SOURCE: "R. D. Laing: The Radical Trip," in Psycho Politics: Laing, Foucault, Goffman, Szasz, and the Future of Mass Psychiatry, Harper & Row, 1982, pp. 66-101.

Sedgwick was an English political scientist and translator best known for his socialist critiques of the treatment of the mentally ill. In the following essay, he outlines Laing's early career; the philosophical, psychological, and theological sources for some of his ideas; and the evolution of his theories about schizophrenia, the family, and society.

The anti-psychiatry movement required a whole train of concurrent, convergent influences before it could gather force. Some of these factors lay in the changing age structure of Western societies, as the prolongation and intensification of active life span, extending back into the teen-years as well as onward into maturity, encouraged unprecedented strains at the boundaries of dependency, both in youth and old age. The expansion of welfare facilities as part of...