The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious, of being out of oneโs mind, is the condition of the normal man. Society highly values its normal man. It educates children to lose themselves and to become absurd, and thus to be normal. Normal men have killed perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in the last fifty years.
R. D. LaingThe 'data' (given) of research are not so much given as taken out of a constantly elusive matrix of happenings. We should speak of capta rather than data.
R. D. LaingIf we can revert to the truth, then a great deal of one's suffering can be erased, because a great deal of one's suffering is based on sheer lies.
R. D. LaingIf I don't know I don't know, I think I know. If I don't know I know I know, I think I don't know.
R. D. LaingWhat do you do when you don't know what to do? No wonder there are more suicides among psychiatrists than in any other profession.
R. D. LaingEven facts become fictions without adequate ways of seeing "the facts". We do not need theories so much as the experience that is the source of the theory. We are not satisfied with faith, in the sense of an implausible hypothesis irrationally held: we demand to experience the "evidence".
R. D. Laing