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): Brazo de Oro (wrestler) • Caesar Rodney • Dave Hope • Elijah Muhammad • Heinrich Himmler • Jack Rowley • Jack Russell (cricketer, born 1887) • John Underhill (captain) • Princess Senate Seeiso • Raimond Valgre • Rune Glifberg • Simon Poulsen

Born in the same month (October 1927): César Milstein • Frank Sedgman • Fritz Wintersteller • Gunturu Seshendra Sarma • Günter Grass • Joe Adcock • Jorge Batlle • Joyce Brothers • Leszek Kołakowski • Princess Joséphine-Charlotte of Belgium • Sandy Gall • Sherman Glenn Finesilver • Sonny Criss • Wolf Kahn