Abstract

The psychotherapeutic legacy of R. D. Laing and his new take on Scottish psychodynamic psychiatry, in whose heritage he practised – “the patients are like you and me” – are explored. His testimony of experience as a psychoanalyst and theoretician, within the field of so-called “anti-psychiatry”, “radical psychiatry” and “avanti-psychiatry”, with the anger and outrage expressed towards the impersonal nature of modern psychiatry, the malign influence of the pharmaceutical industry, the alienating character of modern university education, spanning from the mid 1960’s to late 1980’s, are critically elaborated. The focus of the New Politics of Experience on radical social thinking and interdisciplinary study is based on social phenomenological empirical research and the development of an integrative psychotherapeutic approach.