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Summary
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 R.D.
Laing's first book, The Divided Self, was
published in 1960. At the time of its publication,
Laing was merely 28 years old, and had just
completed his psychoanalytic training. Numerous
publishers had rejected earlier drafts of the
manuscript, and initial sales were disappointing -
only 1,600 copies in hardback. But by 1989, the
year of his death, The Divided Self sold 700,000
copies in England alone, and has since been
translated into more than thirty languages.
As
its enormous popularity indicates, The Divided
Self was not a book for specialists. On the
contrary, it attempted to make madness and the
process of going insane intelligible to ordinary
people. In contrast to the prevailing psychiatric
approach, which enumerates the "signs and symptoms"
of schizophrenia from the perspective of a detached
outsider, Laing sought to understand these
distressed and distressing states of mind from the
inside out. He rejected the terminology of
psychoanalysis and behaviorism as unsuitable to
this end, because they were too burdened and to
deeply infused with dubious theoretical
preconceptions. Instead, to accomplish his task ,
he opted for the descriptive and hermeneutic
approach of existential-phenomenology, and dwelt at
length on memorable "case histories" known to
posterity as John, Peter, Rose, Julie (and others).
Laing noted that these patients suffered from a
radical fear of "authentic self-disclosure". Why
was this prospect so threatening to them?
In
the process of working with these patients , Laing
carefully distilled the underlying processes that
fosters the emergence of schizoid and psychotic
states of mind, introducing the notion of
'ontological insecurity'. Ontological insecurity
begins in childhood, or even earlier, in infancy,
due to an absence of bonding and reciprocity
between a mother and her new born child. In such
cases, the mother does not experience, affirm or
respond to the infant's genuine needs and feelings,
and tries to mold the infant's behavior and
experience to meet her own needs and expectations.
As a result, the infant is only affirmed by the
mother (or parent) when and if its adopts a "false
self". If this pattern persists, the child grows
up, in a certain sense, without ever really being
seen by others, because of how its identity is
defined by them as good, compliant, etc. Thus, no
matter how "good" or accomplished the child is,
outwardly, it remains haunted by feelings of being
phony, unreal, worthless, empty, and disconnected
from others - feelings which feed the fear of
authentic self-disclosure.
In
such circumstances, said Laing, the child lacks the
sense of being completely alive and having a
genuine self, or feels that its existence is
precarious, and contingent on the presence of the
other person. In Laing's terminology, it becomes
"schizoid". In due course, the child's "false self"
- or its "being for others" - becomes radically
detached from the person's "real self", or "being
for himself", which is never genuinely experienced
or addressed by others. The tragic dilemma of the
divided self is that the more isolated the "real
self" becomes, the less equipped it is to contend
with reality and ordinary developmental processes.
Moreover, the "false self" becomes increasingly
identified with the (publicly observable) body, and
the real self with the person's (invisible) mind.
As mind and body become more split, the "real self"
becomes more volatile, dismebodied, more invested,
and eventually lost, in phantasy.
Meanwhile,
as the real self becomes more precarious and
embattled, the "false self" becomes an almost
autonomous entity, so polished, automatic and alien
to what the schizoid person experiences inwardly
that it threatens to overwhelm or annihilate the
"real self" unless desperate (psychotic) measures
are taken. Eventually, the intense self-loathing
occasioned by years of accommodating and/or
deceiving others demands and expectations then
leads to the total repudiation of the "false self".
But the "real self" having been radically
disconnected from others, cannot express itself in
a coherent fashion. Hence the "signs and symptoms"
of psychosis.
In
additional to a repudiation of the "false self",
psychotic behavior often represents the patient's
way of responding to one of three kinds of anxiety
that are produced by the widening chasm between the
"real" and the "false" selves : the fear of
engulfment, the fear of implosion, and the fear of
petrifaction. The fear of engulfment is the fear of
losing one's identity, of absorption in the other,
or of being actively taken over by someone else's
mind. The fear of implosion is a product of inner
emptiness, a sense of being brittle; the fear of
having annihilation when the false self
disintegrates. The fear of petrification is the
fear of objectification in the eyes of the other,
the idea being that another person's gaze or regard
can rob you of your own subjectivity, and turn you
into a thing. To defend against this eventuality,
the person frequently treats others like objects
instead. But whether the person is responding to
one or more of these fears, the final result is
much the same - a concerted flight from the
communal and corporeal dimensions of human
existence.
In
other words, Laing's initial understanding of
psychosis was that it was a tragically misguided
attempt to live an authentic life, but to live it
in ways that are not actually given to human
beings, i.e. radically disconnected from others,
and from one's own body. Understanding and engaging
schizoid and psychotic patients therapeutically is
not possible unless the therapist is capable of 1)
bracketing many of their own theoretical
preconceptions, and 2) entering empathically into
the patient's frame of reference. This latter
requirement is not possible unless the therapist is
aware of his or her own "psychotic
potential".
The
Divided Self is possibly Laing's best book,
and certainly the easiest to read. There is a
coherent narrative structure, the prose style is
vivid and clear, and the case history material
illustrates his theoretical arguments beautifully
throughout the book.
·
Contents
·
Preface
to the Original Edition
Preface to the Pelican Edition
Acknowledgments
Part
I
The existential-phenomenological foundations for a
science of persons
The existential-phenomenological foundations for
the understanding of psychosis
Ontological insecurity
Part
II
The embodied and unembodied self
The inner self and the schizoid condition
The false-self systemSelf-consciousness
The case of Peter
Psychotic developments
The self and the false-self in a schizophrenic
The ghost of the weed garden: a study of a chronic
schizophrenic
References
Index
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