R.D. Laing is a major figure in the history of psychiatry and psychotherapy. His radical critique of how society treats the mentally ill, and advocacy for a more humane approach, are legendary. Laing was also a charismatic guy who became a celebrity of the 60s and 70s counterculture.
The most famous of Laing's experiments was Kingsley Hall, where patients and therapists (though presumably they didn't use those terms) would live together, and where the focus was on helping through simple presence and relationship rather than techniques or treatments. Here is a striking, even astonishing story from one of the houses Laing started after Kingsley Hall: https://www.madinamerica.com/2013/11/living-one-r-d-laings-p.... I posted it here years ago, where it didn't get one upvote (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6713259), but I still think it's one of the most interesting submissions I've made to HN.
The author of that piece, who at the time of the story was a young therapist enamored of Laing's approach, is now the founder of the new(ish) Gnosis Retreat Center in San Francisco, along with a bunch of other people who worked with Laing. Here he is talking about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4-lJWwwRc8#t=8m53s.
I think it's interesting that they are making a fresh start at reviving what Laing did, and that it's in San Francisco. That's why I posted this, though I certainly didn't mean to bork their server!
Two sentences from the archive link made me cry: "Suppose you come to the end of your tether, can no longer cope, have a break-down, fall apart, go to pieces. To whom would you turn? Where would you go?... Our program offers a network of fellow travelers who aspire to cultivate skillful means of helping people whose relations with themselves and others have become an occasion of wretchedness and despair."
It's impossible to describe if you haven't been in such a state and don't know where to go. The contempt people have for you when you are on the street is unbearable. Compared to other places, people at HVRP loved me because many of them had been there. That turned out to the magic ingredient. The power of Love is remarkable.
Here’s one passage I remember after many years: Byron explaining how convenient it was for schoolboys that the editors of the classics had thoughtfully collected all the obscene bits in one place. They were too prudish to leave them in the text, but too scholarly to delete them altogether.
Juan was taught from out the best edition,
Expurgated by learnéd men, who place
Judiciously, from out the schoolboy's vision,
The grosser parts; but, fearful to deface
Too much their modest bard by this omission,
And pitying sore his mutilated case,
They only add them all in an appendix,
Which saves, in fact, the trouble of an index;
For there we have them all "at one fell swoop,"
Instead of being scatter'd through the Pages;
They stand forth marshall'd in a handsome troop,
To meet the ingenuous youth of future ages,
Till some less rigid editor shall stoop
To call them back into their separate cages,
Instead of standing staring all together,
Like garden gods—and not so decent either.
Jerry Weinberg, who died yesterday, used to say that every time you hear the j-word ("just") you should replace it with "have trouble", i.e. "you could also have trouble avoiding your migraine trigger". He was talking about software projects, but the rule is general. The j-word usually indicates that difficulty is being glossed over.
Hah, wow, now I can thank you in person! Thanks to your well written comment I read the book, learned to move and dance, fell in love, got amazing friends, went skinny dipping with beautiful dancers in the summer, got heartbroken, learned to accept change, and started developing objects that behave and choreograph the user through their behavior.
