R. D. Laing

Ronald David Laing, usually cited as R. D. Laing, was a Scottish psychiatrist who wrote extensively on mental illness—in particular, psychosis and schizophrenia. Laing's views on the causes and treatment of psychopathological phenomena were influenced by his study of existential philosophy and ran counter to the chemical and electroshock methods that had become psychiatric orthodoxy. Laing took the expressed feelings of the individual patient or client as valid descriptions of personal experience rather than simply as symptoms of mental illness. Though associated in the public mind with the anti-psychiatry movement, he rejected the label. Laing regarded schizophrenia as the normal psychological adjustment to a dysfunctional social context, although later in life he revised his views.

7 October 1927

Born on the same birth date (7 October 1927): Al Martino

Born on the same birth day (7 October): Aleksandr Mikhailovich of Tver • Alex Groza • Ann Jones (tennis) • Dave Hope • Henri-Elzéar Taschereau • Jack Rowley • John Marston (playwright) • Judee Sill • Kevin Boyle (historian) • Leonidas Paraskevopoulos • Maurice Grevisse • R. Sivagurunathan • Sam Brown (singer) • Simon Carmiggelt • Thakin Mya • Tim Minchin • Trent Alexander-Arnold • William Zinsser

Born in the same month (October 1927): Barbara Robinson (author) • Bill King • Cleo Laine • César Milstein • Frank Sedgman • George C. Scott • Gilbert Bécaud • Günter Grass • Jean-Claude Pascal • Joe Adcock • John Margetson • Jorge Batlle • Lauretta Masiero • Leszek Kołakowski • Sandy Gall • Sherman Glenn Finesilver • Thomas Wilson (composer) • Tom Bosley • Warne Marsh