Socialism: Utopian and Scientific - MIA

Encyclopedia of Marxism: LaBorn into a working-class family in Glasgow, Laing earned a PhD in medicine and psychiatry from theUniversity of Glasgow in 1951. After serving as a psychiatrist as a conscript in the British Army and teaching atthe University of Glasgow (1953-56), he conducted research at the Tavistock Clinic and Institute of HumanRelations for the remainder of life, while running a private practice in London. Founded the Institute ofPhenomenological Studies in 1967.In his first book, The Divided Self (1960), he proposed that people's insecurity about their existence(“onotlogical insecurity”) may prompt a defensive reaction in which the self splits into separate components,generating the symptoms of schizophrenia. He opposed the standard treatments for schizophrenics of the time,which included electric shock “treatment”, holding that the origin of the schizophrenia lay in the family, as speltout in his 1965 Sanity, Madness, and the Family, co-authored with Aaron Esterson. Removal of one familymember as “mad”, would only force another member of the family into the same role.Among his other works are The Politics of Experience (1967), in which madness is viewed as a form oftranscendence of the normal state of alienation, and The Politics of the Family (1971). Laing's early approach toschizophrenia was quite controversial, and he modified some of his positions in later years. His book Wisdom,Madness and Folly: The Making of a Psychiatrist, 1927-1957 (1985) was autobiographical.Landau, Kurt ( - )Left Oppositionist who had moved from Austria to Germany and was to become a leader of the German UnitedLeft Opposition when it was formed in 1930. He also served briefly as a member of the Provisional InternationalSecretariat before splitting from the Left Opposition in 1931. He was assassinated by the Stalinists in Spainduring the civil war.Lange, Friedrich Albert (1828-75)A German scientist and political writer. In the labour movement he showed himself a conciliator. Author of thewell-known book, The Labour Question: Its Significance for the Present and Future. Also the author of aHistory of Materialism, of which Plekhanov said that it had "contributed a great deal, not towards the criticism ofmaterialism but towards spreading and strengthening among the public a wrong view of the historicaldevelopment of materialism and of its importance for modern social science." (Plekhanov's preface to theRussian translation of The Communist Manifesto.) Marx said of Lange in a letter to Engels (March 11, 1865): "Siebel has sent me Lange's pamphlet. Confused; Malthusianism mixed with Darwinian; flirts with all sides--butthere are some nice things against Lassalle and the bourgeois consumers' co-operative fellows."Laplace, Pierre Simon de (1749-1827)http://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/l/a.htm (3 of 5) [23/08/2000 17:41:46]