The Divided Self is required reading on many psychology courses, now published by Penguin as a Modern Classic

I do not experience your experience. But I experience you as experiencing. I experience myself as experienced by you. And I experience you as experiencing yourself as experienced by me. And so on. – R D Laing, The Politics of Experience Laing had already started an affair with Jutta Werner, a German graphic designer who would become his second wife. Despite his burgeoning career, he paid only the legal minimum in child maintenance to his first family. 'He adopted an "out of sight, out of mind" mentality,' says Adrian, who started taking odd jobs aged 13 to contribute to the family income. 'In my mind, he confused liberalism with neglect. My mother was furious about it. She had an unfathomable amount of resentment. Her expression for him was "the square root of nothing".' Today they will scatter Adam's ashes over the ocean he knew so well. Despite his chaotic life, Adam Laing did have his family's love. Perhaps his father might have judged it a life 'worth living'.

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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] Existential Counselling and Psychotherapy, and the New School". New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling. Archived from the original on 26 December 2008 . Retrieved 7 September 2008. An unusual work by the Scottish psychoanalyst R.D.Laing, Knots is a book of poems, or dialogues, dating from 1971. Each poem describes a different kind of relationship, indicating the knots people will tie themselves into through preconception or misunderstanding. Laing calls them "tangles, disjunctions, impasses or binds". The relationship might be that of parent and child, lovers or analysts. The bonds can be of love, dependency, uncertainty or jealousy. Sometimes the relationship is obvious, but in other poems it becomes apparent through the dialogue.

He suffered a massive coronary while playing a vigorous game of tennis. Like Custer, he died with his boots on. So yes, you CAN untie your Knots. All of ‘em. Not overnight, not in five or ten years, but Eventually. Laing, R.D. (1960) The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness. Harmondsworth: Penguin. For sure, they will throw EVERYTHING at you. But whole cities have fallen to the weakness of a good soul, as they fell like dominoes to little King David.Among those considered to be his most celebrated admirers at the height of his influence in the 1960s when he was a regular feature on television were The Beatles, Jim Morrison, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. In Self and Others (1961), Laing's definition of normality shifted somewhat. [31] [ unreliable source?] Collusion has resonances of playing at and of deception. It is a ‘game’ played by two or more people whereby they deceive themselves. The game is the game of mutual self-deception. Whereas delusion and elusion and illusion can be applied to one person, collusion is necessarily a two-or-more-person game. Each plays the other’s game, through he may not necessarily be fully aware of doing so. An essential feature of this game is not admitting that it is a game. [14] It is, however, the perfect metaphor and made a huge impression on me at the time and still. The expression Laing uses in the book’s introduction to describe these ‘knots’ is “the final formal elegance in these webs of maya.” Maya is a Sanskrit word that in Indian religions has multiple meanings centred around the concept of "illusion".