Knots [Mass Market Paperback]

R.D. Laing (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 12, 1972

A series of dialogue-scenarios, which can be read as poems or plays, describing the "knots" and impasses in various kinds of human relationships.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"In his earlier work Laing guided the reader to understanding. In Knots he compels him to experience.... To grasp this dense and difficult book one must be willing to follow Laing in his spirals of descent. If Knots is to yield, one must yield to the knots."

-- James S. Gordon, The New York Times Book Review

"Dr. Laing's gentle determination to unpeel the bottom motive, the most inward secret of the heart, produces a curious combination of intensity and compassion....The heartbreaking ironies...belong to an artist rather than a psychiatrist....

"The voices of known demons rise from these pages: demons of guilt, demons of self-justification; demons of perverse will, demons of self-destruction. All the enemies of the human spirit are arrayed here as vividly, as warningly as in a medieval morality play. Those who believe that to unmask the enemy is a first step toward confounding him will find this a practical as well as a moral book."

-- Melvin Maddocks, The Christian Science Monitor

From the Inside Flap

A series of dialogue-scenarios, which can be read as poems or plays, describing the "knots" and impasses in various kinds of human relationships.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (April 12, 1972)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394717767
• ISBN-13: 978-0394717760
• Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 0.3 x 6.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #710,986 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One for the ages, December 27, 2004

By 

D. Haight (Maple Grove, Mn United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Knots (Mass Market Paperback)

Knots is one of those books that you not only can but need to read and re-read throughout a lifetime. Laing really points out the ways in which we hinder ourselves, our relationships and our lives through these 'knots.'
For those out there who need a book with examples to see Laing's point more clearly, I would recommend 'Sanity, Madness and the family,' where one can see in concrete terms the things Laing points out "only" abstractlt in Knots.
HOwever, do not get me wrong, Knots is one of the best books ever written

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Blaming families, December 27, 2001

By 

D. P. Birkett (Suffern, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Knots (Mass Market Paperback)

A collection of well-written, and sometimes darkly humorous, dialogs and prose poems about the way people communicate and misunderstand each other. It's derived from Gregory Bateson's "double-bind" theory of how families make their members sick. Bateson promoted this as the cause of schizophrenia. Admirers of Laing should read the biography written by his son Adrian. Strangely enough it was never published in the US. You can get it from the UK Amazon,com site

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating, annoying, unnerving - a must read., April 30, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Knots (Mass Market Paperback)

Famed radical psychologist R.D. Laing's bizarre, one-of-a-kind (or at least first of its kind) book consists of five chapters of increasingly weird 'knots' - internal conversations that develop into obsessive debates. Laing uses his deceptively flat, simple style to brilliantly shed light on the way the mind works, and most of all the way it deals with relationships. It starts out easy enough to follow, but watch out - in the second chapter Laing turns the 'If it is me, it is not mine' knot into a masterpiece of convoluted reasoning, actually numbering each line and turning them into impossibly complex diagrams. Next comes the 'There is something Jack knows that Jill does not, but he does not know he does not know...' knot, which might prompt you to hurl the book at the wall after six pages of interminable mental gymnastics. But once you've made it through that, the rest of the book is a breeze, and the fifth chapter, the most opaque, is even a little disturbing. After you close the book, beware of turning every question that pops into your head into a knot - it starts to get a bit compulsive!