Each chapter describes a different kind of relationship—the "knots" of the title—bonds of love, dependency, uncertainty, jealousy. But whole cities have fallen to the weakness of a good soul, as they fell like dominoes to little King David. Knots is unlike any other book, consisting of a series of powerful, witty, unexpected dialogue-scenarios that can be read as poems or as brief plays, each complete in itself. He has re turned with observations, insights and formulations which seem quite pertinent to the lives of thousands of devoted readers. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.

Like Freud 40 years ago, Laing is read as psychi atric theoretician, political philos opher and personal guru. You begin with a thought, which reflexively leads to another, and so on- ultimately producing a tangled mess of paradoxical neurotic beliefs, a knot (added to this are your thoughts about what another person is thinking, and what they think you are thinking, so on). But in “Knots,” Laing has abandoned his ordinarily graceful prose for highly condensed poems, the knots of the title.Laing wrote a considerable number of works, mainly studies into forms of mental illness and his own developed theories of psychotherapy. A "fascinating departure" for this wildly controversial psychoanalyst, this volume consists of "powerful, witty, unexpected dialogue-scenarios that can be read as poems or a brief play," each describing a type of relationship--the "knots" of the title. Actually to the already superseded and already cured, it could be embarrassing to witness those traps.

It's certainly not a comfortable read, but I find myself going back to it whenever I find myself overwhelmed by a social situation or confused as to how or why people are interacting with me the way that they are. It also illustrates how easy mis-communication and working through assumptions can frame how we may come to catastrophic conclusions. Sometimes you are certain that you understand what he means, but after a moment you realize that it is far far away of what you thought it is, you don't know what he means, maybe he doesn't mean anything, maybe it is for you to give a meaning to the knot, and maybe only maybe you can find a way to untie that knot if only you could find it between those perplexing, mysterious, baffling lines. I read this poetry collection years ago and marveled at the brilliance and wit Laing tooled into each poem. Words that come to mind to name them are: knots, tangles, fankles, impasses, disjunctions, whirligogs, binds.

It reads not unlike a child who asks you why, why, why and builds on a question endlessly until you yell, "That's just how it is! Nothing else before or since so perfectly caught the efficiency and momentum and horror of circular thinking. If you take it humbly and try to muddle through, you will see the Light of Morning - as long as you have Hope, and Love. I give it 5* as I think this poem summarizes the logic of relationship failures, in a way that provides a fundamental, deep and timeless understanding of emotions. Though the tone is playful and childlike, the logic is painful and inexorable, and the meaning many leveled.

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process This knot's musical notation— moderato at the beginning, poco poco accelerando al fine as the mutations multiply—led me to try work it out as a composition. Hardcover in original black glossy jacket (jacket has some tears to edges; cloth has some tape residue).D. Laing portrays the innumerable webs we weave in our mind that tangle and fray and continue on and on and on and on until what was at the root likely a simple misunderstanding or words unspoken becomes something so deep seeded that we are unable to untie them and begin again free and clear of whatever or however we got where we are. If these thoughts were spoken out loud, those voicing them would be accused by the majority of overanalysing the situation. Knots is unlike any other book, consisting of a series of powerful, witty, unexpected dialogue-scenarios that can be read as poems or brief plays, each complete in itself.