The Politics of Experience and the Bird of Paradise

therapy' are being practised. These methods reflect the depersonalising forces working in society as a whole. Thus a radical and forthright book dealing honestly with relationships between persons in a social context is an event of importance. Dr. Laing's new book is such an event and will, if widely read, reinforce the striking impact which this original and creative psychiatrist has made in his own field, and also far beyond it. Dr. Laing's work on schizophrenia is widely known and, in my view, constitutes the most important advance that has been made in this area of psychiatric thought and practice for many years. The chapter in the present book called The schizophrenic experience' expounds this approach and may be summed up in the author's words: '... it seems to us that without exception the experience and behaviour that gets labelled schizophrenic is a special strategy that a person invents in order to live in an unlivable situation.' One of the most important chapters in the book seems to me to be the one on transcendental experience. Here Dr. Laing reaches beyond the psychiatric viewpoint and gives an account of mystical truths which relate to the ground of all true human being, as it is directly experienced. And this is done clearly without recourse to muddle, mystification or reliance on