Unintended R D Laing

Adam Curtis' trilogy of documentaries came out in March last year. Someone has put short excerpts onto You Tube that relate to the bits about Ronnie Laing's critical American tour (the links are on the blog side).  Curtis argues that Laing's harangue had unintended consequences. In criticising the profession of psychiatry, he paved the way, Curtis says, for a more speedy medicalisation of the mind. 

The argument against the psychiatrists became such a powerful call that it rallied a potent army. Why? Did lots of people suddenly agree that leaving the important business of psychiatry in the hands of a bunch of people following a false science was not a good idea? Laing had said it was a false science propping up a failing society. One of the audience, a young medic named David Rosenhan took up the challenge and invented a radical research project which seems, at least in retrospect, to have catapulted the cause of the anti-psychiatrists into the stratosphere. 

Laing's gambit was a classic manouevre to open up a space for his own radical and interesting ideas. But his style of attack on his fellow professionals seems at least in part to have produced the conditions for a non-human intervention to take its place. How? The logic is over simple. If the men in white coats weren't to be trusted, we should turn to their non-human replacements. Why? Because it is men per se that is the problem? How does this actually happen in practice?

It can be ridiculously difficult to get a good idea into circulation (think Galileo, Copernicus, and Zero), so why is it easy to get a crackpot idea into circulation? What are the mechanisms that thrust RD Laing onto centre stage as a major player in this drama? 

Curtis's argument is an interesting one if approached in a sensible way. Because it is true that we are now in an era where criticism of professionals has become a serious argument for wheeling in non-human rationality as a replacement. But what are the conditions that have brought this strange situation into being? Why should people latch onto the argument against one idea and completely forget the other. After all, no-one was arguing for a marketing drive for medication. Certainly not R D Laing.