Psychiatrists have always known that a troubled man is his own worst enemy.Now, in language that is literary rather than professional, British Psychoanalyst R.D. Laing has documented what he calls "our violation of ourselves." In Knots (Pantheon; $3.95), a slim volume of verselike forms, he depicts man in bondage to himself, caught in the "webs of maya," or illusion, that he has unwittingly spun.
What are the webs made of? Of guilt, Laing seems to say—unnecessary, irrational guilt, perhaps resulting from fantasied childhood "wrongs" and from tortuous, circular reasoning about causes and effects. When a parent is angry, a child is sure...
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