R.D. Laing: The Philosophy and Politics of Psychotherapy. Andrew
Collier. New York: Pantheon Books, Random House, 1977, 224 pp.
[Reviewed by Robert M. Cutler, Political Psychology, vol. 1, no. 2 (Autumn
1979): 97-98.]
Andrew Collier's study of Laing's writings is advertised as "an original
critique ... that is also an extremely helpful introduction to [Laing's]
work." As a critique, it addresses, with varying success but always
culturally, the three traditions which constitute Laing's intellectual
heritage: existentialism, psychoanalysis, and Marxism. As an
introduction, it is rather high-powered; the reader would do well to be
familiar at least with existentialism and psychoanalysis, if not with
Marxism as well. The main reason I suggest a fluency so wide-ranging lies
in the scope of Collier's critique itself: not content with merely placing
Laing in this or that tradition, the author attempts to buttress his own
judgments with digressions on other figures in those traditions; not
content with merely explicating Laing's relationship to those figures,
Collier wishes to make intelligible the context of those relationships.
Thus, the reader sometimes finds Collier discoursing on the traditions
themselves, although their relevance for understanding Laing is never lost
from view. Collier's motivation cannot be faulted, but it does nothing to
make his work easier to read as an introduction to Laing.
Collier's project -- to unify further the interpersonal analysis of
individuals (1) from the standpoint of their unconscious and (2) from the
standpoint of their social environment -- is basically in sympathy with
Laing's. That community between Laing and Collier contributes to the
success Collier achieves. Collier is correct to call Laing an existential
phenomenologist who is nevertheless not an existentialist. He does an
excellent job of explicating The Divided Self, which is perhaps Laing's
seminal work. That explication mainly involves the analysis of how Laing
understands the schizoid's view of social reality. Laing accomplishes
this understanding by method he calls "social phenomenology," and Collier
is to be credited for his minute inspection of that method. Yet, although
his criticisms of Laing's method must be taken seriously, they seem to me
to be misdirected.
Lang's method regards the schizophrenic's way of being-in-the-world in the
context of the family environment and observes the interactions which
constitute that environment. In this way, Collier explains, Laing desires
to make schizophrenia intelligible by showing that the schizophrenic lives
at the nexus of contradictions within his or her family. But, Collier
maintains, such "description" must be distinguished from the provision of
a causal explanation of the schizophrenia. For such an explanation, he
continues, the Freudian unconscious must be explored.
end page 97 / begin page 98
Collier asserts that (1) Laing's notion of the unconscious is erroneous,
because (2) the social-phenomenological method is intrinsically
superficial; therefore, (3) Laing's consideration of the
depth-psychological factors which can contribute to schizophrenia is
insufficient. These criticisms deserves serious consideration. Collier,
however, mistakes their import when he claims that they are atavisms of an
existentialism which, he says, is not basic to Laing. These criticisms
address rather more directly Laing's phenomenologism. This point deserves
emphasis. Those facets of Laing's social phenomenology which Collier
criticizes are precisely not those which derive from any putative
existentialism of Laing's. Rather, they follow directly from the
phenomenological nature of Laing's method. Collier, however, seems not to
see this and is content to conclude that, although social phenomenology is
not independently viable as a scientific method, it is a most useful
"supplement" to psychoanalysis.
Thus, the author's discussion of Laing's relationship to existentialism
into psychoanalysis is of a peace. Collier believes that Laing wishes (1)
to maintain Freud's conclusions about neurosis in the family but (2) to
revise at the same time Freud's philosophical premises. Where Collier
perceives such a revision proceeding along "existentialist" lines, he
criticizes Laing's divergence from Freud. There is one distracting
feature in these pages. Collier too often uses the device of juxtaposing
his own interpretation of Laing to that of unnamed others. In every case,
Laing, to be sure, is absolved of the blame for being misinterpreted by
readers less faithful than Collier; but, by the end of the book, one tires
of this straw-man polemic, which becomes less effective the more often it
is encountered. The overuse of this rhetorical style in the end initiates
the logic of Collier's exegesis and distracts from his commentary.
The discussion of Laing's relation to Marxism takes place at another
level. There Collier seems primarily concerned with assessing the
political significance of the therapeutic relationship both generally and
in Laing. Using Althusser's concept of the family is an "ideological
apparatus of the state," Collier concludes that Laing is ambiguous
concerning whether one should "transform the structure within which human
interdependence is lived out" or "urge people to change their
'attitudes'." The latter alternative he associates with Laing's
"mysticism," criticizing as "utopian" the "notion of liberation occurring
first at the microsocial level." Shades of Engels's critique of the early
French socialists! But Collier fails to consider the cumulative effect,
on the larger social structure, of many coordinated microsocial changes.
Just as Marx did not recognize the virtues of collectivist socialism, so
Collier does not ackknowledge the liberating potential of those patterns
of psychological interdependence which is structurally resemble
anarchosyndicalist practice. Collier is concerned with the pathogenic
effects of authoritarianism on the microsocial level: all the more reason,
then, that he should have considered seriously the merits of psychological
mutual-aid as a form of nonviolent direct action against oppressive
macrosocial psychological conditioning. Collier divides Laing's work, in
conclusion, into the psychological and the metapsychological (my labels,
his dichotomy), and he lauds that portion of the former which describes
"how one person's reality-problem is often an effect of the transpersonal
defense-mechanisms of others."
Of Laing's work, Collier has written a significant critique which is
significantly flawed but no less thoughtful a contribution to the problem
of psychological liberation. It is unfortunate that he could not include
an assessment of Laing's Do You Love Me? and The Facts of Life because of
their too recent publication.
