ABSTRACT

To deny the tragic facts of existence and to refuse to accept the inevitable hardships and limitations of the world is to escape into wish-fulfilling fantasy and live a false and superficial life. But the arbitrary, unnecessary and even savage curtailments which a particular society or family may impose upon a child present a problem which must be accepted as existing yet resisted as something which should not be there. It would be a sad thing if the extremism of some of this later writing impaired our reception of the important insights of the early work. R. D. Laing uses J. P. Sartre's pessimism creatively in writing vividly of the alienated state and identifying some of the factors which lead a person to this condition of mind. It is a paradoxical fact that so many attempts to bridge the gap between the powerful and the weak become corrupted in the very process they are opposing.