My Book Reviews

Human nature is extremely complex.   We run the risk of much misunderstanding, if not considerable trouble, if we simplify that reality too much in every field from the microcosmic to the macrocosmic, from interpersonal to international relationships.   Interpersonal relationships, and indeed the relationship of individuals with their own self, that is, their self-identity, are often critical, if not very tortured ones. This we have seen in my last three posts on mental disturbances, especially psychotic disorders, as represented mostly in schizophrenia .   In general, apart altogether from such disorders, quite often the behaviours of so-called normal individuals within their own families and communities are often hard enough to understand, and when we magnify such interactions to a global one between nations, we cannot be too surprised that disagreements can escalate quite unreasonably and very quickly into war.   It would seem that we have depraved depths within u...

Reviewing Schizophrenia 3: The Divided Self : R.D. Laing How far does our family of origin shape our personality, mental state and behaviour?  How far do our genetics form those same realities?  It is that age-old , often-repeated question about the  nature-versus-nurture  debate .  A balanced approach answers that they both do.  Before I discuss R.D. Laing’s contribution to psychiatry and psychotherapy, let me begin with an exceptionally cynical poem by Philip Larkin (1922 – 1985), which presents the misanthropic and fatalistic view that parents ruin their children, passing on misery that deepens "like a coastal shelf," advising that one should avoid having children to stop the cycle of abuse.  I think it provides a fitting epigraph for the life and times as well as the thoughts and teachings of the exceptional and eccentric psychiatrist, Ronald Laing: This Be The Verse (1971) They fuck you up, your mum and dad.     ...

Today, most experts advocate a holistic approach to the treatment of mental illness or mental disorders.   As I have emphasised in my last post, psychopharmacology or treatment by medication alone is one avenue to the assuagement of mental suffering, and, thankfully, psychotherapy in its many manifestations is generally used in conjunction with administering prescription drugs.   Medical intervention may, more often than not, be necessary, but very seldom is it used alone and to the exclusion of more holistic, therapeutic and creative approaches.   The key concern today is BALANCE, and the approach is always open-ended and positive, never closed and negative.   An understanding of the history of psychiatry that led to such a balanced approach is interesting to study, as it shows that such is the outcome of no little suffering on the part of patients and many intellectual challenges to the authoritarian, and often patriarchal, approaches of traditional medicine and ...