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A review by ella_holden_
The Divided Self by R.D. Laing
-p. 17 'he experiences himself in despairing aloneness and isolation'
-p. 19 ''our' world will die with us although 'the' world will go on without us
- p. 20 'man does not exist without 'his' world nor can his world exist without him'
- p. 25 'I, for instance, regard any particular man as finite, as one who has had a beginning and who will have an end. He has been born, and he is going to die. In the meantime, he has a body that roots him to this time and this place'
-p. 37 'what an accomplishment it was when we, in fear and trembling, could tell our first lie, and make, for ourselves, the discovery that we are irredeemably alone in certain respects, and know that within the territory of ourselves there can be only our footprints.' 'All that you can see is not me'
-p. 38 'the only real death we recognise is biological death.' 'He either is God, or the Devil, or in hell, estranged from God.'
-p. 41 'we always find something...to give us the impression that we exist...yes, yes, we're magicians'
- p. 42 'unable to assume that the stuff he is made of is genuine, good, valuable. And he may feel his self as partially divorced from his body'
- p. 44 'to be hated may be feared for other reasons, but to be hated as such is often less disturbing than to be destroyed, as it is felt, through being engulfed by love.' 'If a man hates himself, he may wish to lose himself in the other: then being engulfed by the other is an escape from himself'
- p. 45 'he will be engulfed by the fire or the water, and either way be destroyed'. 'But this emptiness is him. Although in other ways he longs for the emptiness to be filled, he dreads the possibility of this happening because he has come to feel that all he can be is the awful nothingness of just this very vacuum'
- p. 47 'he could not become a 'person'. he had no 'self'. 'I am only a response to other people, I have no identity of my own'...He felt he was becoming more and more a 'mythical person'...'i am only a cork floating on the ocean''
- p. 48 'by destroying, in his own eyes, the other person as a person, he robbed the other of his power to crush him. By depleting him of his personal aliveness, that is, by seeing him as a piece of machinery rather than as a human being, he undercut the risk to himself of this aliveness either swamping him, imploding into his own emptiness, or turning him into a mere appendage'
- p. 51 'to consume oneself by one's own love prevents the possibility of being consumed by another'
- p. 53 'he would emerge into social life for a brief foray in order to get a 'dose' of other people, but 'not an overdose''
- p. 54 'she was a flower that had withered in the absence of one day's rain'
- p. 57 'if she was seen as an anonymity, as no one who especially mattered or as a thing, then she was no one in particular'. 'She was unable to fall in love with her own reflection'
- p. 69 'the body is felt more as one object among other objects in the world than as the core of the individual's own being'
- p. 74 'the individual is developing a microcosmos within himself'
- p. 82 'nothing moves; nothing is alive; everything is dead'
- p. 93 'he descends into a vortex of non-being in order to avoid being, but also to preserve being from himself'
- p. 106 'an awareness of oneself as an object of someone else's observation'. 'the gaze or scrutiny of the other can be experienced as an actual penetration into the core of the 'inner' self'
-p. 108 'there has never been a time in which I have been convinced from within myself that I am alive'
-p. 109 'it is the aim of my life to get people to look at me'. 'the unreality feeling came. I must never forget myself for a single minute.' 'He needs other people to experience him as a real alive person because he has never been convinced from within himself that he was alive'
-p. 111 'neurosis is a way of avoiding non-being by avoiding being'
- p. 112 'he turns the living spontaneity of his being into something dead and lifeless by inspecting it. This he does to others as well, and fears their doing it to him'
- p. 113 'he dreads real aliveness'
- p. 114 'i can't feel real unless someone is there.' 'the part he plays is always not quite himself'. 'His longing is to be known. But this is also what is most dreaded'
-p. 116 'it seems that the loss of the mother, at a certain stage, threatens the individual with loss of his self. The mother...is not simply a thing which the child can see, but a person who sees the child...a necessary component in the development of the self is the experience of oneself as a person under the loving eye of the mother'
- p. 118 'the whole point seems to lie in the child temporarily experiencing himself as not being seen'
- p. 119 'going to sleep consists, phenomenologically, in a loss of one's own awareness of one's being as well as that of the world'. 'Even worse, perhaps, than the possible presence of bad things in the dark is the terror that in the dark is nothing and no one'. 'the need to be perceived...extends to the general need to have one's presence endorsed or confirmed by the other, the need for one's total existence to be recognised; the need, in fact, to be loved'
-p. 122' 'lonely is not the same as being alone'
- p. 125 ' I am nobody, so I'll do nothing'. 'I derived a certain sardonic satisfaction out of becoming even less than I had thought I was or they had thought me to be'. 'on the fringe of being'
- p. 132 ' making it the aim of his life not to be himself'
- p. 139 'the creation of a form of death within life'
- p. 150 'he is dead, in order to remain alive'
- p. 152 'she's me, and I'm her all the time'
- p. 156 'she saw that her life had become a systematic attempt to destroy her own identity and to become nobody'
- p. 158 'a ghost cannot be killed'
- p. 165 'meeting you made me feel like a traveller who's been lost in a land where no one speaks his language'. 'Being crazy us like one of those nightmares where you try to call for help and no sound comes out'
p. 166 'if you had actually screwed me it would have wrecked everything. `it would have convinced me that you were only in pleasure with my animal body and that you didn't really care about the part that was a person. It would have meant that you were using me like a woman when I really wasn't one and needed a lot of help to grow into one. It would have meant you could only see my body and couldn't see the real me which was still a little girl. The real me would have been up on the ceiling watching you do things with my body. You would have seemed content to let the real me die. When you feed a girl, you make her feel that both her body and her self are wanted.This helps her get joined together. When you screw her she can feel that her body is separate and dead. People can screw dead bodies, but they never feed them.'
- p. 167 'a person kills because he really wants the other to be resurrected, not just lie dead. Loving is impossible at first because it turns you into a helpless little baby'. 'The self is therefore at the same time empty and starving'. 'Some people go through life with vomit on their lips. You can feel their terrible hunger but they defy you to feed them.'
- p. 171 'are you crying? Good'. 'But when did I go? I cannot find me. Where am I? Lost.'
- p. 172 'you can only be broken if you're already in pieces'
- p. 174 'I could only be good if you saw it in me... I wanted to tear out my stomach for being so hungry'
- p. 175 'The first time I cried, you made a terrible mistake; you wiped away my tears with a hankerchief. You had no idea how I wanted to feel those tears roll down my face. At least I had some feelings that were on the outside. If only you could have licked my tears with your tongue, I would have been completely happy. Then you would have shared my feelings.' 'The patient really wants to be dead and hidden in a place where nothing can touch him and drag him back'
- p. 176 'i went a little catatonic so i wouldn't feel anything. (I guess you had to die emotionally or your feelings would have killed you).'
- p. 190 'the dynamics of the family constellation'
- p. 195 'In her madness, there is no one there. She is not a person. There is no integral selfhood expressed through her actions or utterances. Incomprehensible statements are said by nothing. She has already died. there is now only a vacuum where there was once a person'
- p. 198 'I could be that wall. It's a terrible thing for a girl to be a wall'
- p. 200 'I was born under a black sun. I wasn't born, I was crushed out. It's not one of those things you get over like that. I wasn't mothered, I was smothered. She wasn't a mother. I'm choosey who I have for a mother. Stop it. Stop it. She's killing me. She's cutting out my tongue. I'm rotten, base. I'm wicked. I'm wasted time...'
- p. 202 'This child's mind is cracked. This child's mind is closed. You're trying to open this child's mind. I'll never forgive you for trying to open this child's mind. This child is dead and not dead.'
- p. 204 'I'm thousands. I'm an in divide you all. I'm no un.' 'Under the rays of the black sun she existed as a dead thing. Thus: I'm the prairie. She's a ruined city.'
-p. 19 ''our' world will die with us although 'the' world will go on without us
- p. 20 'man does not exist without 'his' world nor can his world exist without him'
- p. 25 'I, for instance, regard any particular man as finite, as one who has had a beginning and who will have an end. He has been born, and he is going to die. In the meantime, he has a body that roots him to this time and this place'
-p. 37 'what an accomplishment it was when we, in fear and trembling, could tell our first lie, and make, for ourselves, the discovery that we are irredeemably alone in certain respects, and know that within the territory of ourselves there can be only our footprints.' 'All that you can see is not me'
-p. 38 'the only real death we recognise is biological death.' 'He either is God, or the Devil, or in hell, estranged from God.'
-p. 41 'we always find something...to give us the impression that we exist...yes, yes, we're magicians'
- p. 42 'unable to assume that the stuff he is made of is genuine, good, valuable. And he may feel his self as partially divorced from his body'
- p. 44 'to be hated may be feared for other reasons, but to be hated as such is often less disturbing than to be destroyed, as it is felt, through being engulfed by love.' 'If a man hates himself, he may wish to lose himself in the other: then being engulfed by the other is an escape from himself'
- p. 45 'he will be engulfed by the fire or the water, and either way be destroyed'. 'But this emptiness is him. Although in other ways he longs for the emptiness to be filled, he dreads the possibility of this happening because he has come to feel that all he can be is the awful nothingness of just this very vacuum'
- p. 47 'he could not become a 'person'. he had no 'self'. 'I am only a response to other people, I have no identity of my own'...He felt he was becoming more and more a 'mythical person'...'i am only a cork floating on the ocean''
- p. 48 'by destroying, in his own eyes, the other person as a person, he robbed the other of his power to crush him. By depleting him of his personal aliveness, that is, by seeing him as a piece of machinery rather than as a human being, he undercut the risk to himself of this aliveness either swamping him, imploding into his own emptiness, or turning him into a mere appendage'
- p. 51 'to consume oneself by one's own love prevents the possibility of being consumed by another'
- p. 53 'he would emerge into social life for a brief foray in order to get a 'dose' of other people, but 'not an overdose''
- p. 54 'she was a flower that had withered in the absence of one day's rain'
- p. 57 'if she was seen as an anonymity, as no one who especially mattered or as a thing, then she was no one in particular'. 'She was unable to fall in love with her own reflection'
- p. 69 'the body is felt more as one object among other objects in the world than as the core of the individual's own being'
- p. 74 'the individual is developing a microcosmos within himself'
- p. 82 'nothing moves; nothing is alive; everything is dead'
- p. 93 'he descends into a vortex of non-being in order to avoid being, but also to preserve being from himself'
- p. 106 'an awareness of oneself as an object of someone else's observation'. 'the gaze or scrutiny of the other can be experienced as an actual penetration into the core of the 'inner' self'
-p. 108 'there has never been a time in which I have been convinced from within myself that I am alive'
-p. 109 'it is the aim of my life to get people to look at me'. 'the unreality feeling came. I must never forget myself for a single minute.' 'He needs other people to experience him as a real alive person because he has never been convinced from within himself that he was alive'
-p. 111 'neurosis is a way of avoiding non-being by avoiding being'
- p. 112 'he turns the living spontaneity of his being into something dead and lifeless by inspecting it. This he does to others as well, and fears their doing it to him'
- p. 113 'he dreads real aliveness'
- p. 114 'i can't feel real unless someone is there.' 'the part he plays is always not quite himself'. 'His longing is to be known. But this is also what is most dreaded'
-p. 116 'it seems that the loss of the mother, at a certain stage, threatens the individual with loss of his self. The mother...is not simply a thing which the child can see, but a person who sees the child...a necessary component in the development of the self is the experience of oneself as a person under the loving eye of the mother'
- p. 118 'the whole point seems to lie in the child temporarily experiencing himself as not being seen'
- p. 119 'going to sleep consists, phenomenologically, in a loss of one's own awareness of one's being as well as that of the world'. 'Even worse, perhaps, than the possible presence of bad things in the dark is the terror that in the dark is nothing and no one'. 'the need to be perceived...extends to the general need to have one's presence endorsed or confirmed by the other, the need for one's total existence to be recognised; the need, in fact, to be loved'
-p. 122' 'lonely is not the same as being alone'
- p. 125 ' I am nobody, so I'll do nothing'. 'I derived a certain sardonic satisfaction out of becoming even less than I had thought I was or they had thought me to be'. 'on the fringe of being'
- p. 132 ' making it the aim of his life not to be himself'
- p. 139 'the creation of a form of death within life'
- p. 150 'he is dead, in order to remain alive'
- p. 152 'she's me, and I'm her all the time'
- p. 156 'she saw that her life had become a systematic attempt to destroy her own identity and to become nobody'
- p. 158 'a ghost cannot be killed'
- p. 165 'meeting you made me feel like a traveller who's been lost in a land where no one speaks his language'. 'Being crazy us like one of those nightmares where you try to call for help and no sound comes out'
p. 166 'if you had actually screwed me it would have wrecked everything. `it would have convinced me that you were only in pleasure with my animal body and that you didn't really care about the part that was a person. It would have meant that you were using me like a woman when I really wasn't one and needed a lot of help to grow into one. It would have meant you could only see my body and couldn't see the real me which was still a little girl. The real me would have been up on the ceiling watching you do things with my body. You would have seemed content to let the real me die. When you feed a girl, you make her feel that both her body and her self are wanted.This helps her get joined together. When you screw her she can feel that her body is separate and dead. People can screw dead bodies, but they never feed them.'
- p. 167 'a person kills because he really wants the other to be resurrected, not just lie dead. Loving is impossible at first because it turns you into a helpless little baby'. 'The self is therefore at the same time empty and starving'. 'Some people go through life with vomit on their lips. You can feel their terrible hunger but they defy you to feed them.'
- p. 171 'are you crying? Good'. 'But when did I go? I cannot find me. Where am I? Lost.'
- p. 172 'you can only be broken if you're already in pieces'
- p. 174 'I could only be good if you saw it in me... I wanted to tear out my stomach for being so hungry'
- p. 175 'The first time I cried, you made a terrible mistake; you wiped away my tears with a hankerchief. You had no idea how I wanted to feel those tears roll down my face. At least I had some feelings that were on the outside. If only you could have licked my tears with your tongue, I would have been completely happy. Then you would have shared my feelings.' 'The patient really wants to be dead and hidden in a place where nothing can touch him and drag him back'
- p. 176 'i went a little catatonic so i wouldn't feel anything. (I guess you had to die emotionally or your feelings would have killed you).'
- p. 190 'the dynamics of the family constellation'
- p. 195 'In her madness, there is no one there. She is not a person. There is no integral selfhood expressed through her actions or utterances. Incomprehensible statements are said by nothing. She has already died. there is now only a vacuum where there was once a person'
- p. 198 'I could be that wall. It's a terrible thing for a girl to be a wall'
- p. 200 'I was born under a black sun. I wasn't born, I was crushed out. It's not one of those things you get over like that. I wasn't mothered, I was smothered. She wasn't a mother. I'm choosey who I have for a mother. Stop it. Stop it. She's killing me. She's cutting out my tongue. I'm rotten, base. I'm wicked. I'm wasted time...'
- p. 202 'This child's mind is cracked. This child's mind is closed. You're trying to open this child's mind. I'll never forgive you for trying to open this child's mind. This child is dead and not dead.'
- p. 204 'I'm thousands. I'm an in divide you all. I'm no un.' 'Under the rays of the black sun she existed as a dead thing. Thus: I'm the prairie. She's a ruined city.'