The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness by R. D. Laing This work represents a criticism of psychiatry. It fundamentally questions some basic premises that psychiatry has about itself and its role, as well as the "mentally disordered". Laing starts the book first by examining different angles by which one can view a human being - a human being can be a person, and a human being can be an organism. Therefore - when a human being speaks, you can either look at the content of what they express, or you may look at it as a mechanical/biological process that manifests. According to Laing, one fundamental problem in psychiatry is that it's devoted to the latter (as a biological organism) even though the discipline itself is a study and therapy relating to personhood, something that on the surface at least does appear rather absurd. In this work he brings the example of " hebephrenic " and " catatonic " individuals to make his point - whic...