ABSTRACT
R. D. Laing is not a psychologist by profession. He is a psychiatrist and his insights come from his 'clinical' work. His detractors might well say that he has cast off the white coat of the psychiatrist for the more impressive mantle of the guru. Since 1965, Laing has seemed to many people to eschew the path of the scientific medical investigator, he has preferred to become a poet with a political edge. After 1965, he helped found and run a series of hostels in which existential and radical approaches to healing were tried. Laing's work has seen a logical development through a number of books. His first book with Cooper, Reason and Violence is technically an exposition of some ideas of Sartre's philosophy. In his book on Laing, Friedenberg complains that these passages have been, perhaps, used too much. Laing's work is often examined in a different sequence.
