SOURCE: "Me Doctor, You Patient," in Encounter, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 2, February, 1972, pp. 71-6.

In the following review of The Politics of the Family, Martin argues that while Laing's subject matter is fascinating and his style is compelling, he is polemical and defensive regarding his theories about madness and the family/society relationship.

This latest collection of Dr Laing's sermons will appeal to all those who follow the publications of the North London Pulpit. The rhetoric [in The Politics of the Family] is brilliant, the expository style persuasive, the content intriguing. Unlike Dr. Cooper, his fellow preacher, Ronald Laing is not so much a prophet of the death of the family as a student of its present reality. Like the preachers of the seventeenth century he provides an analysis of the soul on its way to the Light. His text is the dominical injunction against family piety, "Let the...