Ronald David Laing: Schizophrenia Researcher

Ronald David Laing was a British psychiatrist known for his alternative approach to treating schizophrenia. He was also the founder of a movement that would become known as antipsychiatry in the 1960s and 70s.

Like many other psychologists and social scientists, Laing worked and researched at the famous Tavistock Clinic. Many years later, he ended up becoming part of the research team at the Tavistock Institute. The institute made sure that he had more than enough money to complete his important studies.

He focused primarily on studying schizophrenia and the treatment environment for schizophrenic patients. Laing suggested that they act differently based on the environment they were in. Continue reading to learn more about the life of Ronald David Laing and his important work.

Ronald David Laing: Early life

Laing was born on October 7, 1927 in Govanhill, Glasgow (Scotland). He came from a working class family and was the only child of David McNair Laing and Amelia Laing.

Until 1945, he attended Hutcheson, a boys’ primary school in Glasgow, where he excelled as an excellent student and musician. He received his accreditation from the Royal Academy of Music in 1944 and began at the Royal College of Music in April 1945.

During his time at that school he was an avid student of philosophy. Some of the authors he found most interesting were Freud, Marx, Nietzsche and above all Kierkegaard. He later began studying medicine and psychiatry and received his medical degree from the University of Glasgow in 1951.

A calling for psychiatry

Between 1951 and 1953 he served as a psychiatrist for the Royal Army Medical Corps. They sent him to the British Army Psychiatric Unit in Netley (near Southampton), and later to the Military Hospital in Catterick, Yorkshire.

Towards the end of 1953 he left the Army and began teaching at the University of Glasgow. During this time he went to Gartnavel Royal Hospital to complete his training as a psychiatrist. At this hospital, he tried an experimental treatment environment : “the Rumpus Room”, where schizophrenia patients could have fun and relax.

Both staff and patients wore normal clothes, and they let the patients spend time doing things like cooking and artistic activities. These daily activities were intended to provide patients with an environment in which they could interact with staff and other patients in a social setting, rather than an institutional one.

All his patients improved after this new treatment. In January 1956, Laing received his certification as a psychiatrist.

Ronald David Laing and his professional life

At the end of 1956, Ronald David Laing received the title of Senior Registrar at the Tavistock Clinic in London. He did research there until 1960. Doctors at the Tavistock Clinic studied primarily patients from the English Navy. The main goal was to identify the marks and scars war could leave on people.

The Tavistock Institute did not come long after, as a non-governmental, non-profit organization. The Tavistock Institute was founded by the Rockefeller Foundation and conducted research in the social sciences and psychology, focusing on education, research and professional development.

Ronald David Laing worked at the department for almost 30 years. At the same time, the Department of Psychoanalysis took him further to receive a certification as a psychoanalyst.

In 1958, he began research that would give rise to his book, Sanity, Madness and the Family , published in 1964. He also created a series of seminars involving a wide range of people, some of whom would continue to be important collaborators. Among them were Aaron Esterson and David Cooper.

Laing’s work and recognition

His book The Divided Self was published in 1960. It received positive reviews, although the sales did not match the enthusiasm of the critics. Not long after, he came out with Self and Others (1961).

Laing received his psychoanalyst certification and set up a private practice in London. He began experimenting with medications, especially LSD. In 1962 he was appointed director of the Langham Clinic in London. From that moment on, he began to gain more popularity.

In the following years he wrote many of the articles that later appeared in the book The Politics of Experience / The Bird of Paradise . He also published Reason and Violence , which he co-authored with David Cooper, another researcher at the Tavistock Institute.

The Kingsley Hall project

He embarked on the Kingsley Hall project in 1965 with Aaron Esterson, David Cooper and other researchers at the time. The project lasted until 1970.

The Kingsley Hall project involved the creation of an experimental, non-hierarchical society in which schizophrenia patients could work through their psychosis without having to use medication, electroshock therapy or surgery (lobotomies).

The inspiration came from Laing’s work with “Rumpus Room” and the experiences of his collaborators. Other projects, such as Cooper’s Villa 21 , were fundamental to Kingsley Hall. In Cooper’s project, they created a community for schizophrenic patients without distinguishing between staff and patients. Their relationship was based on socializing.

Thanks to the success of Kingsley Hall, Laing toured the United States. It put him in touch with many other renowned psychoanalysts. In 1967 he participated in the Dialectics of Liberation Congress, which wanted to unite left-wing politics and psychoanalysis.

There he gave a speech called “The Obvious,” which continued to be an anthology of speeches at Congress.

Personal life

In 1952 he married his girlfriend Anne Hearne. That same year, they had their first daughter, Fiona. They had four more children after that: Susan, Karen, Paul and Adrian.

After he was separated from Anne, Ronald David Laing married Jutta Werner. They had three children together. After that he also had two children with two different women.

In 1971, after Kingsley Hall closed, Laing decided it would be the perfect time to take a sabbatical. He decided to go to Sri Lanka and India. During the journey he began to practice Theravada meditation.

Prior to the trip, he closed his private practice. This was the same practice where he had performed LSD therapy in the 1960s. It is not clear if he started working on LSD therapies again after returning from India.

On August 23, 1989, Ronald David Laing died while playing tennis. According to medical reports, he had a heart attack.

The legacy of Ronald David Laing

Throughout much of his career, Laing became interested in the underlying causes of schizophrenia. He also expressed clear opposition to the prevailing treatments used to treat schizophrenia patients at the time. He tried to find alternatives to hospitalization and electroshock therapy that were so common at the time.

Laing put forward theories that ontological uncertainty (uncertainty about your existence) gives a defensive reaction. That reaction will then lead to the person’s self being fragmented into separate parts. It would then lead to the psychotic properties of schizophrenia.

In the book Sanity, Madness and the Family , he talks about a number of patients whose mental illnesses were at least partially induced in relation to the families. That idea caused a great deal of uproar at the time.

Although his initial views on schizophrenia were quite controversial, some of his ideas ruled in recent years. All in all, Ronald David Laing was a pioneer in the treatment of schizophrenia patients and helped to humanize the way we see and treat them.