The Divided Self
An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness
Penguin Publishing Group · Print & ebook · August 30, 1965
Dr.
We earn from qualifying purchases.
- Who it’s for
- A searching account of madness links psychological experience with questions of selfhood and personal alienation.
- Themes
- Sanity and madness, Personal alienation, The false self
- Genres
- Schizophrenia, Existentialism, Existential Approaches
Nearest books
Matched by what the books are about, then ordered by what their readers also loved.
Anti-oedipusGilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari58% matchShares Schizophrenia
The Sane SocietyErich Fromm57% match
Madness and CivilizationMichel Foucault55% match
Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional DisordersAaron T. Beck55% match
For younger readers: Made You Up
Start with three books, and this one can be the first.
Members get a new edition every morning: a route out from their books to essays, research and talks, with the reason for each.
Start with this bookAbout this book
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.
Continue reading
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 schizophrenic breakdown, the whole personality disintegrates.
Self and Sanity
A searching account of madness links psychological experience with questions of selfhood and personal alienation.
Come here for
- An existential look at sanity, madness, and alienation
Expect
- Case studies alongside an inquiry into the fragile sense of self
Where it sits
| Schizophrenia | 80% |
|---|---|
| Existentialism | 42% |
| Existential Approaches | 38% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- Existentialism
- Schizophrenia
- Mental Health
- Authors
- R. D. Laing
- Publisher
- Penguin Publishing Group
- Published
- August 30, 1965
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Theme
- Sanity and madness · Personal alienation · The false self
- Reading lane
- Existentialism