R.D. Laing

Ronald David Laing was a British psychologist of the Tavistock Institute, who played a role in the MI6/CIA controlled counterculture of the 60's (the New Age Church). He was educated at the University of Glasgow. He founded a Socratic club with Bertrand Russell as president (family Russell, earls of Tavistock).

He worked at the British Army Psychiatric Unit at Netley. It was used in WW1 and for the 1966 BBC version of Alice in Wonderland of Jonathan Miller (Cambridge Apostles with Bertrand Russell, son of Tavistock psychologist Emanuel Miller) with Michael Redgrave (Information Research Department), Peter Sellers and music of Ravi Shankar (Esalen).

During the 50's he also worked at Gartnavel Royal Hospital, where electroshock therapy was used, and where Ewen Cameron (also University of Glasgow, MK Ultra) had worked in the 20's.

From 1956 he started working at the Tavistock Institute with John Bowlby, DW Winnicott, Charles Rycroft (Maudsley).

He worked for CIA front Esalen Institute. In 1965 he founded the Philadelphia Association with David Cooper, Joseph Berke (Columbia University), Clancy Sigal (Columbia Pictures). Berke received LSD from MI6 agent Michael Hollingshead.

He conducted an anti-psychiatry experiment/publicity stunt at Kingsley Hall, associated with Fabian Society puppet Mahatmi Gandhi, similar to the group therapy experiment of Bion at Northfield. Gandhi was visited at Kingsley Hall by Charlie Chaplin and Fabian GB Shaw.

Axel Jensen, friend of Leonard Cohen, was his assistant and treated by Laing. His son Axel Joachim had LSD induced mental problems.

 

He becomes a spokesperson of the anti psychiatry movement with the concept of 'everyone is a bit crazy', the  'everyone here is insane' phrase of the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland, the Apollo-Dionysus (rational-madness) contrast of the Laurel Canyon counterculture scene.

He was a friend of fake anti-establishment actitivist Heathcote Williams (The Magic Circle), who had a relationship with model Jean Shrimpton and played in Revelation (2001) with Terence Stamp who also had a relationship with Shrimpton.

In 1967 he was present at Joseph Berke's Dialectics of Liberation conference with Herbert Marcuse (CIA, Frankfurt School), Allen Ginsberg (CIA, Haight Ashbury, Greenwich Village), Angela Davis (marxist Black Panther Party), Stokely Carmichael and Michael X.

In 1968 he appeared in short film Cain's Film (child of Lucifer), with Beatnik poets and heroin addicts William Burroughs (treated at Bellevue) and Alexander Trocchi (gay agenda, Olympia Press).

In 1975 One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest was released with Jack Nicholson and Danny DeVito about electroshock therapy, T-group sensitivity training of Kurt Lewin, anti- psychatry approach of Laing, MK Ultra experiments with Ken Kesey and Robert Hunter (The Grateful Dead).

In 1982 the movie Gandhi was released filmed at Kingsley Hall, directed by Richard Attenborough (brother of BBC presentator David Attenborough, educated at the LSE of the Fabian Society) with Ben Kingsley as Mahatma Gandhi, Candice Bergen, Daniel Day-Lewis.

In 2002 the movie Frida was released with Salma Hayek and Edward Norton as Nelson Rockefeller, about art as therapy for trauma, directed by Julie Taymor (Across the Universe with songs of The Beatles and The Tempest with Helen Mirren, Russell Brand), based on a screenplay by Laing's colleague Clancy Sigal. It was filmed at Kingsley Hall and produced by Lionsgate films of Frank Giustra (foundation of jesuit Bill Clinton).

In 2007 he appeared in BBC documentary The Trap with John Forbes Nash (game theory, played by Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind, scenes with electroshock therapy), David Rosenhan (Rosenhan pseudo-patient experiment at St Elizabeths hospital in 1973).

In 2017 the movie Mad to Be Normal was released with David Tennant (Dr Who) as Laing during his Kingsley Hall experiment and Elizabeth Moss (Mad Men, influencing social opinions and taste, Scientology, known for anti-psychiatry stance).

He influenced Gilles Deleuze and Loren Mosher (Stanford, Harvard, National Institute for Mental Health), who worked at Tavistock from 1966 to 1967.

born 10/7/1928, date Henry Wallace, Heinrich Himmler, Vladimir Putin, Simon Cowell.

died 8/23/1989, date River Phoenix.

the 60's

History of Mind Control

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