Knots

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I’ve never had a great deal of interest in the big three sciences – biology, chemistry and physics – but I do like formulae. I think it’s simply amazing that you can reduce things to a stream (and often a very short stream) of letters, symbols and numbers. The one I remember from school is something called the coefficient of friction– µ. (µ is the twelfth letter of the Greek alphabet which we pronounce ‘mu’.) It tells you how slippery things are. Ice on steel has a low coefficient of friction, while rubber on pavement has a high coefficient of friction. Under good conditions, a tire on concrete may have a coefficient of friction of about 1.7 where a value of 0 means no friction whatsoever. The coefficient of friction is, however, an empirical measurement – it has to be measured experimentally, and cannot be found through calculations. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a formula, and here it is: In October 1972, Laing met Arthur Janov, author of the popular book The Primal Scream. Though Laing found Janov modest and unassuming, he thought of him as a "jig man" (someone who knows a lot about a little). Laing sympathized with Janov, but regarded his primal therapy as a lucrative business, one which required no more than obtaining a suitable space and letting people "hang it all out". [17] urn:lcp:knots00rdla:epub:498b52cb-d1bc-44bc-b9ae-6936fb4b589e Extramarc University of Alberta Libraries Foldoutcount 0 Identifier knots00rdla Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t6349zt6d Invoice 11 Isbn 0140033505 For all his inconsistencies, there is little doubt that Laing loved his children, in spite of the flawed manner in which he expressed it. In one of his later works, The Facts of Life, Laing wrote: 'Whether life is worth living depends for me on whether there is love in life.' Knots is a logical breakdown of every argument possible, based on how one's identity is affected by others.

In 1987 Laing was forced to withdraw his name from the General Medical Council's medical register after a patient accused him of drunkenness and physical assault (the complaint was later withdrawn). He began to hold 'rebirthing' sessions and took spiritual pilgrimages to Sri Lanka and India. Much of his later work was erratic, crude in tone and increasingly discredited by mainstream psychiatry. 'The general view of Laing's theories within psychiatry is that they are the product of a wild, utopian, romantic imagination - or interesting as museum artefacts but of no contemporary relevance,' says Daniel Burston, author of The Wing of Madness: The Life and Work of RD Laing. 'The view outside psychiatry is more complex.' Ocr_converted abbyy-to-hocr 1.1.20 Ocr_module_version 0.0.17 Openlibrary OL9300838M Openlibrary_edition Humanity is estranged from its authentic possibilities. This basic vision prevents us from taking any unequivocal view of the sanity of common sense, or of the madness of the so-called madman. … Our alientation goes to the roots. The realisation of this is the essential springboard for any serious reflection on any aspect of present inter-human life. urn:lcp:knots0000lain:epub:59f8c256-9d61-4dbf-891b-92db69d8245f Foldoutcount 0 Identifier knots0000lain Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t4fp1n10h Invoice 1652 Isbn 0394432118Laing and to pigeon hole him as a product of his time, another sixties rent-a-guru, a ‘jig man’ whose star flared briefly before spluttering into oblivion. This is to overlook the fact that Laing’s

Finally, let me leave you with a clip from Did You Used to be R D Laing where Laing talks about his mother and, if what he’s relating is accurate (you can never be too sure with him) then it’s clear to see where his first knots originated:

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Laing would disappear for months on end, forgetting birthdays before turning up in a blizzard of misdirected anger. In a 1994 biography he wrote of his father, Adrian recounts one of Laing's rare visits to their new home in Glasgow when, having argued with Jutta, he took out his anger by beating his daughter, Karen. His third daughter Karen was born in Glasgow in 1955 and is now a pracitising psychotherapist. Burston, Daniel (1998), The Wing of Madness: The Life and Work of R. D. Laing, Harvard University Press, p.125, ISBN 0-674-95359-2 Like Blake, he had an awfully warm and fuzzy feeling that EMPATHIZING with folks instead of just giving a diagnosis, prescription and pill was one end of a Golden Thread... that when followed, would lead to a Healing of Mind, Body and Soul. L]ike a contemporary pop star Laing was, in some respects, a product of the publics who read and celebrated him; a point which is nicely captured in the distinction that Adrian Laing draws between ‘Ronnie’, the father he knew, and ‘R.D. Laing’, the public celebrity. … I do not mean that he was a mere representation in radical culture. R.D. was one of Ronnie’s roles and had to be played to exist. [16] [italics mine]