Ronald Laing is somebody I’ve come across before who I’m very interested in. A page called Excerpts from “The Troubled Mind” offers:

“Because of such doubts, Ronald Laing, a Scottish psychiatrist, questions whether schizophrenia should be viewed as a disease at all in the ordinary sense. He feels that the schizophrenic experience may be quite a natural one. In schizophrenia, individuals, for unclear reasons, have entered into an ‘inner world’ that part of their psyche which is unconscious most of the time and which contains many of the primitive instinctual elements ‘discovered’ by Freud. �� He views the schizophrenic episode as a potentially enriching experience, perhaps reminiscent of a psychedelic trip on LSD. ‘This journey is experienced as going further in, as going back through one’s personal life and back and through and beyond into the experience of all mankind, of the primal man, of Adam and pehaps even further into the beings of animals, vegetables and minerals’ If society would only allow them to embark on this journey unimpeded by social pressures, psychiatrists or tranquilizing drugs, they would emerge from it as better people. “

He has a bunch of books. I’d like to read them all. Or at least all the good ones.