Customer Reviews

Mad to Be Normal: Conversations With R.D. Laing

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This book holds many treasures, for both beginning and advanced students of R.D. Laing. For beginners, the book serves as a valuable tool of clarification for many of Laing's ideas. For the more initiated, the book offers up juicy morsels of hard to find information. For example, how many people know that Laing actually obtained copies of Nietzsche's hospital records to find out if Nietzsche actually had syphillis? (Laing contends he didn't). It is little bits like this which make the book continually revelatory. Even moreso than in his autobiography, one gets a sense in this book of Laing as not only a brilliant conversationalist, but as a tremendously complex and conflicted person. As we listen to him describe his relations with the prominent philosophers, psychoanalysts, and critics of his day, his recounting of his emotional and spiritual development, and of his dashed hopes and unrealized dreams, we begin to get a sense of what it might have been like to be around Laing when he was alive. Mullan for his part does a wonderful job of asking Laing pertinent, incisive questions, no matter whether the subject is Sartre or his boyhood days in Glasgow. The only question which arise are, if Mullan spent hundreds of hours talking with Laing, what is the nature of the content he excluded, and what has he done (or is he going to do) with that material? Overall, an excellent and indispensible book for anyone interested in R.D. Laing.

As the editor of MAD TO BE NORMAL (Ronnie Laing's last recorded conversations), I was pleased to read Matthew Morrisey's review. In response to his query - "what am I going to do with the material NOT included in the book?" Well, I have a lot of material I would like to publish from the conversations, but in this dumbed down world it is hard to get a publisher to agree to do it.

This is one of the most engaging books I've read in over 20 years: it brought back to me the stimulation of encountering a truly first-rate mind.

Mullan has brilliantly effaced himself so that you get 100% Laing direct. And a Laing worthy of his better reputation. Mullan limited himself to brief preface and introductions and, during the interviews, short guiding comments and questions. Another interviewer might have cluttered the interviews with his/her own agenda and introduced the book with lengthy analysis, all of which would have obscured Laing. Undoubtedly Mullan also had a mark in selecting and editing the interviews, but what he achieved was this wonderful effect of making the reader feel like he/she is alone with Laing listening to Laing pour out his life in great detail, with great feeling, and without pulling any punches.

In the section on "Influences", Laing's amazing retention and grasp of his existentialist sources is illuminating. In "Kingsley Hall", you get an inside scoop, with lots of warts acknowledged, on this famous and infamous experiment. These conversations are an invaluable complement (and more) to the other sources on Laing, including Laing's own books.

"Great men have great weaknesses": I was struck by how negative Laing was about many of his contemporaries including coworkers. He seems to have distanced himself from many people. As much as Laing seemed to understand Existentialism, my impression from the section "Buddhism" was that his understanding of Buddhism wasn't especially strong. He claimed to have been credited with having a rare kind of "Nirvana consciousness". Do you need a credited consciousness? At any rate, even with Buddhism, Laing poured himself into it and was not shy of insights.

Whether Laing had a "Nirvana consciousness" or not, he was most certainly extraordinary in these interviews. You'll feel why Laing was special if you read "Mad to be Normal". And you'll have a great context for understanding any of Laing's major books.

Mullan has done Laing a special favor. And us.

An excellent book for all people interested in Laing. Hopefully Mullan will find a way to publish the material so that those interested can read it rather than holding onto it and waiting for a publishing deal that isn't too far "beneath" his expectations.

In this huge set of interviews, the former king of counter-culture philosophy expresses his provocative opinions on all imaginable topics, from mystcism to politics. If you are the type of person who thinks for yourself and suspects that straight society is almost incurably ill, you will probably find a kindred spirit in this fascinating man. Being a prestigious psychiatrist and former military officer, he knows the system he's trying to change from the inside out (an advantage most radical thinkers don't have).