It’s been half a year since this talk was released and I still think often how insulting it is to Laing’s legacy. Y’all read a single one of his works and then ‘critiqued’ him, complaining that he didn’t provide a thorough definition of the self while not even mentioning his book Self and Others. The Politics of Experience goes totally unexamined. I’m not saying Laing was perfect, but damn. Y’all can sit there acting smug, but Laing is the one who helped me articulate my own schizoid personality and save myself from going into total autistic withdrawal and dying alone.
They touch on PoE a fair bit but it’s true S&O goes unmentioned. I value The Divided Self for the same reasons as you and was hoping they would have at least included a discussion of the “false self system.” This was unfortunately overlooked. However, I think the conversation was highly valuable for the ways in which they analyze Laing from a postmodern philosophical perspective. Particularly the end section where they get into the political limits of Laing’s views and his failure to engage with the larger political implications of his work. For this reason I would highly recommend David Smail’s ‘The Origins of Unhappiness.’ It’s an excellent companion to The Divided Self. It updates and expands on some of the core Laingian ideas while situating them with in a more modern context.
@@dirtycelinefrenchman I was pretty upset when I left this comment. Don’t care to delete it since other Laing enjoyers seem to have resonated with it. I was disappointed ‘cause Laing rarely gets discussed in interesting ways and this wasn’t what I was looking for. But whatever.
You have to listen to Laing in his own words as his therapy was based on spiritual connection, not language or word programming. Overly intellectualising his method deflates the purpose, people heal through connection and being understood.
First talk I've heard on this channel. Good stuff. I'm reminded, as I listen to this, having read this title many years ago, of the resonance I then felt. Since exposing myself to much in the way of Eastern Philosophies at the time, and especially, "Zen and the Psychology of Transformation", by Dr. Hubert Benoit. Western Psychology is a tough fit with the terminology and experiential realities of Eastern Practices. Self, self, I, etc., is a fiction. They're all about duality-transcendance. I can see why he had difficulty in communicating to our academia, his ideas. It's like when you talked about "love." Osho's words come to mind, " One can deduce the importance of a concept to a culture by the number of terms ascribed to it. In English, we have one word, the Greeks five; Sanskrit has 97 words for "love." What meaning do we ascribe here?
Doesn't sound right to me, we have different words in English for what we could call types of love and those words in Greek and Sanskrit are most likely the same, otherwise they'd be surplus words for the same thing. Is a concept any more important to a culture if it has a single word to describe it or two? 🤷 Osho, was a master at saying things that sounded quite deep while being quite shallow, just look at the effort he puts into the way he speaks and his appearence, even changing his name to maintain guru status. A clever man, but not a trustable one.
@@Xanaduum I'm not certain what exactly doesn't sound right to you, but fair enough. "We have different words in English for what we would call types of love, and those words in Greek and Sanskrit are mostly the same", you write. Could you please clarify the words we have, as they aren't here in the English Language, which is my point. But I do want you to tell me of them. The fact that Sanskrit had 97 words, Greeks 5, is telling. Sanskrit didn't waste words that weren't nuanced and meaningfully different than others, thus their culture felt that the importance of such dilineation was high. The English language reveals OUR lack of weight to the topic; it's revealing as to our understanding (lack thereof) and communication of important matters. Superfluous? I don't agree, but again, when exposed to your list of such a lexicon for Love, perhaps you'll have opened my eyes. With regard to OSHO, you're of course free to your opinion, but if you read the books published from his talks, his genius is evident in his explication of what goes wrong with the common man, and why. Perhaps you really haven't been exposed to it/him and are simply dismissing his trustworthiness because of what MSM has produced regarding Oregon? Please explain what, from him, with which you have take an exception which leads to your mistrust in "him"?
@@Eric-tj3tgI'll agree that he was quite an intelligent man and his books interesting, I wouldn't go quite as far to say genius, but he still followed the road of 'the guru', which should always be treated with healthy suspicion. You made the original comment about Sanskrit from a pithy quote you'd heard elsewhere and I've heard elsewere, so I think the burden lies on you to give examples. I'm just pointing out that it rings like a fallacy, connected loosely to the whole concept that started in the 18th century, their version of cultural appropriation or ' the East is more spiritually authentic than us' and then people from the East taking that up themselves as clout later on. Just for a laugh, tell me two words in the English language that mean exactly the same thing without at least a nuanced difference between them. 😅
@@Eric-tj3tg I never stated that he wrote a book, I said 'his books' I'm well aware that most of these were compiled from talks. You made the statement that Sanskrit and other languages have more words for love with differing meanings, which is fairly fine to do so- the problem I have is presuming that therefore this means that love is more important in these other countries, but how can that on its own be proof? India still has the Varna system, so I'm not going to be led along in thinking it's the most compassionate of countries, or that it shows what their priorities are, simply because it has more words for love, like the inuit have more words for snow (which we also have concepts for but usually us more words to do so). The other problem I have is that you don't need a single word, in order to have a concept, sometimes that is more efficient yes, but the great thing about English is it's plasticity. Plus, in western psychology there area fair few people who did grapple with these ideas in terms of the illusory nature of self/I, Jaques Lacan for a start.
It’s been half a year since this talk was released and I still think often how insulting it is to Laing’s legacy. Y’all read a single one of his works and then ‘critiqued’ him, complaining that he didn’t provide a thorough definition of the self while not even mentioning his book Self and Others. The Politics of Experience goes totally unexamined. I’m not saying Laing was perfect, but damn. Y’all can sit there acting smug, but Laing is the one who helped me articulate my own schizoid personality and save myself from going into total autistic withdrawal and dying alone.
They touch on PoE a fair bit but it’s true S&O goes unmentioned. I value The Divided Self for the same reasons as you and was hoping they would have at least included a discussion of the “false self system.” This was unfortunately overlooked. However, I think the conversation was highly valuable for the ways in which they analyze Laing from a postmodern philosophical perspective. Particularly the end section where they get into the political limits of Laing’s views and his failure to engage with the larger political implications of his work. For this reason I would highly recommend David Smail’s ‘The Origins of Unhappiness.’ It’s an excellent companion to The Divided Self. It updates and expands on some of the core Laingian ideas while situating them with in a more modern context.
@@dirtycelinefrenchman I was pretty upset when I left this comment. Don’t care to delete it since other Laing enjoyers seem to have resonated with it. I was disappointed ‘cause Laing rarely gets discussed in interesting ways and this wasn’t what I was looking for. But whatever.
You have to listen to Laing in his own words as his therapy was based on spiritual connection, not language or word programming. Overly intellectualising his method deflates the purpose, people heal through connection and being understood.
First talk I've heard on this channel. Good stuff. I'm reminded, as I listen to this, having read this title many years ago, of the resonance I then felt. Since exposing myself to much in the way of Eastern Philosophies at the time, and especially, "Zen and the Psychology of Transformation", by Dr. Hubert Benoit. Western Psychology is a tough fit with the terminology and experiential realities of Eastern Practices. Self, self, I, etc., is a fiction. They're all about duality-transcendance. I can see why he had difficulty in communicating to our academia, his ideas.
It's like when you talked about "love." Osho's words come to mind, " One can deduce the importance of a concept to a culture by the number of terms ascribed to it. In English, we have one word, the Greeks five; Sanskrit has 97 words for "love." What meaning do we ascribe here?
Doesn't sound right to me, we have different words in English for what we could call types of love and those words in Greek and Sanskrit are most likely the same, otherwise they'd be surplus words for the same thing. Is a concept any more important to a culture if it has a single word to describe it or two? 🤷
Osho, was a master at saying things that sounded quite deep while being quite shallow, just look at the effort he puts into the way he speaks and his appearence, even changing his name to maintain guru status. A clever man, but not a trustable one.
@@Xanaduum I'm not certain what exactly doesn't sound right to you, but fair enough.
"We have different words in English for what we would call types of love, and those words in Greek and Sanskrit are mostly the same", you write. Could you please clarify the words we have, as they aren't here in the English Language, which is my point. But I do want you to tell me of them.
The fact that Sanskrit had 97 words, Greeks 5, is telling. Sanskrit didn't waste words that weren't nuanced and meaningfully different than others, thus their culture felt that the importance of such dilineation was high. The English language reveals OUR lack of weight to the topic; it's revealing as to our understanding (lack thereof) and communication of important matters. Superfluous? I don't agree, but again, when exposed to your list of such a lexicon for Love, perhaps you'll have opened my eyes.
With regard to OSHO, you're of course free to your opinion, but if you read the books published from his talks, his genius is evident in his explication of what goes wrong with the common man, and why. Perhaps you really haven't been exposed to it/him and are simply dismissing his trustworthiness because of what MSM has produced regarding Oregon? Please explain what, from him, with which you have take an exception which leads to your mistrust in "him"?
@@Eric-tj3tgI'll agree that he was quite an intelligent man and his books interesting, I wouldn't go quite as far to say genius, but he still followed the road of 'the guru', which should always be treated with healthy suspicion.
You made the original comment about Sanskrit from a pithy quote you'd heard elsewhere and I've heard elsewere, so I think the burden lies on you to give examples. I'm just pointing out that it rings like a fallacy, connected loosely to the whole concept that started in the 18th century, their version of cultural appropriation or ' the East is more spiritually authentic than us' and then people from the East taking that up themselves as clout later on.
Just for a laugh, tell me two words in the English language that mean exactly the same thing without at least a nuanced difference between them. 😅
You dodged the questions, and assumed much. Osho never wrote a book. I feel it's best we don't continue this dialogue. Best to you and yours.
@@Eric-tj3tg I never stated that he wrote a book, I said 'his books' I'm well aware that most of these were compiled from talks.
You made the statement that Sanskrit and other languages have more words for love with differing meanings, which is fairly fine to do so- the problem I have is presuming that therefore this means that love is more important in these other countries, but how can that on its own be proof? India still has the Varna system, so I'm not going to be led along in thinking it's the most compassionate of countries, or that it shows what their priorities are, simply because it has more words for love, like the inuit have more words for snow (which we also have concepts for but usually us more words to do so).
The other problem I have is that you don't need a single word, in order to have a concept, sometimes that is more efficient yes, but the great thing about English is it's plasticity.
Plus, in western psychology there area fair few people who did grapple with these ideas in terms of the illusory nature of self/I, Jaques Lacan for a start.
Great discussion!
Would SZ perhaps have a role here? Ontologically profligate but great listening and great stuff, as usual. Thank you
Thanks
This was just the sort of hip big-brain academic discussion of Laing I was looking for. Cheers!