source: Mad to Be Normal

Mad, liberating 60's. Peace, love, sex, grass, time of hope for a different world, the hope long extinguished and barely remembered. Here comes Dr. Laing, the reformer, trying to change the cruelty of mental health treatment. Or to be precise the maltreatment. Treatment would presume decisions that benefit the patient, the maltreatment was perpetuated to make it easier on society to remove the suffering mental patients from public eye and concern. In this jerky, meandering flick Dr. Laing comes off as a troubled man who could have used some TLC himself. Sadly, we still don't know what to do with mental illness, apart from medicating. Fifty plus years later we are overdue for a new Dr. Laing, perhaps one with less personal baggage, thus harder to dismiss and remove.

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.

There is a scene in this movie where a Psychiatrist is being interviewed about electroconvulsive therapy, where he admits that they simply don't know why it works....but it does. (This statement that it does work in directly contradicted in the movie by someone who experienced it and stated that actually it stopped his recovery). The point is that the fact the practitioners openly say they don't know what it is they are doing is the single most important aspect of this movie. Unfortunately this element is simply not explored in anywhere near enough depth. Far more time is spent on the romantic relationship which develops with one of R D Laings fans. Its one thing trying to make people interested in a real life person on screen by focusing on his relationships, however that is not what he is known for. The other very important part of this movie which does not get enough time is around diagnosis, while lip service is paid to the idea that psychiatrists diagnose on the basis of "symptoms they cannot see", this aspect of mental health is also only briefly mentioned. I feel that this was a wasted opportunity to bring up some real issues in mental health treatment that the public are unaware of and does not explore the harm which some treatments have on patients. Due to the focus on romantic relationships, overall the film seems to drag out and nothing is really learned about the idea of R D Laing in any real depth. Neither are the counter arguments to his ideas explored. If you have any experience of the mental health system, you may came away from this feeling frustrated that an opportunity to expose the shortcomings of mental health treatment in the UK has been missed. The sad part is that despite there being more years on the clock, psychiatry and mental health treatment has not really moved on. So the closing credits about the hospital experiment ending but "some" of his ideas still being around is another cop out. There is a great film to be made about the state of mental health treatment which critiques its current failings, but this isn't it.

When an excellent cast turn in strong performances - David Tennant, Elizabeth Moss and Gabriel Byrne are all outstanding in the lead roles - how can you end up with an unimpressive, unaffecting film? Can't be the subject matter - RD Laing was a fascinating, divisive, bold, brilliant, reckless public intellectual whose opinions and ideas about psychiatry and society challenged the established order of, well... everything. I'm sorry to say responsibility for this mediocre, somewhat messy film lies with writer/director Robert Mullan. The dialogue is often cliched, the scenes poorly constructed and the direction oddly distant and static. All of which makes for a rather uninvolving experience, which is a great pity given the talent at his disposal not to mention the compelling story there to be told. There's simply no real point of view to get hold of. Laing's work remains acutely controversial, genuinely reaching for something even he as a highly qualified practitioner with a highly original brain and skilled writer could not quite realise. There's an argument his deep insights were too far ahead of his time, but equally he might just have been so damaged, deluded and egocentric that he didn't care who or what got broken. Some of that is there in the film but despite the warm colour palette this exploration of a more interesting British counterpart to the likes of Timothy Leary and Arthur Janov fails to engage, and leaves you cold.

I couldn't get past the first 40 minutes. Even with beers. Ronald David Laing was a radical - and eminent - psychotherapist who believed that orthodox mental health treatment was equivalent to punishment, like prison, torture or mind control through drugs. A professional with his own demons, he knew of what he spoke and wrote. He wasn't a snake oil salesman and would be the first to say he might have been 'mad' himself. This film is the story of the psychotherapeutic community he set up in London where controlled LSD trips were part of the treatment. I use the term 'story' loosely. Unfortunately someone decided it should be a kind of fly-on-the-wall docu-drama, and it's a well dramatised series of scenes, but is a crashingly dull, infuriating film. The plot has no tent-poles, ie the point you start from and the point you expect to end up at with an arc inbetween. The only tension is through wondering, at length, which patient may decide to start waving a knife about. There are plenty to choose from, and really this does a bad disservice to the mentally ill, and Laing's legacy. The audience is put in the position of the yobbos smashing bottles and taunting the inmates at the doors of Kingsley Hall, and David Tennant does a Gorbals Doctor Who shtick, which doesn't work at all.

In the 60's a revolutionary treatment for mental illness was tried. A psychiatrist set up a place for mentally ill patients to live without medication or electric shock. They were left alone to freely act out their delusions & madness. Of course they weren't allowed to inflict harm on themselves or to each other. The doctor lived at the center with them. They each had their own room but were monitored 24/7 around the clock. If it appeared no progress was being made by letting them work through their stuff on their own LSD was offered. A couple of drops on their tongue would be administered but only with the patients permission. This movie tries to tell me that this was a neat-o experiment without any overwhelming problems but I'm sure in real life situations occurred that were not shown in the movie.

David Tennant as Dr. Liang being the protagonist in this movie has set a very unique example of treating psychological illness through simplistic means. This movie set in 1960s opposes orthodox approach of psychiatry then with that of unconventional means such as simply establishing a common ground of communication with the patient, paying attention to their behavioral patterns and many more to comprehend the root cause of their illness. They deserve the kind of attention that any so called "normal" person in a society is entitled to which I have come across in some of Dr. Jung's books. I would suggest to patiently watch this movie in order to grasp the underlying essence of this movie.

Having mental health issues myself I was super stoked to watch this film thinking it would be a moving and inspirational. Cutting edge stuff. No you don't see any such sessions. He lets his so called patients run round with blow torches. He helped NO ONE. Including his two failed relationships. He literally just smoked his way through A FILM THAT SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN MADE.

Set in the 1960's, the film centers on the rather revolutionary psychiatric treatments of the time conducted by Dr. R. D. Laing. David Tennant stars as Laing, who was strongly opposed to accepted treatments such as electroshock therapy and tranquilizers for mental illness ,believing more in non-drug (except for LSD) and more natural therapies. Most of Laing's work took place at Kingsley Hall, between 1965 to 1970 in East London. Elisabeth Moss co-stars here as Angie Wood, a graduate student at Columbia, who while attending one of Laing's lectures is completely taken in by his charismatic persona and they will soon begin a relationship. There's a most solid cast in the movie, including Gabriel Byrne and Michael Gambon. Unfortunately, the film itself despite its fine cast, became a real slog for me to stay with, with its very deliberate pacing and quite depressive tone. Also, for whatever reason I wasn't able to really connect with the characters as presented. Overall, I thought this drama had some quite interesting aspects to it, but I was not able to emotionally connect with the characters here , and combined with the other factors as mentioned, I can't say it was entertaining.