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Originally Posted by notyourfiend
Demonrail - I actually initially majored in psychology because my goal was to somehow work in the anti-psychiatry field. I wanted to do human rights law or community organizing. The college I went to had a strong humanistic psychology program and even offered a Laing seminar. I am somewhat involved with the Icarus Project - some stuff I did is being sold this weekend at their fundraiser in NYC. Are you familiar with the Icarus Project? They are less political and more discussion/outreach based.
I've never read The Divided Self specifically but my gf/many of my other friends have. My gf did some very intensive independent work on his material. I never got as involved because the professor who was an expert on his work started hating me after she found out that I was reading Foucualt. She was hyper-critical about anything remotely post-modern and distributed by Foucault's proposal of our notions of the soul being something that is construction. I'm pretty sure that she read his work as claiming that there is no such thing as a soul which is inaccurate. Laing apparently tried to approach Foucault because he felt their work was similar (analysises of madness and such) but Foucault claimed that they were nothing alike.
Anywho, if I go back to grad school for something academic, I want to study the intersections between science, normalization, micropolitics and gender. How pretentious is that?
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I just looked up the Icarus Project and it does seem really interesting.
I think there were definitely similarities between Foucault's and Laing's positions. In many ways I think they were French and British equivalents of one another - at least with regards issues of mental illness. Guattari is the other really fascinating one, I think. He tends to get a bit sidelined by some people, who seem to see him as little more than Robin to Deleuze's Batman, but the stuff he wrote by himself on the anti-psychiatry movement is quite brilliant.