Laing’s concept of complementary identity describes how another person helps fulfil or sustain who we are. A friend needs someone with whom to be a friend; a teacher needs someone to teach. In Self and Others, Laing asks how this ordinary interdependence can support a relationship—and how it can become restrictive when one person requires the other to remain a particular kind of person.
An identity takes shape in a relationship
Chapter 6 begins with a methodological objection. An account of someone’s life becomes misleading when the other people in it are treated as objects rather than as people with experiences and intentions of their own. A relationship contains several centres of action. Each participant responds to the others and contributes to the situation the others experience. [1]
Laing gives complementarity a particular meaning in this chapter:
By complementarity I denote that function of personal relations whereby the other fulfils or completes self.
R. D. Laing — Self and Others (second edition), p. 66 [1]
Complementarity names the function through which another person fulfils or completes an aspect of the self. This can concern gestures, feelings, needs, roles and identities. A question requires a response, an offer needs a possible recipient, and an identity such as parent or partner includes a relation to someone else. The concept concerns the structure of personal life, rather than an unusual condition affecting only distressed people. [1]
Laing explicitly distinguishes this usage from the narrower communication-theory contrast between complementary and symmetrical relationships. His concern is not simply whether two people occupy unequal or equal positions. People can complement one another through friendship, rivalry, care or a struggle over authority. [1]
Recognition gives an action its place
We can act towards someone without our action having the meaning we intended for them. An offer understood by its giver as kindness may be received as interference. The recipient’s response matters because the giver cannot independently determine both sides of the relationship. Laing connects this dependence with the need to make a meaningful difference to another person. [1]
Consider an invented example of two musicians. Each listens and responds to the other, sometimes leading and sometimes following. Their musical identities develop through this exchange. Complementarity here allows initiative and change. If one insists that the other can only accompany, however, a flexible relationship becomes a demand that someone remain in an assigned place.
The example separates interdependence from compulsion. Depending on another person does not itself make a relationship deceptive or harmful. The question is whether each person can respond as a person, including by refusing, changing direction or bringing something unexpected.
When another person must remain the complement
Laing describes Stephen’s mother as requiring the position of giver while leaving her son only the position of recipient. On his interpretation, declining what she offers disturbs more than a practical arrangement: it challenges the identity she maintains through giving. Her son’s independent response becomes difficult to recognise on its own terms. [1]
Completion by another person is therefore not automatically a healthy or mutually satisfying arrangement:
Such complementarity can be genuine or false.
R. D. Laing — Self and Others (second edition), p. 67 [1]
This is a specific clinical interpretation, not a general explanation of parental generosity. Its conceptual force lies in the restriction on possible responses. If gratitude confirms the giver’s identity while refusal is always treated as ingratitude, the recipient has little room to explain what they actually need.
The same question can be asked of many roles. Can a teacher recognise that a pupil has outgrown their instruction? Can a friend hear disagreement without treating it as disloyalty? These are applications of the concept, rather than cases reported by Laing. Their answers depend on the particular relationship and its distribution of freedom and power.
Several identities, several points of view
Laing distinguishes how someone experiences themselves, the identities others attribute to them, and what they believe those others think. These accounts need not coincide. Nor does one relationship contain the whole person. Different commitments and expectations can pull in incompatible directions. [1]
He also discusses a pivotal identity: a central understanding around which a person organises perceptions, intentions and projects. An event that unsettles it can change the meaning of many other things at once. The proposal helps explain why apparently limited news may have far-reaching personal significance, although its significance must be established through the person’s account rather than assumed by an observer. [1]
In the account of John, Laing examines a father’s conditional recognition of his son and the son’s later attempts to assert an identity independently. His conclusion resists two absolute positions: neither another person’s verdict nor one’s own proclamation can settle everything about who one is. This is Laing’s reading of a particular history, not a general causal theory of the crisis he describes. [1]
Complementarity, confirmation and collusion
These terms address different features of a relationship. Complementarity concerns how one person fulfils a position in another’s life. Confirmation concerns recognising the other through one’s response. Collusion concerns mutual self-deception sustained through a relationship. Laing allows genuine as well as false complementarity; the concepts should therefore not be treated as synonyms. [1]
The distinction makes complementary identity useful beyond a vocabulary of dysfunction. Relationships enable capacities and ways of being that no isolated person could establish alone. Difficulty emerges when the required identity becomes too narrow to accommodate the actual person. The test of an interpretation is what it helps us understand about that relationship, including the responses it permits and the ones it excludes.
For the wider argument, see Self and Others explained and attributions and injunctions.
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References and source notes
- Laing, R. D. (1969). Self and Others. Revised second edition. Pantheon Books.Cited: chapter 6, pp. 65–66; p. 66; chapter 6, pp. 66–67; chapter 6, p. 66, footnote; chapter 6, pp. 67–68; chapter 6, p. 67; p. 67; chapter 6, pp. 69–71; chapter 6, p. 76; chapter 6, pp. 78–80; chapter 6, p. 67; chapter 8, pp. 90–93.