R. D. Laing

Feb 26, 2024 | fivebooks.com | R. D. Laing |Shelley Adler |Jasper Gibson

Before we look at the books you’ve chosen to recommend, I think we need a definition of ‘hallucination.’ It’s a more complex and contested term than a lot of people realise, isn’t it? Absolutely. The classic definition of hallucination is that you’re having a sensory or perceptual experience without a corresponding external stimulus: there’s not something out there in the world to produce the sensory experience you’re having right now.

May 22, 2023 | newleftreview.org | R. D. Laing

The thesis of Herbert Marcuse’s book One-Dimensional Manfootnote1 is as follows. When dialectical rationality was first brought to bear on the historical process in the early 19th century it was clear, to any one who was prepared to look at the facts, that there existed an identifiable body of people, the proletariat, who were the living refutation of the capitalist system, in that though they made the goods that produced wealth, they themselves neither owned the goods, nor acquired the wealth.