CALENDAR OF EVENTS

A curated listing of international critical psychology conferences and events. Email us at [email protected] if you’d like to suggest an event.

Mad To Be Normal: The West Coast Premiere


February 4, 2018

Gnosis Retreat Center and the California Institute of Integral Studies proudly present The United States West Coast Premiere of Mad To Be Normal. All proceeds go to Gnosis Retreat Center and support sanctuary and community for people with altered and distressing experiences of reality.

Mad To Be Normal is the story of controversial Scottish psychiatrist, R.D. Laing and the infamous anti-psychiatry experiment he ran at Kingsley Hall- a medication-free sanctuary which made headlines around the world.

During the 1960s and 1970s Laing was an international celebrity. In Santa Monica, 4,000 people turned out to see him perform a lecture, a week after Bob Dylan had pulled in the same number. A radio journalist confidently referred to him as the “white Martin Luther King.”

His books topped student reading lists the world over, as his language excited and enthralled them: “a child born today stands a 10 times greater chance of being admitted to a mental hospital than to a university….perhaps it is our very way of educating them that is driving them mad… [and]…”so- called ‘normal men’ have in the last 50 years killed perhaps 100 million of their fellow normal men”. It was opinions like these which turned the psychiatric establishment against him.

This Premiere, best of all, will host a panel of friends of R.D. Laing; people who lived in the houses started by Laing, worked with him, and knew him intimately.

This premiere is proudly presented by Gnosis Retreat Center and sponsored by the California Institute of Integral Studies PsyD department.

All proceeds from this event go to support Gnosis Retreat Center, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving the legacy of R.D. Laing. To learn more, visit www.GnosisRetreatCenter.org or follow us on Facebook!

You can use the code TheRDLaingDiscount to receive a discount.

Mad To Be Normal: The West Coast Premiere

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