Psychiatrist Ronald Laing's Film "It Enrages Being Normal" - Reviews, Society

• UK, 2016
• Director: Robert Mullan
• Starring: David Tennant, Elisabeth Moss

A biographical film about a psychiatrist who popularized the so-called "antipsychiatry". His name thundered in the West in the 1960s-1980s, books were published in huge editions, he was invited to lecture around the world. However, in our country, he is still little known. His name is Ronald Laing (1927-1989); people close to him in the film call him Ronnie

Ronald Laing was born in Scotland to a difficult family. A gloomy childhood subsequently led to a passion for philosophy, psychiatry, psychology and psychoanalysis. Brilliantly gifted, he became a psychiatrist and soon formed his own view of mental illness: its causes and how to help.

An ardent opponent of electrocution and medication, he offered treatment through empathy, respectful and understanding conversation

And he achieved brilliant results. There are videos of him working with mentally ill patients. Ronald Laing managed to get in touch with people seemingly cut off from reality and living in their fantasies.

He looked for the causes of mental illness in the tragic past. He owns interesting research and works on the influence of a negative parental figure on internal splitting and the formation of schizophrenia. Laing's own childhood was the key to understanding.

He analyzed the influence of parents, especially a cold, demanding mother, on his adult problems. He had difficulties with alcohol, periods of depression and difficulties in building a personal life. At the same time, he loved all his children from different women and tried to take care of them.

Therapeutic refuge

Among Ronald Laing's ideas was the idea of a kind of therapeutic community - a "refuge" for mentally ill people. He made this idea a reality in London when he opened Kingsley Hall on the east side in 1965.

There was no room for violence, patients had freedom, and the instruments of healing were love, care, acceptance

Kingsley Hall lasted five years, then Lane closed it and left to travel. It was the period of "Kingsley Hall" in the life of Ronald Laing that is shown in the film, undoubtedly supplemented by the imagination of the creators. The action takes place precisely in this “therapeutic haven”.

Of course, the film was not without a love story - between Ronnie and young Angie, who dreams of becoming a psychologist. They live in a London community for madmen, try to take care of them, build their own uneasy relationships and raise a child. But the main emphasis is on Laing's ideas: understanding insanity and possible help.

No definite answers

The film does not give clear answers to the questions of who is right, who is wrong and what to do, but encourages the audience to think about it. Probably, there can be no unambiguous answers. On the one hand, the viewer sees how Laing's methods help patients live without drugs and return to normal life. On the other hand, this is not true for everyone, and one of the patients begins to show aggression and cruelty. What to do?

Of course, the film is not a scientific manual for psychiatrists and psychotherapists, but it makes you think about humanity, kindness, acceptance of others, albeit different from you

Read also:

• Schizophrenics Are Everywhere, or How to tell fads from illness
• To give birth or not to give birth with schizophrenia? Clinical psychologist's opinion
• Next to the mentally ill: five rules of conduct. How to live with someone with schizophrenia