MAP 14

The Di vi ded Sel f :

Jean-Paul Sar t r e t o R. D. Lai ng
R. D. Laing advances the existential position of jean-Paul Sartre, that persons
experience being-for-themse/ves and seekto enhance this. Existential being refers
to a continuous dynamic flow of consciousness-through-action (praxis) which
issuesfrom human beings out into their social environments. Yet when we behold
others we tend to seethem asbeings-in-themselves, asobjects located in our own-
purposive vision. ForSartre interpersonal relationships were aperpetual struggle to
assertthe fluidity of our own existence against persistent attempts to objectify usby
others.
Now the 'scientific world view' is overwhelmingly objectifying. This view of the
detached observer seeksto explain usfurther by analytic reasoning which reduces
us to parts. There is psychological violence in this stony gaze and disintegrative
thinking. Sartre opts for his own brand of dialectical reasoning wherein the
convictions of any persons or group will be 'depassed', ie encompassed into the
larger configuration of another's convictions. No conviction should therefore
masquerade as a moral absolute or objective determination.
R. ,D. Laing regards contemporary psychiatry as having made a false
objectification of psychic states. Freud descended into the 'underworld' of stark
terrors wielding his theory like Medusa's head which turned these terrors to stone.
We must learn to understand psychotics without petrifying them. Laing is not
claiming that Freud's theories are 'wrong'. They may, indeed, accord with
observable evidence. Hispoint isthat facts can bemeasured and communicated in
amanner that increases their salience! Patients seeking help because they feel like
dead and shattered objects find themselves further petrified by the viewpoints of
psychiatry. The very data which symptoms constitute are in reality capta, pieces
torn and abstracted from the fabric of lived experience.
Laing's view of the process of becoming schizophrenic begins with split or
schizoid functioning. Persons ontologically insecure, that is those who have not
been allowed to experience themselves as continuously related to the world by
moral action, may split themselves into two systems, a system of false selves
presented as a mask to the world, and an inner self of authentic experience not
revealed to others.
Schizoid organization is a question of degree. We all recall as children the
discovery that we could hide our knowledge from detection by parents. It iswhen
the false self becomes habitual that splitting can become a permanent
characteristic. Theadvantage being sought by splitting isthe reduction of anxiety.
When I offer my true, embodied self to others for acceptance or rejection there is
existential anxiety in the anticipation of their response. Such anxiety may be
excruciating for those much rejected and poorly socialized intheir past lives. They
seek relief in the fabrication of false selves designed to gain acceptance. Should
such a self be rejected, the pain is considerably less.
Yet this immediate relief can spell later disaster. Ifthe true selfisnever committed
to others, it can neither confirm itself nor learn from experience, while the false self
can only be confirmed in its falsity, sothat even success is like crowning adummy.
Social skills will atrophy and neurotic anxieties consequent on gauche behaviour
soon replace the existential anxiety. There is, claims Sartre, 'no exit' from the
vicious circle (Huis Clos) of proffering in 'bad faith' false versions of ourselves. We
, will become tormented by mutal objectification in a world where 'hell is other
people'. Schizoid behaviour does not lead directly to schizophrenia, rather it
intensifies psychological violence sothat some win the struggle to define others as
objects, and others losethis struggle. It isamong victims and losersthat the drift to
psychosis is likely to occur.
60
The patient (left) is being viewed
by the psychiatrist (right) through
a screen of theory which divides
the patient into so many 'signs of
illness' and objective categories.
Such a psychiatrist may
understand everything about
schizophrenia without
understanding a single
schizophrenic. Ironically the
patient has come to seek help
because of feelings of
disintegration, feelings to which
the psychiatrist adds by the very
process of reductive analysis.
Sanity is judged in our society by
the degree of conjunction
between two persons, the
certifier and certified, when the
first is sane by common consent.
Patients are typically those whose
relatives or friends have pinned
objective determinations of
sickness upon them, persuaded
them to seek help, which then
furthers their disintegration. The
patient unintentionally facilitates
his own psychoses by fabricating
a 'false self' which inauthentically
complies with the demands of a
hostile environment, while an
inner 'true self' resorts to fantasies
of freedom and compensatory
dreams of revenge. While the
false self accumulates onerous
experiences, the true self feels
progressively isolated and unreal.
It dreads being swallowed by the
false-self system, now seething
with introjected critics and
inconsistent attributions ... So
the person who says he is a
machine is mad, while many of
those who say men are machines
are considered great scientists!
MAP REFERENCES
Objectifying, 6-7, 35, 39, 43,
52-3; One-dimensionality, 43,
50, 53, 60; Oscillation, 22, 34, 43,
48-51,56-8; Schizophrenia, 12,
22, 24, 34, 49, 51; Schizoid, see
also schismogenesis, split, 6, 12,
23-4,28,34,40,43,48-50.
61
LEVEL 2/MAP 14
PATIENT
THEORY
THERAPIST
......("FALSE SELF < > -- < .
_ --J _ _ (embodiedl-. '-. "-
~" . -', .'
- - --i;~:'_ . .- __ - )--.---~.
i
MAP 14/LEVEL 2
These dynamics are illustrated inthe map. The patient (left) has split off asystem
of false selves designed to conform to others' expectations. These are deployed in
defence of an inner self, which suffers in Kierkegaard's phrase, 'a demonic
shutinness'. Yet the psychiatrist (right) has his own 'false self, inthe shape of theory,
by which the patient isobjectified and analysed. J ustas parents or spouses won 'the
politics of experience' and persuaded the patient to be their 'sick object', so the
therapist now confirms the diagnosis. By a vocabulary of denigration, whether
moral or medical, one schizoid system labels the other as mad, each wearing a
'death mask' that mirrors the others falsity. The patient is likely to agree with
psychiatric suggestions, while the psychiatrist delights inthe self-fulfilling powers of
his theory. Why even the patient's dreams oblige!
This victory of authorities over patients accelerates their psychoses. The false self
becomes an increasingly brittle facade crowded by a collage of inconsistent
attributions and increasingly mocked and hated by the true self, which develops
compensatory values. The more craven, defeated and bounded the false self
becomes, the more dauntless, victorious and free grows the true self. There are,
after all, no limits to the imaginings of a phantom locked away from the world.
Steadily the paradox becomes sharper, that the true self is equally threatened by
continual imprisonment and by letting in the external reality.
The psychotic break is usually Signalled by changes in language. Near the
borderline a patient may saythat he does not really make love to his wife. Over the
borderline he may saythat the woman he makes love to is not his real wife. Yet the
transition is understandable. A two-way conversation has yielded to one between
four or more entities. The false self, by now soinvaded by relatives and psychiatrists,
has become indistinguishable from them. They are it and it is them, while the true
self has opted for the fantasy wife. The original conflict between the patient and
others has been pushed by objectification within him, so that his selves literally
mock and caricature each other.
With the onset of schizophrenia in early adolescence there are often three
sequential descriptions of the patient by parents, 'goodness, then badness, then
madness' (see diagrams). Typical was the case of J ulie, 'the ghost in the weed
garden'. She 'never made trouble' wasalways 'sweet, obedient and clean'. Since
real children are not inthe least like this, J ulie's 'perfect self was clearly false, with a
true self seething behind the mask. As the psychotic break approached, J ulie made
afrantic bid to save herself. This was her 'badness phase'. Shesuddenly accused her
mother of never leaving her alone, of smothering her. Desperate truths, but
naturally her parents were aghast. How could their darling harbour such
sentiments? We can imagine the ferocity of their shock and disapproval. It
therefore came as a relief to her parents (and as a surrender Signal from J ulie) when
she said that her mother had murdered a child and the police must be informed.
J ulie was ill! Her badness could be explained by madness. She had not meant what
she said.
Sartre and Laing would agree with Marcuse (seeMap 53)that J ulie isthe victim of
one-dimensional judgements. The moral absolutes of her parents - obedience,
cleanliness, quiet - leave no room for the other ends of the dialectic process -
rebellion, dirtiness and noise. Even medical science was one-dimensional in
insisting on the sanity of her false self and the insanity of her true experience.
Moralism and positivism joined to smash those values which appeared to negate
their being. But it is a fallacy of momentous proportions to regard obedience as
good and rebellion as bad, to insist on yielding and not assertion. The real disease
lies in the splitting of these values, so that the false self seems docile and dead and
62
'In short we have an already
shattered Humpty Dumpty who
cannot be put together again by
any number of hyphenated or
compound words: psycho-
physical, psycho-somatic, psycho-
biological, psycho-pathological,
psycho-social, etc .. .'
'The Divided Self' Ronald Laing
We shall be concerned
specifically with people who
experience themselves as
automata, as robots, as bits of
machinery, or even as animals.
Yet why do we not regard a
theory that seeks to transmute
persons into automata or animals
as equally crazy?'
'The Divided Sell'
'Patients kick and scream and
fight when they aren't sure the
doctor can see them. It's a most
terrifying feeling to realize that the
doctor can't see the real you, that
he can't understand what you
feel, and that he's just going
ahead with his own ideas.'
'The Divided Sell'
I.
2
Three phases of schizophrenia in
,earlyadolescence:
1. A 'good', obedient child
2. A 'bad', rebellious child
3. A 'mad' child. oscillating
between the extremes of 'good'
(false self) and 'bad' (true seli).
LEVEL 2/MAP 14
the true self wildly animated. The pattern we observe in psychosis is an oscillation
between extremes, with no moderation or mutual restraint between absolutes.
Laing's views were championed by the counter-culture of the sixties and grossly
simplified. The media presented him in an increasingly bizarre light, in seeming
sympathy with patients who were conceived of as having mystical experiences -
the veritable odyssey and return of the hero. I believe, however, that we can
distinguish the profundity of Laing's work from its later extravagance by making a
single important distinction. Laing took Sartre's 'real self and 'imaginary self and
altered these to read false self and true self. He did not, he now insists, intend to
convey that the true self in its split-off, phantomized condition was an enviable
state of superior sanity, only that it was truly experienced. Patients can be helped
back to a fusion of their subjective experiences with the social realities seen by
others, only if these true selves are first accepted as legitimate bases to build upon.
In this way their rebellion is respected along with their obedience, their assertion
with their yielding and the entire range of behaviours between. .
Itwas Laing's popularizers, not he, who tried to define whole asone polarity upon
the continuum subjective whole-objective part. The principle of unity cannot be
applied at only one level of language (seeMap 40), but must logically refer to the
whole continuum, which includes objectivity and parts inawidened context. When
the continua of whole-part, subject-object, separation-relationship are cloven ina
divided self, then all split-off ends are pathological, mutually excitatory, and wildly
oscillating, the turned-on hippie and the buttoned-down automaton alike, and
both can only be healed by the integration of their extremities. If Laing has
emphasized the subjective end, it was because too many others had de-
emphasized it. The necessary one-sidedness of his tactics have been confused with
the vital balance of his goal. .
Inthe light of such models as catastrophe theory (seeMap 56), Laing's work takes
on renewed importance and the concept of a widening, catastrophic splitting in
mind and behaviour, with jumps or oscillations between, becomes much more
than a metaphor and iscapable of mathematical expression and three-dimensional
representation. Essentially the schizophrenic is crucified by the subject-object split
of Cartesian dualism (seeMap 6). He (or she) is 'the broken image' as Laing puts it.
The risk consists in this: if one experiences the other as afree agent, one is open to
experiencing oneself asan object of hisexperience and thereby of feel ing one's own
subjectivity drained away. One is threatened with the possibility of becoming no
more than athing inthe world of the other, without any life for oneself, without any
being for oneself. Interms of such anxiety, the very act of experiencing the other as
a person is felt as virtually suicidal. Sartre discusses this experience brilliantly ...
63