R. D. Laing revisited

Abstract

In Scotland's National Portrait Gallery, there hangs the only portrait of a 20th century Scottish psychiatrist to have been commissioned by this pantheon to the country's great and good. The subject of the painting is, of course, R. D. Laing, who was not only Scotland's most famous psychiatrist, but, for a brief period in the 1960s and early 1970s, the most famous psychiatrist in the world. He was the world's first media psychiatrist, and his books sold in millions and were translated into more than 20 languages.