User:Margreta Carr
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I'm the Administrator of the Society for Laingian Studies and International RD Laing Institute websites.
Comments regarding Laing's biographical details and philosophy and approach to therapy appearing on the relevant pages in Wiki often contain inaccuracies, and I hope that registering under my own name to post additions and corrections might help contain the vandalism, and possibly encourage more accurate, and fewer of the spurious and argumentative additions and deletions.
It might be a worthwhile addition to the RD Laing page to create a heading for "common misconceptions", such as, that "Laing didn't believe there was such a thing as mental illness" - he certainly did, and throughout his career, not merely at the outset - or, that "Mary Barnes was a patient of Ronald Laing's", which is also not accurate; she was a resident of Kingsley Hall, but her care was primarily provided by Dr. Joseph Berke during her residency, and for many years afterward, as Barnes and Berke's co-authored books clearly describe, and so on.
Perhaps the subtlety of phrasing Laing often employed in his writing unwittingly contributed to certain misinterpretation, [his position on schizophrenia a prime example of dire misreading]; however, given the excess of care he took in preparing the manuscripts for his books [Knots having seen 8 full hand-wirtten drafts before publication, for example] it behoves the authors of commentary to ensure they have understood what Laing actually had said in the first place before endeavouring to produce their critiques.
Given the rapidly increasing degree of interest in Laing's contribution to modern intellectual thought, there is reason to be optimistic that established standards of scholarship will be present in more of the current and future critique.
