Sanity, Madness And the Family: Families of Schizophrenics by RD Laing

Published by Penguin Books, 1990, softcover, index, 281 pages, condition: very good.

In 1958, while working at the Tavistock Clinic, John Bowlby introduced Laing to Gregory Bateson's double bind theory of schizophrenia. Intrigued, Laing engaged another Glaswegian, Dr. Aaron Esterson, in an intensive phenomenological study of more than 100 families of diagnosed schizophrenics in the London area. In 1962, Laing travelled to meet Bateson and his co-workers in Palo Alto (and elsewhere across the U.S.A.) In 1964, Laing and Esterson published the results of their study in a brilliant and deeply disturbing book, Sanity, Madness & The Family, which John Bowlby described as the most important book about families in the 20th century.