R. D. Laing, The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise

Daniel Burston (Duquesne University); Gavin Miller (University of Glasgow)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Gina Lyle (University of York), Graham MacPhee (University of Manchester), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Domains

Psychoanalysis

Dates

First circulation or publication 1967

Places

Scotland (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Treatise

Resources

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The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise was published in 1967, and was such an astonishing success that it transformed R.D. Laing from the darling of British Left and artistic

avant garde

into an international icon on a par with Jean-Paul Sartre, Marshall McLuhan or Allen Ginsberg by the end of the decade. Sadly, the book's great popularity was not a measure of any lasting effectiveness. Though Laing was celebrated and reviled for this book throughout the 1970s, the substance of his ideas about interpersonal phenomenology, violence and normality, group psychology, schizophrenia, and so on, were grasped dimly, if at all, by most of his younger admirers, many of whom lacked the requisite background to fathom his work, but simply revelled in his anti-authoritarianism and…

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2354 words

Citation: Burston, Daniel, Gavin Miller. "The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 29 August 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=16851, accessed 23 November 2024.]