Craft: R.D. Laing

R.D. Laing (Ronald David, 1927-1989) was a Scottish psychiatrist who specialized in studying mental illness, especially psychosis. He was opposed to certain doctrine in psychoanalytic theory, such as diagnosing schizophrenia from behavior, but treating such illness biologically.

In 1970 Laing wrote a book, Knots, that consists of little poem-like dialogues, or “dialogue-scenarios,” between lovers, parents and children, analysts and patients, or between self and self.

I find it interesting that psychiatry and psychoanalysis brush against poetry, and Laing’s insight of the knot as metaphor is helpful. Insofar as poetry’s function is to ask questions rather than answer them, the image of the knot remains essential.

Poetry is one of the best tools we have to name “knots, tangles, ankles, impasses, disjunctions, whirligogs, binds.” Many interpersonal conflicts can be clarified through imagined dialogues.