We have to realize that we are as deeply afraid to live and to love as we are to die.
R. D. LaingRead
What we call "normal" is a product of repression, denial, splitting, projection, introjection, and other forms of destructive actions on experience...It is radically estranged from the structure of being.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The concept of 'normal' is often shaped by unhealthy mental processes and does not reflect true existence.
This quote by R. D. Laing suggests that what society perceives as 'normal' behavior or state of mind is often constructed through various psychological mechanisms that distort and repress our true experiences. These actions lead to a disconnect from our authentic existence, indicating that the accepted norms may be fundamentally flawed or harmful.
Themes
NormalRepressionExperienceBeingPhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
In a mental health awareness seminar, to highlight the intricacies of normality and psychological well-being.
More from R. D. Laing
All quotes βMadness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through. It is potential liberation and renewal as well as enslavement and existential death.
R. D. LaingRead
Whether life is worth living depends on whether there is love in life.
R. D. LaingRead
The experience and behavior that gets labeled schizophrenic is a special strategy that a person invents in order to live in an unlivable situation.
R. D. LaingRead
The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice.
R. D. LaingRead
Here we have the paradox, the potentially tragic paradox, that our relatedness to others is an essential aspect of our being, as is our separateness, but any particular person is not a necessary part of our being.
R. D. LaingRead
Similar quotes
False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.
PlatoRead
This is a matter of freedom. If you don't have many possessions then you don't need to work all your life like a slave to sustain them, and therefore you have more time for yourself.
Jose MujicaRead
My mother's death put me in touch with my most savage self. As I've grown up and come to terms with her death and accepted it, the pieces of her that I keep don't exist materially.
Cheryl StrayedRead
There is indeed the possibility that the evolutionary process has, in gray antiquity, bred into us an excess of aggression.
Konrad LorenzRead
That day, I really believed that I had grasped something and that henceforth my life would be changed. But insights cannot be held for ever. Like water, the world ripples across you and for a while you take on its colours. Then it recedes, and leaves you face to face with the void you carry inside yourself, confronting that central inadequacy of soul which you must learn to rub shoulders with and to combat, and which, paradoxically, may be our surest impetus.
Nicolas BouvierRead
To have and not to give is often worse than to steal.
Marie Von Ebner-EschenbachRead