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
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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.
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The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice.
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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
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We are all potentially such sick men. The sanest and best of us are of one clay with lunatics and prison-inmates. And whenever we feel this, such a sense of the vanity of our voluntary career comes over us, that all our morality appears but as a plaster hiding a sore it can never cure, and all our well-doing as the hollowest substitute for that well-being that our lives ought to be grounded in, but alas! are not.
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I have a theatrical temperament. I'm not interested in the middle road - maybe because everyone's on it. Rationality, reasonableness bewilder me.
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