The Meaningful Encounter
LAING, R.D., H. PHILLIPSON, and A.R. LEE. Interpersonal Perception: A Theory and a Method of Research. New York: Springer Publishing Company. 1966.
8vo. Original yellow cloth with black lettering to spine and front board, with original yellow dust jacket printed in black; pp. [x], 179, [1], with fold out IPM chart; extremities very lightly rubbed, a few small marks and short edge tears to jacket, spine slightly sunned; a near-fine copy overall.
First edition, inscribed by Laing “To Mike / With all wishes / from Ronnie / March 1969” to the front free endpaper.
R.D. Laing remains one of the most controversial figures in modern psychiatry, renowned and reviled for his efforts – as he wrote in the preface to The Divided Self (1960) – “to make madness, and the process of going mad, comprehensible”. His commitment to understanding psychosis through human relationships rather than clinical abstraction won him admiration from the 1960s counterculture and scorn from much of the psychiatric establishment.
Interpersonal Perception: A Theory and a Method of Research explores the experiences, perceptions, and actions that arise when two people engage in a meaningful encounter. While much of the study focuses on the marital relationship, it also extends to other dyadic interactions and broader "we / they" dynamics. A meticulous and methodologically distinctive investigation, it stands as one of the more unusual and underrated contributions to Laing’s provocative body of work.
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