THE POLITICS OF EXPERIENCE

by R. D. Laing ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 4, 1967

The author of this collection of essays espouses a number of radical concepts. For instance, he maintains that psychosis is really a transcendental experience, a trip to a world of released libido that ends in an existential rebirth, and that our idea of normal is ""a form of destructive action on experience""--that to be normal is to be absurd. Our educative process is likened to the force-feeding of a goose, making us brutal, half-crazed creatures. The author concludes from statistics that ""we are driving our children mad more effectively than we are genuinely educating them,"" and that psychoanalysis as we know it is a ""degradation ceremonial"" that can culminate in depriving us of our civil liberties. Madness is, in other words, a political experience, of this time, that place. Exasperated by our society's narrow definition of normality which inhibits the interior life, R.D. Laing has some arresting things to say. The general reader may find the occasional forays into phenomenology so much gobbledegook, and may be somewhat put off by the author's own flamboyant rhetoric, but this book is potentially disturbing and exciting reading.

Pub Date: April 4, 1967

ISBN: 039471475X

Page Count: -

Publisher: Pantheon

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1967

Categories: NONFICTION