title: Wisdom, Madness and Folly: The Making of a Psychiatrist
author:  R. D. Laing 
description: This autobiography takes us up to the time just before the publication of Laing's controversial landmark book The Divided Self. It describes his childhood and medical studies in Glasgow, and his growing disenchantment with what he regarded as the coercive mental-health establishment and the dismal institutional settings of the 1950s. When the book ends, Laing has not yet gained his reputation for integrating the personal aspect into clinical practice and for mental patient advocacy, as well as his denial that there is an unbridgeable gap between normals and schizophrenics. Yet, the narrative successfully conveys a sense of his evolving point of view toward the phenomenology of disordered experiences. For subject collections. William Abrams, Portland State Univ. Lib., Ore.
zlib_text: THE 
  FACTS OF LIFE 
  
  About the Author 
  R. D. Laing studied medicine at the University of Glas­
  gow, where he also later taught: He served as a psychia­
  trist in the British army and a physician at the Glasgow 
  Royal Mental Hospital, before joining the Tavistock 
  Clinic: He was later appointed director of the Langham 
  Clinic in London. From 1961 to 1967, he undertook 
  research into families, and he is now in private practice 
  as a psychoanalyst. 
  Since 1964, Dr. Laing has been president. of the 
  Philadelphia Association in London. This organization 
  is mainly concerned with setting up households as places 
  of sanctuary, asylum, refuge, and dwelling, where people 
  may live without receiving any treatment they do not 
  want. 
  Dr. Laing is the author of numerous articles and re­
  views. His other books are The Divided Self, Self and 
  Others, Reason and Violence 
  (with David Cooper), 
  Sanity, Madness and the Family, Vol. 1: The Families of 
  Schizophrenics 
  (with Aaron Esterson) ,  Interperson