Wally Dixon wrote on 12 December: > Perhaps as a pleasant end-of-the semester thread, and perhaps as an > opportunity to let each of you beam with family pride, I would be very > curious to know whether any of you out there in TIPS land have traced your > roots to psychology notables and would care to share it with the list. > Would it be inappropriate to solicit your academic family of origin?
May I suggest an alternative thread in which TIPSters deny any familial relationship with psychology notables. In my case, please be aware that I have no relationship with Aaron Esterson, co-author, with R. D. Laing, of *Sanity, Madness, and the Family: Families of Schizophrenics* (1964), and author of *The Leaves of Spring: The Dialectics of Madness” (1970). (The latter is a detailed study of one of the families discussed in *Sanity, Madness, and the Family*.) TIPSters will be aware that Laing and Esterson argued that “schizophrenic” symptomatology could be understood as “socially intelligible”, resulting from “the family’s mystifying pattern of interaction”. My own view, from a reading of both books, is that for the most part the authors read their preconceived theories, such as that of the “double-bind”, into the taped recordings of the conversations that they had with family members. It is therefore revealing to note that in *The Wings of Madness: The Life and Work of R. D. Laing*, by Daniel Burston, Laing is quoted as saying that “interviewing the normal families was a more gruelling experience than speaking with the families of schizophrenics. They were just so dead and stifling and, at the same time, it was very hard to describe what the deadening was. So it was difficult to say what the difference between the two was except that in the normal family nobody cracked up.” (Simon, 1983, p. 26). ‘Nuff said! Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.human-nature.com/esterson/index.html http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=10 Reference Simon, R. (1983). “Still Laing after all these years”. Family Therapy Networker, vol. 7, no. 3. --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
