The Ontological War

This post is a reply to a poster who had written that, among other reasons, he didn’t like R. D. Laing because he wrote some of his books mainly for the money, he had sex with numerous women, he had sex with some of his patients, and so on. The poster also quoted William S. Burroughs in his post: “By their fruits ye shall know them, not by their disclaimers.”

When I read your thoughts about Laing I first thought that you hold people up to a high ethical and moral standard. But thinking about it later, I wasn’t so sure. You quote William Burroughs without qualification, but he did have his questionable activities: he was addicted to heroin; he sold heroin; he forged doctors’ prescriptions; he cut off the end of his finger to prove something to a man he was infatuated with; he shot his ex-wife in the head and killed her when he was doing a William Tell stunt; he escaped to Mexico to keep from going to prison in the US; and, after the statue of limitations ended, he escaped back to the US to keep from going to jail/prison in Mexico.

Laing certainly had his problems, but I don’t think his writing books for money was that big of a misdeed. Someone once observed that “women like to have sexual intercourse with famous men,” and Laing did avail himself of some of these women, but, again, I’m not sure that that was that bad of a misdeed. The times were different then, a lot of men have done it, and Laing comes no where close to men such as Keith Richards and his claimed 2,000+ women. Laing’s having sex with his women patients is in a different category altogether, of course, but I would like to know more about the circumstances.

As I was reading your thoughts about Laing, it occurred to me several times that you weren’t just listing his misdeeds, but you were in some way personally offended by them. Perhaps this comes from your interest in psych, and Laing represents the psych community.

But I also wondered if your feelings might be partly ontological. I don’t think you are the kind of person I describe in the next two paragraphs, but there is probably a measure of this type of person in all of us, with the amount diminishing as we move forward.

Some people are more sensitive ontologically than they would like to be, and when they look into themselves they see what they believe are ugly and terrible qualities. (If these people were to understand these qualities better, they would see that these qualities are just potentials within all of us and do not represent who we truly are.) In response to these qualities, some of these people turn away from what they see, and these people go on to hate the true self and everyone they think has anything to do with it.

If these people happen to read TDS [The Divided Self], they sense what it represents ontologically. And a few of these people will say, correctly, “Laing wants us to become more our true self, but I am afraid to do that.” Others, though, will say instead “Laing was an SOB who was screwing his women patients right and left!” The two advantages of saying this is that it puts the focus away from who one truly is, and it also sabotages the very idea of becoming who we are. A young woman might read TDS and say, “I think Laing might have some good ideas.” Someone else then says, “Do you really want to follow the advise of a PATIENT-SCREWER!?” She replies, “no, I guess not,” and she stops striving to become her true self.

I do have a suggestion for you: Turn your view around from looking forward out through your eyes to looking inward to the deepest location within you–to your “heart of hearts” and your innermost self. After you do this, don’t remain on the outside looking in, but take a step forward by acknowledging that the self that is there is, at least in part, who you are. You might ask questions such as Why am I not being that self completely? What are its beliefs and feelings, and why do they seem different from the beliefs and feelings I have in my daily life? Which self is more “me”? Will I become a better or worse person as I become more that self?

After you have thought about these kinds of questions enough to get the lay of the land of where you are and where you are going, look to the far horizon ahead of you. After you get to that horizon, look ahead again to your new far horizon, go there, and then do this a third time. When you finally reach the third far horizon, take a look around, and what you will find is . . . Laing.

This is why Laing is important, the ontological insights he has into who we really are and why we do some of the things we do. It is true–a person can understand Laing only as well as that person understands himself or herself. And this is what it takes to achieve this understanding.

Kind regards,

Scott