These ideas are fundamentally opposed, firstly, to the Lacanian concept of lack which emphasises the fact that we have never been and can never be whole. The mirror phase acts as a moment of alienation, in which the subject ‘misrecognises’ his/her own wholeness. The infant ‘still trapped in his motor impotence and nursling dependence’ (Lacan 2006 [1949]: 76) is transfixed by his reflection in the mirror which suggests a greater level of integration than is actually the case. He is captured by the imaginary ‘ideal-I’ and this misrecognition fixes him for all time in an illusory or, as Lacan terms it, ‘fictional’ search for wholeness (Lacan 2006 [1949]: 76).
According to Lacan, not only are we destined to endlessly seek an illusory wholeness which will always elude us, we are also subject to the lack inherent in desire and to the ‘cut’ of the symbolic. Finally, with reference to Freud, we are always divided by the otherness of the unconscious, which definitively rules out the possibility of wholeness.
Indeed Laing’s position here seems closer to Carl Rogers’ person-centred approach than to a psychoanalytic view. Rogers, whose ideas are explained here by Brian Thorne, emphasises the ideal integration of man:
The person-centred therapist is constantly working with clients who have all but lost touch with the actualizing tendency within themselves and who have been surrounded by others who have no confidence in the innate capacity of human beings to move towards the fulfilment of their potential (Thorne 2002: 137).
Whilst this is not the vocabulary Laing uses, there are certainly familiar concepts at work here, including fulfilment of potential and a self-actualizing tendency in man.
Freud, on the other hand, insists on conflict being at the centre of our experience, conflict that will, in fact, never be fully resolved. Laplanche’s notion of therapy is that of a constant de-translation and re-translation of our own narratives, a process which never ceases and which cannot exhaust that which is enigmatic, that which eludes us, the confusion at the heart of experience; this translation always leaves a residue of unmetabolizable elements which form the unconscious.
To recap then, I believe three related aspects of Laingian theory have emerged. Firstly, there is the fundamental acknowledgement that man is radically alienated and divided in an alienating society. This is a grounding principle in which one might situate the aim of psychoanalysis. Unfortunately, Laing claims, traditional psychiatric and psychoanalytic approaches have exacerbated this alienation by pathologising the comprehensible state of madness; by embodying the alienating splits of inner//outer, mind//body and by treating the person as object. The solution Laing’s approach proposes is a therapeutic relationship which is a true meeting between persons, with the aim of re-integration and de-alienation.
This certainly does seem to be a more optimistic proposal than Freud’s aim of ‘turning neurosis into ordinary unhappiness’. Laing’s vision of a fully integrated man – even as a possibility – is at odds with the insolubility of the Freudian intra-psychic conflicts, as it is with Laplanche’s ceaseless de-translation and re-translation.