October 25-27, 2013

A Weekend Symposium Addressing R.D. Laing's legacy and contemporary relevance in commemoration of the 25th Anniversary of his death.

Wagner College, Staten Island, NY

www.rdlaing2013symposium.com/

SPEAKERS
Fritjof Capra, Ph.D., Keynote Speaker
Betty Cannon, Ph.D.
Darlene Ehrenberg, Ph.D.
Brian Evans, Ph.D.
Andrew Feldmar, Ph.D.
Steven Gans, Ph.D.
Miles Groth, Ph.D.
Theodor Itten
Douglas Kirsner, Ph.D.
Stanley Krippner, Ph.D.
Alma Menn
Peter Mezan, Ph.D.
Maureen O'Hara
Chris Oakley
Andrew Pickering, Ph.D.
Leon Redler, M.D.
Kirk Schneider, Ph.D.
Martin A. Schulman, Ph.D.
Mina Semyon
Ross Speck, M.D.
Michael Guy Thompson, Ph.D.

Friday, 24. August 2012 - R.D. Laing’s Psychotherapeutic Compassion

A dialogical talk by Theodore Itten and Murray Graham Gordon

“Imagine you freak out, come to the end of your tether, can’t hold it together anymore. Where would you go? Imagine you enter a way of being and experiencing the world, which other people call mad, and your nearest and dearest can’t cope with your presence any longer. To whom would you turn?”

R.D. Laing (1927–1989) asked this question, framing a larger range of questions concerning what we owe one another when someone loses their way. Both presenters knew and worked with Laing personally and lived in the therapeutic communities he established in London. This evening elucidates Laings’s integrative therapeutic approach, his profound understanding of sanity and madness, and his awareness that without sympathy there is no healing.

AN EVENING LECTURE
at Open Center New York
Wednesday, October 10, 8–10pm 12FP88P
Members: $22 / Nonmembers: $25

more Informations

Friday, 24. August 2012, I like to inform you all, that on October 2012, a new book on Ronnie Laing’s life and work will be published.

R.D. LAING : 50 years since ‘THE DIVIDED SELF’
Edited by Theodor Itten & Courtenay Young
PCCS Books (2013)

Ross-on-Wye Together with Courtenay Young, Editor of The International Journal of Psychotherapy, I have collected and edited this book. There are twenty four authors who joined in, and we begin our Introduction as follows:

With this book, our authors and we, the editors, commemorate and celebrate in our various ways, the 50 years (or so) since the publication of R.D. Laing’s: The Divided Self, in 1960. He was then 33 years old. He began writing his first book shortly after he entered clinical practice in the Royal Gartnavel Hospital, Glasgow, in 1953, developing his style of relating to patients, listening to them, and conveying his experience by getting his ‘voice’ going. For Laing, the epistemological basis for the science of a person became empirical phenomenology: the ultimate definition was not some erudite theory, but what could actually be seen and heard. In this, he was quite radical and – for him – this was also somewhat transformational.

What was Laing’s basic message just over half a century ago? First of all, it is imperative to listen more carefully to the ‘mad’ communications of all the people that are similar to those who are portrayed in ‘The Divided Self’. Maybe they are not as ‘mad’ as they seem; maybe they are just ‘divided selves’. Whilst simple, this was revolutionary. For centuries, society (we) had excluded, ignored, imprisoned, laughed at, and been afraid of these ‘mad’ people. De facto, their ravings could not therefore be sensible, but Laing just asked us to listen more carefully and take some of their personal ‘stories’ into account: maybe then they would make more sense than heretofore presumed. If you start to ‘be’ with these ordinary people, much like you and me, in a more courteous respectful way, you may find that they might open up to you some of the treasures of their hidden true selves.

See an overview (incl. Contents)
download pdf

The Book is published 20.10.2012
For more Information: please visit http://www.pccs-books.co.uk/.

Presently this Site of The Society for Laingian Studies will remain as it is, more for archive research than continuous news, as it has been for years, when looked after by the founder and webmaster Margareta Carr.

For Laingian-News we have the pleasure to direct you to the new R.D. Laing Institute hosted by the R.D. Laing Association: http://r-d-laing.com

11. November 2011 - After a long hiatus, I am pleased to announce that the Society for Laingian Studies website is back up!
I want to thank Theodor Itten for taking over the site. The site’s founder, Margreta Carr, has decided to go on to pursue further projects. I have agreed to continue as the director and both Theodor and I are dedicated to continue the history of excellence with the site that Margreta established with the founding of the site. There is much going on in the world of Laingian scholarship and I look forward to bringing everyone up to speed as quickly as possible. Thank you for your patience and please continue to check back for updates.
Brent Potter

18 April - The earthly ball a peopled garden*
In a demonstration interview with a young woman, Christy, (diagnosed 'intractably paranoid schizophrenic') at the 1985 Evolution of Psychotherapy Conference, Ronald Laing responded to Christy's expressed concerns about the state of humanity, our capacity for consciousness, and a conspiracy around her by saying,

This he described as a conspiracy, but that it was "... a benign one." Time has proven him to be right on both counts, as 22 years later, the map below confirms:

[To view today's map, click here]

This map is a snapshot taken of the geographic locations of daily visitors to the SLS website – an extraordinary image of the 'benign conspiracy', and far beyond its usefulness as a concise reply to individuals who would see Laing's legacy diminished, (and/or, who may simply be out of touch with current times) this map reflects the waking up taking place all over the world to conscious humanity. Consider that, if this little endeavour to preserve Laing's contribution realises this level of awareness - imagine what all of the movements toward humane treatment, to an end to war, oppression, tyranny in all forms, would look like altogether on a map like this.

At the least, it could be said that the spirit of collective engagement in the "thoroughly self-conscious and self-critical human account of man" that Laing insisted on is being globally embraced, and we have good reason to be hopeful for the future.

But for our part, since the last update, we have added just over 40,000 words worth of new content, including R.D. Laing's The Obvious, articles and essays by John Heaton, Gavin Miller, Paul Zweig, Francis Mansbridge, as well as a Model Consent Form for psychiatric treatment. We've completed the transition of all content to a single graphic style, and greatly expanded the Quotations page. And last but not least, we've restructured the Resources section and added a new section, In the News, to provide a small library of news items that mark milestones in the progress toward humane psychiatry.