The : An Existential study in Sanity and Madness Laing,R. D. creator text xx London : Penguin Books ,1960 9999 monographic und 218p. Dr. Laing's first purpose is to make madness and the process of going mad comprehensible. In this, with case studies of schizophrenic patients, he succeeds brilliantly, but he does more: through a vision of sanity and madness as 'degrees of conjunction and disjunction between two persons where the one is sane by common consent' he offers a rich existential analysis of personal alienation. The outsider, estranged from himself and society, cannot experience either himself or others as 'real.' He invents a false self and with it he confronts both the outside world and his own despair. The disintegration of his real self keeps pace with the growing unreality of his false self until, in the extremes of his schizophrenic breakdown, the whole personality disintegrates. / R.D. Laing Sociology Psychology Psychoanalysis 157.282 LAI 0140135375 260608 20261029223111.0