Portrait of the Psychiatrist as a Young Man The Early Writing and Work of R.D. Laing, 1927-1960.

by Beveridge, Allan

• ISBN13: 9780199583577
• ISBN10: 0199583579
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-11-07
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

RD Laing remains one of the most famous psychiatrists of the last 50 years. In the 1960s he enjoyed enormous popularity and received much publicity for his controversial views challenging the psychiatric orthodoxy. He championed the rights of the patient, and challenged the often inhumane methods of treating the mentally ill. Based on a wealth of previously unexamined archives relating to his private papers and clinical notes,Portrait of the Psychiatrist as a Young Mansheds new light on RD Laing, and in particular his early formative years - a crucial but largely overlooked period in his life. The first half of the book considers Laing's intellectual journey through the world of ideas and his development as a psychiatric theorist. An analysis of his notebooks and personal library reveals Laing's engagement not only with psychiatric theory, but also with a wide range of other disciplines, such as philosophy, literature, and religion. This part of the book considers how this shaped Laing's writing about madness and his evolution as a clinician. The second half draws on a rich and completely unexplored collection of Laing's clinical notes, which detail his encounters with patients in his early years as a psychiatrist, firstly in the British Army, subsequently in the psychiatric hospitals of Glasgow, and finally in the Tavistock Clinic in London. These notes reveal what Laing was actually doing in clinical practice, and how theory interacted with therapy. The majority of patients who were to appear in Laing's first two books,The Divided SelfandThe Self and Othershave been identified from these records, and this volume provides a fascinating account of how the published case histories compare to the original notes. There is a considerable mythology surrounding Laing, partly created by himself and partly by subsequent commentators. By a careful examination of primary sources, Allan Beveridge, both a psychiatrist and an historian, examines the many mythological narratives about Laing and provide a critical but not unsympathetic account of this colourful and contradictory thinker, who addressed questions about the nature of madness which are still being asked today. This book will be of interest to mental health workers and social historians alike as well as anybody interested in the philosophy of psychiatry.

Author Biography

Dr Allan Beveridge is a Consultant Psychiatrist at the Queen Margaret Hospital in Dunfermline. He lectures at the Department of Psychiatry of Edinburgh University and also at Queen Margaret College on the history of psychiatry, and on art and mental illness. He is an assistant editor of the British Journal of Psychiatry, where he edits the "Psychiatry in Pictures" series and is one of the Book Review Editors. He is an assistant editor of History of Psychiatry, where he is also one of the Book Review Editors. He has over 60 publications, including 8 book chapters, on such subjects as the history of psychiatry, ethics, and the relation of the arts to mental illness. He has written about Robert Burns, Robert Fergusson, James Boswell, Dostoyevsky, Kafka, Edvard Munch, Iain Crichton Smith and Charles Altamont Doyle. In 2006 he was awarded a Wellcome clinical leave research grant to study the early writings and private papers of R.D. Laing.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. xiii
Laing and theory
Portrait of the psychiatrist as a young man 1927-1960	p. 3
Early years	p. 4
School days	p. 8
Medical school	p. 12
Beginning as a doctor	p. 20
The British Army	p. 26
Gartnavel Royal Mental Hospital	p. 31
The Southern General Hospital	p. 32
London	p. 33
Portrait of the psychiatrist as an intellectual: Laing's early notebooks, personal library, essays, papers, and talks	p. 38
The quest to be an intellectual: the notebooks	p. 39
Leaving medical school: what path to follow?	p. 44
Laing's library	p. 46
Medical school: first public pronouncements and early writings	p. 50
Early papers	p. 57
Laing and psychiatric theory	p. 64
History of psychiatry	p. 64
Psychiatric theories	p. 69
Later psychiatric theories	p. 85
Later psychotherapeutic approaches to schizophrenia	p. 91
Laing and existential phenomenology	p. 101
Introduction	p. 101
Existentialism	p. 102
Laing and individual existential thinkers	p. 107
Phenomenology	p. 128
Existential-phenomenological psychiatry	p. 131
Laing on existential analysis	p. 135
Laing and religion	p. 142
Religious upbringing	p. 143
Doubts as an adult	p. 149
Religion and science, psychoanalysis, psychology, philosophy, and psychiatry	p. 152
Laing and the arts	p. 158
William Blake	p. 160
Gerard Manley Hopkins	p. 161
Dostoyevsky	p. 164
Chekhov	p. 172
Kafka	p. 173
Camus	p. 174
Artaud	p. 176
The Unquiet Grave	p. 178
Other writers	p. 179
Laing and practice
Laing in the Army	p. 185
Army psychiatry	p. 186
The Army reports	p. 188
Dream analysis	p. 191
An instance of the Ganser syndrome	p. 192
Peter/'David'	p. 193
Gartnavel Hospital and the 'Rumpus Room'	p. 199
The historical background to Gartnavel Hospital	p. 199
Laing at Gartnavel	p. 202
Background to the 'Rumpus Room' experiment	p. 203
The refractory ward	p. 207
The 'Rumpus Room' as seen by Laing	p. 210
Staff meetings	p. 213
The larger staff discussion meetings	p. 214
The 'Rumpus Room' results	p. 217
Reflections	p. 219
Individual patients at Gartnavel	p. 224
Mrs C.	p. 224
Miss M.	p. 225
Miss L.	p. 226
Miss A.	p. 226
Betty	p. 227
Magda	p. 229
The coldness of death	p. 231
The ghost of the weed garden	p. 238
'Julie' in The Divided Self	p. 242
Laing at the Southern General Hospital	p. 249
Southern General case conferences	p. 249
Outpatients	p. 259
Child psychiatry	p. 266
Laing as a conservative revolutionary in clinical practice	p. 269
Laing in London	p. 271
Mr B.	p. 272
Diana	p. 273
David	p. 275
Billy	p. 280
Group psychotherapy	p. 282
From the clinical notes to the published report	p. 284
The Divided Self	p. 286
Early drafts	p. 286
Manuscript	p. 289
The book	p. 291
Laing on The Divided Self	p. 296
Responses to The Divided Self	p. 297
Critique	p. 299
How Scottish was R.D. Laing?	p. 305
Laing's influence on Scottish culture	p. 311
Aftermath	p. 313
Concluding remarks	p. 317
References	p. 320
Primary sources	p. 320
Secondary sources	p. 322
Unarchived sources	p. 335
Index	p. 337
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