In the sixties, RD "Ronnie" Laing was the most famous psychiatrist in the world. He became the leading figure of the British anti-psychiatry movement and a public celebrity. Laing saw existentialism as the explanation for the problem of psychosis, leading to alienation. He was the charismatic spokesman for an era that wanted to hear that psychiatry was the punitive arm of the state and that...
This article describes the life and work of the psychiatrist Humphry Osmond who pursued a radical path as a psychiatrist while he remained within the establishment. To the public mind however, he is best known as the man who introduced Aldous Huxley to mescaline and coined the iconic word psychedelic. From an early stage of his career, Henry Osmond embraced new ideas to break the nexus in...