In Self and Others, R. D. Laing examines how people participate in one another’s identities. Recognition, misunderstanding, dependence and pretence become events between people, with consequences for how each experiences themselves. The book extends his account of a divided self into a detailed study of relationships.
What the book sets out to do
First published in 1961, the book appeared in a substantially revised second edition in 1969. Laing’s later preface describes the revision as extensive while maintaining the original direction: to understand experience and behaviour together, and to describe personal relationships in terms appropriate to persons. This guide uses the revised edition, with its printed pagination. [1]
The first-edition preface places the work in research on interaction, particularly within marriages and families, undertaken at the Tavistock Institute and Tavistock Clinic. It also acknowledges psychoanalytic influences and research into communication and perception. Laing’s concern with interpersonal life developed through engagement with these fields; the book is not a simple rejection of everything psychoanalytic. [1]
The two parts distinguish modes of interpersonal experience from forms of interpersonal action. The first considers phantasy, communication, pretence and the different perspectives within a relationship. The second examines complementary identity, confirmation, collusion, false positions, attributions and injunctions. The distinction helps the reader ask both what a situation is like for someone and what people are doing to one another. [1]
Why another person’s perspective matters
For Laing, an account of a person becomes distorted when the others in their life are reduced to scenery. Those others also perceive, interpret and act. A person responds to what someone says, but also to what they think that person means, how they think they are being seen, and what response they believe is expected. These perspectives can diverge substantially. [1]
The relational emphasis is explicit:
No one acts or experiences in a vacuum.
R. D. Laing — Self and Others (second edition), p. 66 [1]
Consider an invented example. A colleague offers to check every piece of your work. They understand this as generous support; you experience it as a judgement that you cannot be trusted. You refuse; they experience your refusal as hostility. The same exchange now contains several different accounts of what happened. Describing either person alone as “helpful” or “difficult” misses the relationship through which those descriptions acquired their force.
This does not make every interpretation equally accurate. It means that an explanation needs to distinguish observable actions from the meanings each participant gives them. The observer’s interpretation is another perspective to examine, rather than a privileged shortcut into everyone’s private experience.
Complementary identity
Some identities require another person who occupies a corresponding place: a teacher needs someone to teach, and a helper needs someone to help. Laing calls attention to the ways another person fulfils or completes an identity. He also distinguishes his use of complementarity from the more specific communication-theory contrast between complementary and symmetrical relationships. [1]
The difficulty appears when an identity becomes dependent on keeping somebody else in a fixed position. In the invented workplace example, support can become restrictive if the helper cannot tolerate the colleague’s growing competence. The relevant question is whether the relationship can accommodate change. Mutual dependence alone does not establish deception or pathology.
Confirmation is more than agreement
Laing draws on Martin Buber when discussing confirmation: the recognition of another person through a response that engages with what they actually express. Confirmation can be partial and can occur through words, gestures or practical acts. A response can recognise the significance of someone’s statement while disagreeing with it. Conversely, a pleasant response can avoid the person and their concern entirely. [1]
Recognition and agreement are consequently different questions:
A partially confirmatory response need not be in agreement, or gratifying, or satisfying.
R. D. Laing — Self and Others (second edition), p. 82 [1]
For example, “I understand that you want to leave, although I want you to stay” recognises a stated intention. “You always say that when you’re tired” may divert the conversation away from whether the person means what they say. These are illustrative examples, not quotations from Laing. Their significance depends on context, history and what follows; one sentence is insufficient to characterise a whole relationship.
This distinction connects Self and Others with Laing’s later accounts of mystification and invalidation. It also prevents a common misunderstanding: recognising someone as a person does not require endorsing every assertion they make.
Collusion and the maintenance of appearances
Laing uses collusion for a relationship organised around mutual self-deception. Participants sustain appearances that support each other’s preferred identities, without necessarily recognising what they are doing. He explicitly distinguishes this from a situation in which someone is predominantly the passive victim of manipulation, while acknowledging that the distinction can be difficult to establish in practice. [1]
The emphasis on mutual participation must therefore be handled carefully. It is not a reason to assume equal power, equal freedom or equal responsibility. An account that calls every constrained response “collusion” would obscure the differences that Laing himself tries to keep in view.
How to read its clinical claims
The book moves between descriptions of interaction and stronger interpretations of distress and psychosis. Those arguments require separate assessment. A recognisable account of disconfirmation does not by itself establish why a particular person became ill. Laing’s clinical narratives should be read as his interpretations of particular situations, with attention to the evidence he supplies and the alternatives he leaves unexplored. [1]
Its continuing value lies in the precision of the questions it makes available. Whose experience is being recognised? What identity must each person maintain? Can someone disagree without losing their place in the relationship? Read alongside The Divided Self and The Politics of the Family, it provides a bridge between Laing’s descriptions of inner division and his analysis of interpersonal life.
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References and source notes
- Laing, R. D. (1969). Self and Others. Revised second edition. Pantheon Books.Cited: preface to the second edition, pp. ix–x; preface to the first edition, p. xi; contents; chapter 6, pp. 65–66; p. 66; chapter 6, pp. 66–67, including the footnote; chapter 7, pp. 81–83; p. 82; chapter 8, pp. 90–93; chapter 7, pp. 83–84.