The Crucible of Experience

One of the great rebels of psychiatry, R. D. Laing challenged prevailing models of madness and the nature and limits of psychiatric authority. In this brief and lucid book, Laings widely praised biographer distills the essence of Laings vision, which was religious and philosophical as well as psychological. The Crucible of Experience reveals Laings philosophical debts to existentialism and phenomenology in his theories of madness and sanity, family theory and family therapy. Daniel Burston offers the first detailed account of Laings practice as a therapist and of his relationshipsoften contentiouswith his friends and sometime disciples. Burston carefully differentiates between Laing and Laingians, who were often clearer, more confident, and more simplistic than their teacher. While he examines Laings theories of madness, Burston focuses most provocatively on Laings views of sanity and normality and on his recognition, toward the end of his life, of the essential place of holiness in human experience. In a powerful last chapter, Burston shows that Laing foresaw the present commercialization of medicine and asked pointed questions about what the meaning of sanity and the future of psychotherapy in such a world could be. In this, as in other matters, Laings questions of a generation ago remain questions for our time.