Ronald David Laing (1927-1989) trained and qualified as a doctor, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. R.D. Laing published 15 books which sold worldwide in their millions, the most celebrated of which are: The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness; Sanity, Madness and the Family, The Politics of Experience and the Bird of Paradise and Knots. The Divided Self is required reading on many psychology courses and to this day the life and works of R. D. Laing influence writers, poets, musicians, philosophers, psychologists, therapists, film makers and those involved with the day-to-day challenges of coping and dealing with mental distress. R.D. Laing was a controversial figure to the Establishment and a hero to the counter-culture movement of the 1960s which viewed R. D. Laing as a pioneering humanitarian whose works displayed an authentic existential understanding of psychosis.

(By kind permission of the Laing Estate).

David Graham Cooper (1931-1986) was a South African-born psychiatrist and theorist who was prominent in the anti-psychiatry movement.