Today they will scatter Adam's ashes over the ocean he knew so well. Despite his chaotic life, Adam Laing did have his family's love. Perhaps his father might have judged it a life 'worth living'.

He liked to drink but he could take it. I saw him a few days before his body was found, and we went on drinking into the night. He seemed all right at the end.' We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing. work was a reaction, tentative at first, against some of the more disturbing psychiatric practises of his day, doubtful and downright dangerous treatments that had been rubber stamped into orthodoxy

Laing, R.D. (1985) Wisdom, Madness and Folly: The Making of a Psychiatrist 1927-1957. London: Macmillan. Alienation as our present destiny is achieved only by outrageous violence perpetrated by human beings on human beings. Laing maintained that schizophrenia was "a theory not a fact"; he believed the models of genetically inherited schizophrenia being promoted by biologically based psychiatry were not accepted by leading medical geneticists. [19] He rejected the "medical model of mental illness”; according to Laing diagnosis of mental illness did not follow a traditional medical model; and this led him to question the use of medication such as antipsychotics by psychiatry. His attitude to recreational drugs was quite different; privately, he advocated an anarchy of experience. [20] Personal life [ edit ] Nour, Matthew M.; Barrera, Alvaro (November 2015). "Schizophrenia, Subjectivity, and Mindreading". Schizophrenia Bulletin. 41 (6): 1214–1219. doi: 10.1093/schbul/sbv035. ISSN 0586-7614. PMC 4601706. PMID 25848120. RD Laing and the others who shared his vision of a genuinely compassionate response to mental disturbance had a profound influence on the practice of

In fact, I retained the whole armour of primordial goodness up until I was 20. But permissive society didn’t share my enthusiasm. In fact, permissiveness decided to put the boots to me.

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In Self and Others (1961), Laing's definition of normality shifted somewhat. [31] [ unreliable source?] What You See Is Where You’re At (2001). A collage of found footage by Luke Fowler on Laing's experiment in alternative therapy at Kingsley Hall. The Divided Self is required reading on many psychology courses, now published by Penguin as a Modern Classic