Reviews for Readings in radical psychiatry

The average rating for Readings in radical psychiatry based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-07-16 00:00:00 Lem DuBose This is a retrospective compendium of Laing's work, with discussion about his early difficulties with the reflective self and power-over in psychiatry- especially personality disorders such as schizophrenia and bi-polar in the early days of psychiatric interventions that mainly consisted of medical restraints. I particularly enjoyed this novel because I can read Laing's path so clearly...first with his very Foucaultian notions that "madness" is simply being the person who does not fit in or cannot function within their family unit as the family unit would like them to, then in his work with Kingsley Hall. Kingsley Hall was way ahead of it's time in terms of Western psychology, where patients and residents there were truly treated from where they ARE, rather than an imagined endpoint. It appears to me from Kotowicz's work that Laing put his whole heart into Kingsley, and pure exhaustion lead him to travel East. After his break from Kingsley and his move into the dharma, Laing is portrayed as having lost some of his passion for his earlier work. Kotowicz describes this as Laing just having burned out from the work, but I wonder if Laing didn't instead experience acceptance and compassion for those he was working against (i.e., others in psychiatry that did not share his methods or beliefs about human behaviour). My perception is that Laing experienced an opening-up from his time in the east and his connection with the dharma and, although what would appear to an outsider that he lost his earlier passion, what he replaced that passion with was acceptance and lovingkindness. I like to think if Laing had lived, he would have been at the forefront of DBT research and interventions, and some might say he started the stone path that lead to this integration between acceptance, compsasionate awareness of the self, and challenging social dogmas that perpetuate behaviours that are considered anti-social. I would love to see pieces of this work integrated into Clinical Psychology curriculums, first because it offers a platform to develop awareness and exploration of the future practitioners attitudes, values and beliefs about persons considered "mad," and also because it is a great portrait of a practitioner on the path of social justice and advocacy, what he was able to do with his calling and how we as practitioners can learn from him.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-05-17 00:00:00 Chris Lenio This book is a condensed version of the work of Stan Grof. All of his previous books and research on psychedelic therapy and spiritual exploration are exposed here in basic form. I recommend this as an intro to his work and to anyone who may be interested in the use of psychedelics for healing and self-exploration.