R.D.Laing, Phantasy and Communication

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IS ella nd O th ers, . Once a split is dissolved in the present, memory is alwtg[opened to some extent. Fo~ in becoming aware of a present'memory one .remembers, let us say, the last time one wasthinking of that, which was when one was imagining' this,

f. when one was with so and so, and so on. But the difficulty isthat as some doors open, others close.T he ' u nc on sc i.o us ' i s w ha t w e d o n ot c om 'f un ic ate , to o urs elv es o r t oo n e a not he r. We may convey something, to another, without,communicating it to ourselves. Something about Peter is.evident to Paul that is not evident to Peter. This is on e sense ofthe phrase, 'Peter is unconscious of ... '

CHAPTER 2

Phan ta sy a nd Commun ic atio n,WE,are in the habit of distinguishing experience in differentways. Some of the most common distinctions are: inner andouter, real and unreal, full and empty, meaningful, futile,private, public, 'shared. Terms make distinctions in time be-tween pasn and present, here and now, then and there. Mostof us regard part of all we experience at any time and place as'me' and the rest as 'not-me'. We also Categorize the, type ofexperience by modality: namely, memory, imagination,!dreaming, waking perception, and so on.

In the above paragraph anft the rest of the chapter I intend ,only, to allude to some ways in which such terms are used, andto implify the discussion of he psychoaniuytic concept of, phantasy ~'and 'unconscious experience", _ .

The '1's in the fdRowing paragraphs are hypothetical selvesto' some of which some of us may subscribe.

I think of me being inside my body and at the same tife theinside of my body being somehow 'inside' my private space.If someone comes into my room unasked he does 'not intrude'upon me to the same extent as if he were to enter my bodywithout permission. However since I am inside my body, mybody is also outside me in some peculiar sense. , I "

Bodilyfeelings are usually felt to be real. Physical pai~ is\ very 'real. People seldom feel any feeling they take to bephysical is unreal, although some people are given ~ocalli~g a

, pain Ifeel 'your imagination', if the;y think I have insufficientreasons to feel it. Some people do not feel their bodies to bereal and this is grounds per se inour culture to. consider themas mentally ill.

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Self and O thers, . !I have also met people who are prepared to call 'real' pain,they themselves feel 'imagination', though this seems to berare. \I Human bodies have a thre~fold position in personal space,since all other objects are external to all men, We usually sup- 'pose ,thai the other's body is shareable with him in some res-pe~ts: , 'a public event shareable by all except him (as an object.b~tsideeveryone else), and, third, private to him. ~I, Our culture, while allowing certain marginal licence, comes, .dowa .very sharply on people who do not draw the inner/outer, real/unreal, me/not-me, private/public lines where it isthought to be healthy.iright, and normal to do so.

A halluc~ated voice may be-iaken to be inside me or outside ,me; real or unreal; private, in that I may not think anyone else'I'fan hear it, or public, if I think others can. Unreal is not~yn.o~y~.o~~. w.ith imaginary. I a~ supposed to keep myimagmauon inside myself. Others WIllusually feel that there issomething the matter with me if I think that what I "imagine".,is gomg on outside my 'rnind " especiallY ifI call it my imagina-tion and imagine that others do not imagine the same. If t w 6,or more persons share such .experiences, they are inclined tosuppose them to be real. Those wh~ do no t share them are"inclinedto suppose that those who do are suffering from someI ,Iform of shared psychosis. ~, ,, I take many bodily feelings to be private, If I have a burn on

, ' iny arm, I take the pain to be private, the sight to be public., This is not always so. Some people feel that they can actuallyfeel another person's pain, or think directly another's thoughts;and may feel that other people can feel their bodily feelings, Ior actually be thinking their thoughts. I'

I , My body, as I experience it, is not only shared or public, but,a s~t of private events: namely, the body-for-self. The body-for-self appears in dreams, imagination, and memory. Iq

, ,;whichever of these modalities it occurs it may be experien~ed34

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P ha nt af Y a nd C ommun ic at io nas alive or dead real or unreal, whole or in bits. From thestandpoint of the reflexive awareness that is' regarded' as sane, one's own body-for-self is essentially a private experience,and' the body-for-self of the other is essentially inaccessible.In phantasy, however, this is not necessarily so. The absenceof consensual validation as a court of arbitration on this issueperhaps facilitates its encroachment by phanta~yunrecognized ,,Ias such:Since each person experiences any event, however publicthat event may be, in his own way, experience even of publicevents can be said therefore to be 'private ' in a qualified sense.But it is my impression that most people feel that there is anarea of experience which is private in an unqualified sense.It is of the area of unqualified privacy that' Gerard ManleyHopkins speaks in the following words: ,. ': my self-being, my consciousness :md feel.ing of ~yse,lf, thattaste of myself, ofIand me above and m all things, which is more,disd~ctive thanthe taste of ale or alum, more distinctive than thesmell of walnutleaf or camphor, and is incommunicable by anymeans to another man (1953, pp. 147-8). .

My self-being, my consciousness and feeling of myself, thattaste of myself, of I and me above and in all things, includes.my taste of yo'u. I taste you and you taste me. I am your tasteand-you are mine, but I do not taste your taste of me i~ your ,earyOne cannot both be everything and have everything atonce. ~It is difficult to understand the self-being, of t he o th er :, I

\ cannot experience it directly. I must rely on the other's actionsand testimony to infer how he exp,eriences himself. Thepsychiatrist is 'immediately involved in this area when helistens to the testimony of his patients. By what token dochanges in the way a man experiences his self-being, hisbeing-for-himself, determine his own definition of himself as

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S elf a nd O th ers'ill', 'physically' or' psychologically', and what leads oneperson to decide that the self-being, the being-for-himself ofthe other, is sick? I

The Hopkins of ale and alum, of walnutleaf and camphorwas later to write: ')

I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decreeBitter would have me taste: my taste was me'. I'Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse. 'Self yeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I seeThe lost are like this, and their scourge to beAs I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.

(op. cit., p. 62 )

'Thousands of people have come to psychiatrists to be 'cured'of less than this. And after the courses of electric shocks. thousands have felt 'better'. ", Hopkin~ knew that this taste, of ale or of gall, was him. Tobe 'cured' of this is more problematical than any other cureif the cure is to become estranged from one's self-being, to los;one'S very self. The loss of the experience of an area of un -

. q u a l if ie d p r iv a ry , by its transformation into a quasi-publicrealm, is often one of the decisive changes associated with the'process of going mad. This is not simply a recasting of the.'loss of ego boundary' theory (Laing, 1960, p. 216). Yet evenfthe world', although 'common' to all persons and in thatsense 'shareable', is possibly never experienced by two

I indi:viduals in absolutely the same way. When two men looki ',at a landscape, and' one likes it and the other does not, there is

a!ready a ~ulf between them. To one man the landscape maysimply be Itself, full of its' is-ness': he feels a delicate sadnessperhaps, at his otherness from it. To the other the 'same: .trees and sky and grass are seen as creation: as a veil , revealingthrough themselves their Creator. For one man there may belittle or no sense of connection between himself and nature

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P h an ta sy a nd C ommun ic at io noutside himself; for th~ same person, on another occasion,there may not even be any ,essential distinctions betweeninside, outside, self, and nature.

In so far as we experience the world differently, in a sensewe live in different worlds. 'The Universe is full of men goingthrough the same motions in the same surroundings, butcarrying within themselves, and projecting around them,universes as mutually remote as the constellations' (Meunier,1952, p. 5). Yet th e world - the world around me, the world inwhich I live, my world - is, in the very texture of its mode ofbeing-for-me, not exclusively my world, but your world also,it is around you and him as well, it is a shared world, on eworld, th e world. /

There is no necessarycorrelation between publicity, real-ness, and shareability. Persons can be most alone in theirexperience of the most public of spectacles; and most togetherin the sharing of the most' real', yet unqualifiedly private ofevents. Sharing a common experience may be a token of themost genuine bond between two persons, or' a token of themost abject bondage. Phantasy mayor may not be experienced,by either the one person or the other, as inner or outer,private or public, shareable or unshareable, real or ~nreal ..

It is ironical that often what I take to be most public realityturns out to be what others take to be my most privatephadtasy. And that which I suppose is my most private'inner' world turns out to be what I have most in commonwith other human beings.. . A psychoanalyst describes his experience at certain momentsin a group when he 'feels he is being manipulated so a~ to ~eplaying a part, no matter how difficult to recogmze, 10s om e bo 4J e ls e' s phantasy - or he would do if it were not for

what in recollection I can only call a temporary loss of insight,a sense of experiencing strong feelings, and at the same time abelief that their existence is quite adequately justified by the

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Selj.and O th~ ~s .'r objective situation without recourse t~recondite explanation, of their causation.'i.(Bion, 1 95 5" p. 446, .italics my own). .

This alienation effect is insidious. We are all prone to be.drawn into s oc ia l p ha nta sy s ys te m s (Jaques, 1 95 5 ), with 'loss of 'iOne'~ 'own' identity in the process, and only in retrospect, become aware that this has happened. Bion goes on: 'I believe, the ability to shake one's self out of the n um b in gfe el in g o f r ea li tythat.is a concomitant of this state is the prime requisite of the'analyst in the group .. ' ( 0 1 " cit., p. 446, italics my own).

The loss of one's own. perceptions and evaluations, which'c~mes with occupying a f al se po si ti on (doubly false in that one

" does not see that it is false), is only 'realized' retrospectively. ~A false position is not necessarily totally 'untenable'. I shall 'consider later some of the difficulties in trying to occupy, qr,. 'If f Ito.extricate one s se rom, an untenable position. The personina doubly false position feels 'real'; without, 'feeling' numb,he is/numbed by this very feeling of-f reality'. To shake one'sself out of the fa ls e s en se o f r ea lity entails a derealization of whatone falsely takes tobe unreality. Only then is one able toapperceive the social phantasy system ,in which one is. Th~n,ormal state of affairs is to be so immersed in one's immersionin .social phantasy systems that one takes them to be real,


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IPh{Zntasy and Commun ica ti onphartta~y systems of a nexus. This 1S~s~a~ly c~lled h~v~gan\,'identity' or 'personality'. We never ,reallZeweare init. ~enever even dream of extricating ourselves. We tolerate; / .punish, or treat as harmless, bad, or mad th~se who1try t~ , /extricate themselves, arid tell tis that we should also. .,

A person may be placed in anIuntenable pqsit~on co~?riSing,a non-compossible set of positions. When hIS 'pOSItiOn, orpositions in the social phantasy system become .such ~~at, ,~ecan neither stay in nor .leave h is o w n p ha nt as y, hIS pOSltiOn ISuntenable." I" .I'Wh'at is called a psychotic episode in one person, can often

, b~understood as a crisis of a peculiar kind in the inter-experi:nceof the nexus, as well as in the behaviour of the nexus (see Laingand Esterson, 1964; Laing, 1967b). .', One way that one may try to get out of ~he family. IS'to g:tthe family inside one's self, ~othat one can be outslde,ones6wninside and thus be free. But anywhere one goes one has, to Igo elsewhere, so one decides to settle down and have someplace to call one's own. '.The greater need there is to get out of an untenable, pOSl~tion the less chance there is of doing so. T he m or e ,1 f1 lte na ble .a "p os i: io n i s, th e m or e d if fic ul t it is to get out of it. This tautology IS,worth pondering upon. . ' ' .

By untenable, I mean that it is impossible to leave 'and im-possible to stay. . . . .In an alienated untenable posltlon one does not realize t~IS,.,.Hence it is impossible to get out. As soon as Paul reahzes -,'that he is in a box, he can try to get out of it. But since to themthe box is t he wh ol e wo rl d, to get out of the box is tantamount to'stepping off the end of the world, a thing that no one wholoves him could sit by and let happen./. ' To further the understanding of the bond and/or bondagein the inter-experience of persons, we shall have to show how,, 'each person affects the others' phantasy so that his phantasy

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,1 1people want. te get from the experience 0 ' being in a'particularset of human collectivities?' ,,', ' ";" The closeLknit groups that occur in some families and othergroup;~gs an e bound together ~y the need to find pseudo-realexperience that can be found only through the modality ofp,hal;ltasy.This means that the family is not experienced as themodality of phantasy but as "reality", However, 'reality'in 'this, sense is not a modality, but a quality attachable to any '"

. modality,If a:family, member has,a tenable position within the family

\ ~hantasy system, his call to leave the system in any sense ishkely only to come from outside the .phantasy system. We

, vary in readiness, and indesire, to emerge from the uncon-scious pha~tasy systems we take to be our realities. As long as

-we are in apparently tenable positions, W e find every reasonnot'to suppose that we are in a false sense of reality or unreality,

,I' I security or insecurity, .identity or lack of identity.I A false social sense of reality entails, among other things,phantasy unrecognized as such. If Paul begins to wake up from,the family phantasy system, he can only be classified as mad or?,ad by the family since to them their phantasy is reality, ,and,wha~ is not their phantasy is not real. .If he testifies -to, any,~xperience outside what they take, to be real and true, he ~an,' o n l Y be involved in a regrettable tissue of phantasy and false-, . -hood, in tel1lingthem that what they know to be real and true is ,a regrettable tissue of phantasy and falsehood in telling him

I \ 'Ithat what he knows to be real and true, (namely: God has, given him a 'specialmission to reveal that what they take to be, ,, r e a l ' is a 'regrettable tissue of phantasy and falsehood and tothis end he walked naked and unashamed down the High . 'Street and does not care that he is disgracing the family) is aIreg~ettable tissue of phantasy and falsehood; for which hecneeds therapy. _'.The usual state of affairs is to be ina tenable position in , .

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S el f a nd O th er sbecomes' 'either more conjunctive or disjunctive with theirphantasy. As one person>,s experience of a situation he is inwith otfers comes to be more disjunctive with that of theothers in the 'same' situation, his actions become more and~ore dissonant with the actions of the others. At some pointInthe developing disjunction .of experience and dis~onaflce of,action, the minority comes to be judged by the majority as, different' . ', 'Reality' moves from relative to absolute. The more the.man we think is absolutely wrong thinks he is absolutely right'and,.,weare absolutely wrong, the sooner that man has to bedestroyed be~ore he destroys himself or us. We do not (ofcourse) mean that we want to destroy him. We want to savehim from his terrible delusion that we want to destroy him.Can't he see that alI we want to, do is to destroy his delusion?, --lfis delusion that we want to destroy him. His delusion is ~he

, belief that we are trying to stick pins in his eyes. Someone who, thinks tha~ pe?ple are stic~g pins in his eyes may go alongItoa p~yc~tr1st to have himself leucotomized by pins being"stuckjn his eyes, because he would rather even believe he wasmad than that it might be real. I ~

The, quality of reality experienced inside the nexus ofphant.asymay be enchanting, Outside it is cold, empty,meaningless, unreal. It is not desirable and; thank God, it isnot possible to leave.

It is certainly -not easy. But to a number of people/thephantasy system of the nexus is a lousy hell, not an enchantingspell, and they want out. But it is bad to want out, that showsingratitude. It is mad to want to walk out, there is an abyssthere,. tfere.are wild beasts. Besides don't worry, even despiteyour ingratitude, and your perversity, you can still be grate-ful to us that we will not le t you walk out. The doctor willS?o,,":you that you don't really want to walk' out, you are [ustrunning away from 1;1sbackwards because you ,~e frightened

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P h r J f l ' t a s y an~ G :ommunicaiion , I- , I""of having a knife stuck in Y(J)urback. 'You'know yre ~ou1dnit ,do that. ,,' " ,I ',,'The choice in phantasy co~es to be to suffocate to de~tj:linside, or to risk exposin,g one's self to whatever terrors t~eremay be outside. But as soon as one ~oe~ ~r,ough a:d~or Inaspace that is now inside, one is back right inside the ln~lde that ,,'one took inside from the outside in Older to get outside what

\ one was inside. So as soon as' one goes through that door thatwqy, one is more inside the more one thinks one is out~id:: ' , '

< ' 'When inside and outside have been flipped so that inside-" h hi k' b ~outside for A is ol!ltside-inside for' B and bot tim a ,50- '/ , "lutely ', then we have spiralled into the most e~tr~me in~er-, ,experiental disjunction_in our culture - psychiattlsts, sane:patients, psychotic. The psychiatrist in this ,case.has n~ d?ubtabout the diagnosis. The patient is psychotic without insight.The patient thinks the psychiatrist is p~ychoti~ a~d withoutj;

, insight. The patient is psychotic and without ~nsight ~ e~ au se ( .he, thinks that psychiatrists are dangerous.lunatlcs who,oughtto b : locked up for their own safety, and if other people 'aretoo' much under the spell of the thought-police to see that, heis going to do something about it. " , ,',The way out is via the door. But within the phantasy ~f,the'nexus to leave is an act of ingratitude, or cruelty, or suicide,or m~rder. First steps have to be takenstill within the phan-tasy,before it can be apperceived as such. Herein is the,riskof,defeat and madness. " " ,So~e 'psychotics' look on psychoanalysis as a relativelyslfe place to tell someone what they really think. They are,, prepared to play at being a patient: and even to keep ul1 mecharade by pqying the analyst, providing he does Ino~ '.cur~:them. They are even prepared to pretend to be cured if Itw~llook bad for him if he .is having a run of people who don t, .:seem to be getting better. ,'"Not 'an unreasonable contract. '

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R.D.Laing, Phantasy and Communication