R. D. Laing—loquacious eccentric or credible psychiatrist? Daniel Burston’s new biography paints a decidedly positive picture of the man renowned for bringing sufferers back to childhood and then forward again to adulthood. Burston argues that Laing’s complex and contradictory personality both fuelled his genius and was the cause of his downfall. The Wing of Madness (Harvard University Press, $35, ISBN 0 674 95358 4) pieces together the factors that catapulted Laing to global fame, from his first book, The Divided Self, to his bizarre experiments with psychotic patients at Kingsley Hall.
More from New ÒÁÈ˾þÃ
Explore the latest news, articles and features
Popular articles
Trending New ÒÁÈ˾þà articles
1
The Selfish Gene at 50: Why Dawkins’s evolution classic still holds up
2
Mystery of the ancient giant stone jars of Laos may have been solved
3
The ‘doomsday’ glacier’s giant ice shelf is about to break away
4
We could generate hydrogen from rocks while storing CO2 in them
5
The distant world that is our best hope of finding alien life
6
How I used psychology to come back from the worst year of my life
7
We may finally know why dinosaurs like T. rex evolved tiny arms
8
PMOS shows us why many scientific terms need to be renamed
9
CAR T-cell therapy bolstered by stiffening up cancer cells first
10
The 3 things you need to know about protein, according to an expert
