RD Laing, Feminism and the Politics of Birth and Re-birth

RD Laing's phenomenological approach to madness influenced early second wave feminism, since it buttressed the feminist critique of the nuclear family and exposed the abuses of institutional psychiatry in policing gender roles. However, feminist perceptions of Laing's 'gender blindnes...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inAustralian feminist studies Vol. 34; no. 100; pp. 248 - 262
Main Author Tonkin, Maggie
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Abingdon Routledge 03.04.2019
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects
Blindness
Childbirth & labor
Denial
Emma Tennant
existential psychiatry
Feminism
Gender
Gender roles
History of ideas
Medicalization
Nuclear family
Politics
politics of birth
Psychiatry
Psychoanalysis
RD Laing
re-birthing
unscripted experience
Women
Womens history
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Summary:RD Laing's phenomenological approach to madness influenced early second wave feminism, since it buttressed the feminist critique of the nuclear family and exposed the abuses of institutional psychiatry in policing gender roles. However, feminist perceptions of Laing's 'gender blindness', as exemplified by Elaine Showalter's The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture, and the feminist turn towards Freudian/Lacanian psychoanalysis, soon moderated enthusiasm for Laing. In the 1970s, Laing became increasingly incensed about the medicalisation of childbirth, writing an unpublished manuscript, The Politics of Birth, and promoting the practice of therapeutic 're-birthing'. The latter practice is relentlessly satirised in Emma Tennant's speculative novel The Crack (1978). Drawing on Laing's unpublished papers, I show that even as feminists were disavowing, critiquing and satirising Laing, he was embracing feminist ideas. I argue that Laing's emergent feminist sympathies underpin his critique of contemporaneous birthing practices and that there is a common thread linking his critique of psychiatric and obstetric abuses as being premised on a denial of the value of 'unscripted' human experience. This article thus argues for a more nuanced understanding of feminism's own intellectual history and a reappraisal of Laing vis-a-vis feminism, which would contribute to the broader re-evaluation of Laing's work currently underway.
ISSN:0816-4649
1465-3303
DOI:10.1080/08164649.2019.1570817