Mad to be Normal: Conversations with R.D. Laing

People believe quite different things about R.D. Laing, and the views it is claimed he held. Equally, there are many opinions about his intellectual worth. What is incontestable is that in the 1960s Laing wrote a number of books including The Divided Self, The Politics of Experience and the Bird of Paradise and Sanity, Madness and the Family that rocked the foundations of conventional psychiatry and galvanized the imagination of millions of ordinary readers. For the next twenty years his books were translated into every single major language in the world, and many more. His collection of short poems, Knots, enjoyed huge international success and was performed on television and the stage. His existential approach to madness angered many people as much as it sensitized others to matters of individual liberty and the importance of the social context of 'illness'. Through his fame he was almost reinvented, hence the burgeoning of the controversies that surround his work. Mad to be Normal presents Laing's own words, about his work and about his life. It is the most complete record on Laing, by Laing.