Despite rd Laings many flaws he did nevertheless revolutionise the treatment of patients right across the medical spectrum, as someone that suffers from mental health issues I can assure you that the problems and dogmas Laing confronted - largely on his own, still persist today in the medical industry, but thankfully because of laings outside the box thinking it is far less pervasive, for instance i can see many of laings methods - namely treating patients with dignity in order to understand and effectively treat them, present in the field and treatment of autism, most modern and successful treatments of autism are all based on this principle, a principle that Laing pioneered and fought for. Laing definitely had his own demons and some of his eccentricities, lack of structure and awareness definitely lead to some patients being harmed , but considering he was a pioneer working mostly on his own - he was still very successful - especially when compared with his peers - who were later revealed - through experiments where they were the subjects- unknowingly - were unable to distinguish between the insane and the sane, in these experiments the leading psychiatrists in the most prominent psych wards in America admitted completely normal qualified psychiatrists and held them in psych wards against their will until they admitted they were insane, so the widespread harm that was being caused by the industry at the time was prevalent and almost guaranteed, laing was one of the first to publicly acknowledge this and had the courage to fight a constant uphill battle for most of his career. So Laing came out well ahead of his peers and at the very least should be acknowledged for dragging this field kicking and screaming into the 21st century, those that dispute his contributions need to take a hard look at the murky and well hidden history of psychiatry and I'm not partial to the hippy dippy anti authority attitudes that characterised this generation.
The movie was great, a contemplative and interesting biopic of a maverick pioneer, a fly on the wall docu drama without a Clear or structured narrative, although I did get a vague " Icarus flying to close to the sun theme"
The acting is top notch from the all star cast, a well crafted and interesting film that I would recommend to anyone interested in psychology. 7/10.
Although I'm not sure how true this story is.
