Knots

I have been in a profession 29 years in modern USA encountering hundreds of people and their varying issues, demands, needs, knots. I did not encounter this book in my education, even in psych, sociology or education courses. I picked it up at the school bookstore, and it has ended up about the most frequently re-referenced book in my library since -- for practical reasons. The book, simply, has been indispensible. Not every situation imaginable, obviously, is outlined here, but the patterns are true and revealing. Laing was a great man, pioneer and rebel in a field brand spanking new that too quickly developed set and shared beliefs. He jumped into the chaos despite his own flaws, well known and well documented, but they do not detract from his contributions and uncanny insights into human relationships and what goes awry with them -- here laid out in poetic scenarios like a collection of butterflies. Laing hated the DSM manual, calling it the verbal equivilent of a straight jacket. In how many cases have I seen this bold and broadly human view confirmed, I cannot say -- many, many. The human psyche is a wildernesss, beautiful and potentially dangerous, full of pitfalls unknown to ourselves. Laing and his pioneer compatriots humanized mental illness and took it out of the closet; they dared to attempt to communicate with those written off and locked up in bare rooms. Laing's writings are also increasingly prophetic of our sad, manically unraveling moment of history. The line between those diagnosed insane (increasingly, too many) and sane is indeterminate and grey, certainly no bright line, and shifts continually. The "family" and "love" are often words sucked of all meaning in our lunatic freeways, life "choices" and "styles," our rush for the $$$ and "self" fulfillment. This book would help just about anyone -- just remember its exploratory and tentative, the product of close personal & clinical study, not written in stone. Everybody's own knots are as singular as their fingerprints.

Knots is one of those books that you not only can but need to read and re-read throughout a lifetime. Laing really points out the ways in which we hinder ourselves, our relationships and our lives through these 'knots.' For those out there who need a book with examples to see Laing's point more clearly, I would recommend 'Sanity, Madness and the family,' where one can see in concrete terms the things Laing points out "only" abstractlt in Knots. HOwever, do not get me wrong, Knots is one of the best books ever written

Take a chance and let your mind go to a place where few follow. RD Laing was, in my opinion, a master within his field. Other reviewers summed up what the book is about pretty nicely, so I won't approach the inner workings. Instead, I suggest you take a serious look at the author, this, and his other writings (esp. Politics of Experience).If you want to really figure out who you are, why you think the way you do, and how we are all perpetually children, then you really should take a look at this book! However, don't expect to understand it all the first time you read it...yes, that means reading it again, and again, and again........in a good way :)Best Wishes!

Famed radical psychologist R.D. Laing's bizarre, one-of-a-kind (or at least first of its kind) book consists of five chapters of increasingly weird 'knots' - internal conversations that develop into obsessive debates. Laing uses his deceptively flat, simple style to brilliantly shed light on the way the mind works, and most of all the way it deals with relationships. It starts out easy enough to follow, but watch out - in the second chapter Laing turns the 'If it is me, it is not mine' knot into a masterpiece of convoluted reasoning, actually numbering each line and turning them into impossibly complex diagrams. Next comes the 'There is something Jack knows that Jill does not, but he does not know he does not know...' knot, which might prompt you to hurl the book at the wall after six pages of interminable mental gymnastics. But once you've made it through that, the rest of the book is a breeze, and the fifth chapter, the most opaque, is even a little disturbing. After you close the book, beware of turning every question that pops into your head into a knot - it starts to get a bit compulsive!

Dr. Laings book, Knots, illustrates in terms we can easily understand the unusual complexities of human relationships, particularly involving loving or not loving. With apparent child-like simplicity Dr. Laing demonstrates for us what is intuitively complex and daunting. He clarifies what for us is emotional and psychological, using the knot as a metaphore for what we want to see about our relationships that is clouded and only vaguely sensed. To clarify is to confirm. To make visible what is troubling is to give the reader respect for their intuition and possibly even a grasp of how to deal with our relations with each otherl. The power of understanding our relating to others is here in a short text from which we can begin to unknot our mental perplexity and achieve for ourselves satisfying or at the very least, understood, relations with those we love.