R.D. Laing Quotes

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

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

Society highly values its normal man. It educates children to lose themselves and to become absurd, and thus to be normal.

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.

If I do not know that I do not know, I think I know. If I do not know that I know, I think I do not know.

I cannot experience your experience. You cannot experience my experience. We are both invisible men.

Experience is mad when it steps beyond the horizons of our common, that is, our communal sense.

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.

The dynamics and structures found in those groups called families in our society may not be evident in those groups called families in other places and times.

The experience and behavior that gets labeled schizophrenic is a special strategy that a person invents in order to live in an unlivable situation.

Rule A: Don't. Rule A1: Rule A doesn't exist. Rule A2: Do not discuss the existence or non-existence of Rules A, A1 or A2.

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

No one acts or experiences in a vacuum.

In describing one way of going mad, I shall try to show that there is a comprehensible transition from the sane schizoid way of being-in-the-world to a psychotic way of being-in-the-world.

The square root of nothing.

Few books today are forgivable.

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.

What do you do when you don't know what to do? No wonder there are more suicides among psychiatrists than in any other profession.

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

memory is a storm I can't repel.

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.

To be a woman and a writer is double mischief, for the world will slight her who slights "the servile house," and who would rather make odes than beds.

If I don't know I don't know, I think I know. If I don't know I know I know, I think I don't know.

Truth is literally that which is without secrecy, what discloses itself without a veil.

To live in the past or in the future may be less satisfying than to live in the present, but it can never be as disillusioning.

One cannot say everything at once.

A man who says that men are machines may be a great scientist. A man who says he is a machine is 'depersonalized' in psychiatric jargon.

There are good reasons for being obedient, but being unable to be disobedient is not one of the best reasons.

We live equally out of our bodies and out of our minds.

In the society of men the truth resides now less in what things are than in what they are not.

Few books today are forgivable. Black on canvas, silence on the screen, an empty white sheet of paper are perhaps feasible.

Being embodied as such is no insurance against feelings of hopelessness or meaningslessness. Beyond his body, he still has to know who he is.

[of Nan Goldin] In an afterword to Ballad written in 2012, she declared: ‘I decided as a young girl I was going to leave a record of my life and experience that no one could rewrite or deny.

Resurrect the dreams that you allowed to be killed by those who never dare to dream

The psychiatrist must become a fellow traveller with his patient.

Schizophrenic behaviour is a special strategy that a person invents in order to live in an unlivable situation.

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.

When family relations are no longer harmonious we have filial children and devoted parents.

What we call 'normal' is a product of repression, denial, splitting, projection, introjection and other forms of destructive action on experience.

At some point, you have to set down the past. At some point, you have to accept that everyone was doing their best. At some point, you have to gather yourself up, and go onward into your life.

The truth is our generation would rather spend money to attend events to prove to people that they can than actually enjoying the moments themselves.©SaccheenLaing2015

This is what's so terrifying about being lonely: the instinctive sense that it is literally repulsive, inhibiting contact at just the moment contact is most required.

Collapse, spread, merging, union: these things sound like the opposite of loneliness, and yet intimacy requires a solid sense of self to be successful and satisfying.

There are kinds of solitude that provide a respite from loneliness, a holiday if not a cure.

Why do you put yourself in unsafe places? Because something in you feels fundamentally devoid of worth.

They are playing a game. They are playing at not playing a game. If I show them I see they are, I shall break the rules and they will punish me. I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game

What does it feel like to be lonely? It feels like being hungry: like being hungry when everyone around you is readying for a feast.

If I could turn you on, if I could drive you out of your wretched mind, if I could tell you I would let you know.