The Politics of Experience and the Bird of Paradise

Description

Is there anywhere seen such a thing as a normal man? Modern society clamps a straitjacket of conformity on every child that's born. In the process man’s potentialities are devastated and the terms sanity and madness become ambiguous. The schizophrenic may simply be someone who has been unable to suppress his normal instincts and conform to an abnormal society. The whole question of ‘normality’ is raised in this new book by Dr. Laing, the author of The Divided Self. In the fog of psychological ambiguities, as he sees it, we cannot rely on the navigators, just because the theories of experts about alienation too often manifest the very faults they describe. The author's argument leads him to explore the psychological weapons of constriction, deprivation, splitting and projection; and he does not hesitate to call on science, rhetoric, poetry, and polemic to support his points. If he leaves us with little more than the bitter taste of truth in this modern dilemma, at least he believes that 'as there are survivors, there is still hope'.