Portrait of the Psychiatrist as a Young Man: the Early Writing and Works of R.D. Laing, 1927-1960

Portrait of the Psychiatrist as a Young Man: the Early Writing and Works of R.D. Laing, 1927-1960 . Allan Beveridge. 350 pp., Oxford University Press, 2011. £39.99. ISBN 978-0-19-958357-7. Indexed.![Graphic][1] The series ‘International Perspectives in Philosphy and Psychiatry’ is the right place for this erudite review and commentary on the thinking, opinions and writings of R.D. Laing. The writings include previously unexplored clinical notes made by Laing, and his presentations to colleagues when a trainee psychiatrist as well as his diaries. Beveridge has not attempted a biography: others have written about the life of this larger-than-life figure of our times. Beveridge, too, is a psychiatrist, but this is not a psychobiography.As is well known, Laing was critical to the point of lampooning ‘establishment’ psychiatry. Turning up drunk at Edinburgh University Medical School's to give the 1967 ‘Annual British Medical Association … [1]: /embed/inline-graphic-1.gif