Abstract
Using the example of Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing, this chapter argues that alternative conceptualisations of therapeutic ‘asylum’ spaces (real and material, imagined and envisioned) matter in the exploration of the deinstitutionalisation process. Concentrating on Laing’s time spent at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations and his part in the development of the therapeutic communities of the Philadelphia Association (PA) during the 1960s, this piece illuminates an underexplored dimension to his studies. Beginning with a discussion of Laing’s blueprint for a true asylum this chapter examines investigations of familial worlds. Finally, through exploring the therapeutic pursuits of the PA, including the Archway Community, this chapter demonstrates the importance of investigating alternative spaces of asylum in the deinstitutionalised landscape, from their very imagining to their physical foundations.
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Notes
- 1.
Mike (undated) ‘A Personal Memoir’ (Unpublished Typescript, Papers of R. D. Laing, Special Collections, University of Glasgow: MS Laing A711), p. 2. All names in this memoir are pseudonyms, except from the author, in order to protect the identity of the individuals referred to. This is due to the material not being publicly available and only accessible via the R. D. Laing Collection held in Special Collections, University of Glasgow.
- 2.
In the above mentioned memoir the author discusses in detail the dark atmosphere of the house.
- 3.
C. Philo (2004) A Geographical History of Institutional Provision for the Insane from Medieval Times to the 1860s in England and Wales: ‘The Space Reserved for Insanity’ (Lampeter: Edwin Mellen).
- 4.
H. Parr (2008) Mental Health and Social Space: Towards Inclusionary Geographies? (Oxford: Blackwell).
- 5.
Ibid., 12.
- 6.
C. McGeachan (2014) ‘Worlding Psychoanalytic Insights: Unpicking R. D. Laing’s Geographies’ in P. Kingsbury and S. Pile (eds) Psychoanalytic Geographies (Farnham: Ashgate).
- 7.
Philo, Geographical History.
- 8.
Ibid.
- 9.
D. Moran (2015) Carceral Geography: Spaces and Practices of Incarceration (Farnham: Ashgate); T. Disney (2015) ‘Complex Spaces of Orphan Care—a Russian Therapeutic Children’s Community’, Children’s Geographies, 13, 30–43.
- 10.
Parr, Mental Health; L. Bondi (2009) ‘Counselling in Rural Scotland: Care, Proximity and Trust’, Gender, Place and Culture, 16, 163–179; L. Bondi and J. Fewell (2003) ‘“Unlocking the Cage Door”: The Spatiality of Counselling’, Social & Cultural Geography, 4, 527–547.
- 11.
J. Wolpert and E. Wolpert (1974) ‘From asylum to ghetto’, Antipode, 6, 63–76.
- 12.
Parr, Mental Health.
- 13.
G. Moon, R. Kearns and A. Joseph (2015) The Afterlives of the Psychiatric Asylum: Recycling Concepts, Sites and Memories (Farnham: Ashgate).
- 14.
R. D. Laing (1985) ‘The What and Why of Asylum’, Unpublished Typescript, Papers of R. D. Laing, Special Collections, University of Glasgow (MS Laing A532), p. 1.
- 15.
R. D. Laing (c.1960/1990) The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness (England: Penguin Books); R. D. Laing (1961) The Self and Others: Further Studies in Sanity and Madness (Tavistock: Tavistock Publications); R. D. Laing (1969/1972) Self and Others (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books); R. D. Laing and A. Esterson (1964/1990) Sanity, Madness and Family: Families of Schizophrenics (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books); L. Fowler (2011) All Divided Selves [film] (Gisela Captain Gallery: The Modern Institute/Toby Webster Ltd).
- 16.
J. Andrews (1998) ‘R. D. Laing in Scotland: Facts and Fictions of the “Rumpus Room” and Interpersonal Psychiatry’ in M. Gijswijt-Hofstra and R. Porter (eds) Cultures of Psychiatry and Mental health Care in Postwar Britain and the Netherlands (Amsterdam: Rodopi); C. McGeachan (2013) ‘Needles, Picks and an Intern Named Laing: Exploring the Psychiatric Spaces of Army Life’, Journal of Historical Geography, 40, 67–78.
- 17.
McGeachan, ‘Needles, Picks and an Intern Named Laing’.
- 18.
Parr, Mental Health, 32.
- 19.
Cooper is an important voice in the range of movements during the 1960s and 1970s to create alternative forms of asylum.
- 20.
Laing as quoted in G. M. Carstairs (1973) ‘Something To Say No. 241/2 John Morgan Speaking to R. D. Laing’, Papers of R. D. Laing, Special Collections, University of Glasgow (MS Laing L149), p. 3.
- 21.
J. Wykert (1978) ‘R. D. Laing at 50’, Psychiatric News, 32.
- 22.
Multiple copies of these notes have been typed up and edited by Laing over the years.
- 23.
Laing, ‘The What and Why of Asylum’, p. 6.
- 24.
Ibid., p. 4.
- 25.
Ibid., p. 2.
- 26.
Laing as quoted in D. Glotzer (1973) ‘Experiencing R. D. Laing’, Valley Advocate, p. 9, emphasis in original.
- 27.
R. D. Laing (1974) ‘Draft notes’, Papers of R. D. Laing, Special Collections, University of Glasgow (MS Laing A682), n.p., emphasis in original.
- 28.
R. D. Laing (1974) ‘Transcripts of interviews with R. D. Laing and John McGreevy’, Papers of R. D. Laing, Special Collections, University of Glasgow (MS Laing L162/1–5), p. 22.
- 29.
Ibid., n.p.
- 30.
R. D. Laing, A. R. Lee and D. Sherret (1960) ‘Draft Application for a Grant for the Study of Schizophrenic Patients and their Family Interactions, Tavistock Clinic’, Papers of R. D. Laing, Special Collections, University of Glasgow (MS Laing A620), p. 2.
- 31.
Esterson was born in Glasgow in 1923 and, after being demobilised from the Royal Navy, entered Glasgow University where he graduated as a doctor of medicine in 1951. This is also where he first met Laing and their friendship would continue until coming to a bitter end after the setting up of Kingsley Hall in 1965. Esterson worked in general practice until taking up psychiatry in 1954, and between then and 1962 he held a number of appointments in British mental hospitals and psychiatric units. Esterson became disenchanted with the practice of therapy in the National Health Service and he entered private practice in 1962 as an existential psychoanalyst and family therapist.
- 32.
Although both Laing and Esterson wished to conduct the interviews in the home, the majority of the interviews actually took place within the institutions themselves.
- 33.
This study received public criticism with many taking the prominent argument to be that ‘families cause schizophrenia’. A. Laing (2006) R. D. Laing: A Life (Stroud: Sutton Publishing).
- 34.
Laing and Esterson, Sanity, Madness and the Family, p. 15.
- 35.
J. Neill (1990) ‘Whatever Became of the Schizophrenogenic Mother?’, American Journal of Psychotherapy, 44, 499–505.
- 36.
Laing and Esterson, Sanity, Madness and the Family, p. 19, emphasis in original.
- 37.
C. McGeachan (2014) ‘“The World Is Full of Big Bad Wolves”: Investigating the Experimental Therapeutic Spaces of R. D. Laing and Aaron Esterson’, History of Psychiatry, 25, 283–298.
- 38.
Laing and Esterson, Sanity, Madness and the Family, pp. 15–27.
- 39.
Ibid., p. 21.
- 40.
Ibid., p. 12.
- 41.
For further discussion of the family case studies used in the text, see McGeachan, ‘“The World Is Full of Big Bad Wolves”’.
- 42.
R. D. Laing (1966) ‘Prayer for a Place’, Papers of R. D. Laing, Special Collections, University of Glasgow (MS Laing L221/22).
- 43.
R. D. Laing and A. Esterson (1964) ’Family and Schizophrenia Draft’, Papers of R. D. Laing, Special Collections, University of Glasgow (MS Laing A627), n.p.
- 44.
Ibid., n.p.
- 45.
Ibid., n.p.
- 46.
Ibid., n.p.
- 47.
T. Itten (2005) ‘All the Lonely People Where Do They All Come From: Facts, Feelings and Experience from the Philadelphia Association London’, paper presented at the Association for Community Living Conference (New York).
- 48.
Philadelphia Association ‘Leaflet’, Papers of R. D. Laing, Special Collections, University of Glasgow (MS Laing L259/10).
- 49.
Ibid., n.p.
- 50.
Philadelphia Association (1978) ‘Study Programme’, Papers of R. D. Laing, Special Collections, University of Glasgow (MS Laing L259/2).
- 51.
Laing as quoted in Wykert, Laing, 28. The nature and location of many of these houses varied with many opening and closing in short periods of time. Although some of these houses, such as Kingsley Hall, had a very visible presence in the community, others wished to maintain a more understated existence.
- 52.
Itten, ‘Lonely People’, n.p.
- 53.
D. Harris (2012) The Residents: Stories of Kingsley Hall, East London, 1965–1970 and the Experimental Community of R. D. Laing (London: D. Harris).
- 54.
Laing as quoted in Harris, The Residents, foreword.
- 55.
Mike, ‘Memoir’, 3.
- 56.
Harris, The Residents.
- 57.
Mike, ‘Memoir’, pp. 14–15.
- 58.
Laing, ‘The What and Why of Asylum’, n.p.
- 59.
Mike, ‘Memoir’, p. 29.
- 60.
R. Greenspun (undated) ‘The Screen: “Asylum”, A Documentary’, Papers of R. D. Laing, Special Collections, University of Glasgow (MS Laing T101), p. 19.
- 61.
Laing as quoted in ibid., p. 19.
- 62.
M. Knelman (1974) ‘Review of Asylum, Toronto Globe and Mail’, Papers of R. D. Laing, Special Collections, University of Glasgow (MS Laing T103).
- 63.
Wykert, ‘Laing’, pp. 16–17.
- 64.
Mike, ‘Memoir’, p. 2.
- 65.
J. Clay (1996) R. D. Laing: A Divided Self (London: Hodder & Stoughton), p. 140.
Acknowledgements
Research for this chapter was made possible under the doctoral award funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (Award Number 030-2005-00165). Thanks to the editors of this collection for their insightful comments on earlier versions of this piece. Thanks also to Sarah Hepworth and the Special Collections at the University of Glasgow, for their help in locating the archival materials used in this paper, and to the Laing Estate for permission to access the R. D. Laing Collection. All R. D. Laing source material is copyright R. D. Laing Estate.
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McGeachan, C. (2016). ‘Do You Have a Frog to Guide You?’: Exploring the ‘Asylum’ Spaces of R. D. Laing. In: Kritsotaki, D., Long, V., Smith, M. (eds) Deinstitutionalisation and After. Mental Health in Historical Perspective. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45360-6_10
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