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Even Facts Become Fictions Without Adequate Ways Of Seeing "the Facts". We Do Not Need Theories So Much As The Experience That Is The Source Of The Theory. We Are Not Satisfied With Faith, In The Sense Of An Implausible Hypothesis Irrationally Held: We Demand To Experience The "evidence".

-R. D. Laing

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Even Facts Become Fictions

R. D. Laing

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Even Facts Become Fictions Without Adequate Ways Of Seeing "the Facts". We Do Not Need Theories So Much As The Experience That Is The Source Of The Theory. We Are Not Satisfied With Faith, In The Sense Of An Implausible Hypothesis Irrationally Held: We Demand To Experience The "evidence".

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The Range Of What We Think And Do Is Limited By What We Fail To Notice.

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Man As Seen As An Organism Or Man As Seen As A Person Discloses Different Aspects Of The Human Reality To The Investigator. Both Are Quite Possible Methodologically But One Must Be Alert To The Possible Occasion For Confusion. (...) Seen As An Organism, Man Cannot Be Anything Else But A Complex Of Things, Of Its, And The Processes That Ultimately Comprise An Organism Are It-processes.

The 'data' (given) Of Research Are Not So Much Given As Taken Out Of A Constantly Elusive Matrix Of Happenings. We Should Speak Of Capta Rather Than Data.

The Way Out Is Through The Door You Came In.

Schizophrenia Is The Name For A Condition That Most Psychiatrists Ascribe To Patients They Call Schizophrenic.

Few Books Today Are Forgivable.

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What We Take Anything To Be Profoundly Affects How We Go About Describing It, And How We Describe Something Profoundly Affects How We Go About Explaining, Accounting For, Or Understanding What Is What We Are, In A Sense, Defining, By Our Description.

Even Facts Become Fictions Without Adequate Ways Of Seeing "the Facts". We Do Not Need Theories So Much As The Experience That Is The Source Of The Theory. We Are Not Satisfied With Faith, In The Sense Of An Implausible Hypothesis Irrationally Held: We Demand To Experience The "evidence".

Beauty Is Almost No Longer Possible If It Is Not A Lie.

The Statesmen Of The World Who Boast And Threaten That They Have Doomsday Weapons Are Far More Dangerous, And Far More Estranged From 'reality',than Many Of The People On Whom The Label 'psychotic' Is Affixed

True Guilt Is Guilt At The Obligation One Owes To Oneself To Be Oneself. False Guilt Is Guilt Felt At Not Being What Other People Feel One Ought To Be Or Assume That One Is.

Madness Need Not Be All Breakdown. It May Also Be Break-through. It Is Potential Liberation And Renewal As Well As Enslavement And Existential Death.

In Describing One Way Of Going Mad, I Shall Try To Show That There Is A Comprehensible Transition From The Sane Schizoid Way Of Being-in-the-world To A Psychotic Way Of Being-in-the-world.

If I Hazard A Guess As To The Most Endemic, Prevalent Anxiety Among Human Beings-including Fear Of Death, Abandonment, Loneliness-nothing Is More Prevalent Than The Fear Of One Another.

Pain In This Life Is Not Avoidable, But The Pain We Create Avoiding Pain Is Avoidable.

The Dynamics And Structures Found In Those Groups Called Families In Our Society May Not Be Evident In Those Groups Called Families In Other Places And Times.

A Mental Healer May Be A Psychiatrist. A Psychiatrist May Or May Not Be A Mental Healer.

Alienation As Our Present Destiny Is Achieved Only By Outrageous Violence Perpetrated By Human Beings On Human Beings.

A Man Who Says That Men Are Machines May Be A Great Scientist. A Man Who Says He Is A Machine Is 'depersonalized' In Psychiatric Jargon.

Creative People Who Can't Help But Explore Other Mental Territories Are At Greater Risk, Just As Someone Who Climbs A Mountain Is More At Risk Than Someone Who Just Walks Along A Village Lane.

If We Can Revert To The Truth, Then A Great Deal Of One's Suffering Can Be Erased, Because A Great Deal Of One's Suffering Is Based On Sheer Lies.

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Whether Life Is Worth Living Depends On Whether There Is Love In Life.

What We Think Is Less Than What We Know; What We Know Is Less Than What We Love; What We Love Is So Much Less Than What There Is. And To That Precise Extent We Are So Much Less Than What We Are.

Our Behavior Is A Function Of Our Experience. We Act According To The Way We See Things. If Our Experience Is Destroyed, Our Behavior Will Be Destructive. If Our Experience Is Destroyed, We Have Lost Our Own Selves.

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We Live Equally Out Of Our Bodies And Out Of Our Minds.

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