Family Nexus - Laing and Schizophrenia

Laing and Schizophrenia

Laing was particularly interested in schizophrenia, which he believed could be understood if seen from the viewpoint of the person concerned. He saw how a powerful family nexus could victimise one member, usually a child, who found themselves in the position of not being able to speak or even think the truth without being chastised by the group, who often had vested interests in perpetuating the family myth and excluding reality. In Laing's opinion, 'what is called a psychotic episode in one person, can often be understood as a crisis of a peculiar kind in the inter-experience of the nexus'.

Often described as part of the 'antipsychiatry' movement, Laing, struggled to see things in terms of existentialism, emphasising the difference between 'being' or 'being in this world' and being alive. 'An issue essential to an existential analysis of action is to what extent and in what ways the agent is disclosed or concealed...in and through action'. Being in the existentialist sense means being an object for others, and having others as objects, in other words carrying a model in our heads of all the significant others in our lives. This model provided the motivation for many of our thoughts and actions, and without it we 'cease to be' in a very real sense.

It is this need for others, in order to 'be', which makes us afraid to contradict a family nexus, risking family exclusion. However 'to a number of people the phantasy system of the nexus is a lousy hell, not an enchanting spell, and they want out...But within the phantasy of the nexus, to leave is an act of ingratitude, or cruelty, or suicide, or murder...Herein is the risk of defeat and madness'. The distortion involved in not going against the nexus can force wrong thinking - leading to 'not being in reality', which Laing saw as the essence of schizophrenia; and for Laing 'one of the most important questions, therefore, is whether such mistrust of her "feelings" and the testimony of others arises from persistent inconsistencies within an original nexus'.