [and do] research; but I can’t impress myself sufficiently by the “importance” of any possible research which I can imagine, to embark upon it.… The terrible secret is that I don’t believe in natural science. And yet I do, I do.
— R. D. Laing
From notebook K12 manuscript, 2-3. As quoted and cited in Allan Beveridge, Portrait of the Psychiatrist as a Young Man: The Early Writing and Work of R.D. Laing, 1927-1960 (2011), 45.
Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through. It is potential liberation and renewal as well as enslavement and existential death.
— R. D. Laing
Politics of Experience (1967), 110.
The experience and behaviour that gets labelled schizophrenic is a special strategy that a person invents in order to live in an unlivable situation.
— R. D. Laing
Politics of Experience (1967), 95.
See also:
- 7 Oct - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Laing's birth.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
