R.D. Laing and
Primary Ontological Insecurity
R.D. Laing’s 3 Forms of Anxiety
Anxiety has been described as an effect of our engagement with technology, but the concept it has its roots in the notion of sense of uncertainty about one’s future or life prospects that often goes hand in hand with modern life. In an enlightening comment on the meaning of “existence” as used in the context of existential psychology, Hendrick Ruitenbeek describes the state as follows:
Existential philosophy is rooted in the basic, literal meaning of the word existence, which is ex-istere, to emerge or stand out. Existence as emergence typifies the person in a state of becoming. Consequently, the emphasis is placed on the dynamic side of man coming into being. If a person has a strong sense of his identity, of the permanency of things, and of an integral selfhood, he will be secure. As soon as man experiences non-being, however, he is at once beset by the anxieties and insecurities which accompany the state of non-being.1
It might be said, in summary, that this kind of existential anxiety emerges when the coming-into-being of an individual is beset with the prospect of non-being in a way that poses, or is felt to pose, a deep threat to one’s being. A “threat to one’s being” may be understood in terms of one’s identity, one’s place in the world, a sense of existing-as that orders one’s self concept and gives one’s existence meaning, stability, and continuity. Events like having to change careers, economic insecurity, falling into debt, or uncertainty about the future after a traumatic event can all lead to symptoms associated with anxiety, which are often accompanied by stress. Psychology Today describes anxiety as the most common mental health disorder and states that it will affect one third of adults at some point in their lives.2 R.D. Laing was, along with Harry Stack Sullivan, one of the earlier theorists who approached the phenomenon anxiety by moving away from Freudian models that emphasized pyscho-sexual developmental stages.
In Laing’s case, he made use of the tools of existential analysis to describe anxiety as “ontological insecurity,” a state he describes as follows:
The individual in the ordinary circumstances of living may feel more unreal than real; in a literal sense, more dead than alive; precariously differentiated from the rest of the world, so that his identity and autonomy are always in question. He may lack the experience of his own continuity. He may not possess an overriding sense of his own personal consistency or cohesiveness. He may feel more insubstantial than substantial, and unable to assume that the stuff he is made of is genuine, good, and valuable.3
As the quotation shows, Laing was devoted to describing and understanding the lived experience of his patients as such and working to understand their causes and remedies in a direct manner. In Laing’s hands, existential analysis was a way to bring the lived experiences of individuals more fully and immediately into the scope of treatment.4 Alfried Längle, a practitioner of existential analysis and logotherapy in Vienna describes existential analysis as “a phenomenological and person-oriented psychotherapy, its aim being to bring the person to make (mentally and emotionally) free experiences, to induce authentic decisions and to bring about a truly responsible way of dealing with life and the world,”5 The description owes much to the influence of Martin Heidegger, who also influenced Laing. Essentially, existential analysis is a form of “talking cure” that tries to understand the causes of mental illness without recourse to the Freudian unconscious, taking the central difficulties of the patient, as much as possible, to be just what they reveal themselves to be.6 In the case of anxiety, for example, ontological insecurity is the core difficulty.
Ontological Insecurity
In his article, “Ontological Insecurity,” Laing provides three basic cases of its occurrence: engulfment, implosion, and petrification or depersonalization. In each case, anxiety is a feeling of the precariousness of one’s autonomy that underlies a kind of insecurity that triggers it.
- In the case of engulfment, Laing writes, “The individual is experiences himself as a man who is only saving himself from drowning by the most constant, strenuous, desperate activity.”7 In the case of human relationships, It is the lack of a firm sense of one’s own autonomy that makes them difficult. “Engulfment is felt as a risk in being understood (thus grasped, comprehended), in being loved, or even simply in being seen.”8
- Implosion is characterized in terms of an “impingement” of the world upon the individual. The individual feels a sense of emptiness of identity and nothingness that leads to both a longing to be “filled” and a repulsion toward it, since he is that emptiness. Thus, contact with reality carries with it the threat of an obliteration of one’s self–the very self that wants to be filled, given meaning and purpose–that is seeking to preserve itself as such.
- Petrification and Depersonalization can be understood more straightforwardly as a dread of being depersonalized, of becoming a thing or an “it,” or of being depersonalized. Laing writes, “if one experiences the other as a free agent, one is open to the possibility of experiencing oneself as an object of his experience and thereby of feeling one’s own subjectivity drained away. One is threatened with the possibility of becoming no more than a thing in the world of the other, without any life for oneself, without any being for oneself.”9 Thus, a kind of dilemma emerges: if one experiences the other as a autonomous person, the possibility of one’s own depersonalization emerges. Therefore, a defense against the perceived threat to one’s autonomy is to depersonalize the other, to treat them as a thing or as an “it” in relation to oneself. What cannot be sustained is a genuine person-to-person relationship.
Autonomy and Dependency
It might be said that in each case the road to autonomy is barred by feelings of dread that emerge in the company of others. A kind of catch-22 emerges: the need for recognition, a basic human need, requires an other; at the same time one’s own feelings of dread and need for ontological security suggest that the other is to be avoided. Sometimes these conflicting needs can arrange themselves as extremes that Laing describes as a tension between merging and isolating oneself. Merging can be felt as an impulse to lose oneself in an other that can sometimes be experienced by the other as a kind of parasitism or vampirism. In such a case, a dependency emerges: the other is felt as necessary to sustain one’s sense of self; one cannot exist alone without the other; the removal or loss of the other is felt as a threat to one’s own sense of self, of one’s own existence in a sense. As Laing writes, “The capacity to experience oneself as autonomous means that one has really come to realize that one is a separate person from someone else.”10 Isolating oneself may be a response to exactly this felt tendency to merge with an other. Laing cites a case where a certain “James” took his own self-imposed isolation as a point of pride despite a “progressive impoverishment” of one’s experience of life.11
Social Factors and Alienation
On reflection, it is possible to see not only how the uncertainties of the modern world, but especially the economic system that has emerged in the last few centuries might play a role in the development of such conditions. The need for autonomy and recognition runs up against the conditions of industrialized and post-industrialized labor that has its primary emphasis on the development of techniques that contribute to productivity rather than the development of the human person. Indeed, the development of the human person is lost in the shuffle of higher priorities-of the need to be profitable to sustain livelihoods and the need to find gainful employment, driving men and women to pursue careers that offer little in the way of creativity and real autonomy.
Underlying such conditions is the experience of alienation from oneself, others, and from a meaningful sense in which one’s labor serves to build up the human person. The classic case of the medieval artisan is worth reviewing as a point of contrast. The artisan has a way of being related to his or her work that is, in its very essence, creative in an originative sense. “Productivity” and “creativity” are one because the final product is bound up with the origination of productive activity. The material before the laborer is not merely something to be mastered and manipulated, but brought to a higher state through the laborer’s creative activity. One’s sense of individuality and purpose may be developed and heightened by one’s own creativity.
Perhaps a way to bring greater authenticity and autonomy into today’s labor is by adopting an attitude of ownership towards one’s work. One can choose to “own” one’s own labor in a sense that involves setting one’s own goals and applying one’s own values to one’s work. This may even be a necessary psychological strategy in many cases; in others, it may simply be best to find another form of employment. However one chooses to make one’s way toward a more authentic mode of life, awareness of a call to authenticity may be the first step. The second and third may require more labor on the basis of that very foundation of authentic relatedness to oneself and toward the future, but the reward, a dawning sense of greater autonomy will be the reward.
R.D. Laing’s The Divided Self may be accessed here: The Divided Self (An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness) (curezone.org)
References
- Ruitenbeeck, Hendrik. “Some Aspects of the Encounter of Psychoanalysis and Existential Philosophy.” Psychoanalysis and Existential Philosophy, edited by Hendrik M. Ruitenbeek, New York, E.P. Dutton & Co., 1962, xi.
- Quoted from page xi of the Introduction to Psychoanalysis and Existential Philosophy, edited with an introduction by Henrik Ruitenbeek (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co. 1962).
- Psychology Today. “The Causes of Anxiety.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, 2021, www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/anxiety/the-causes-anxiety.
- Laing, R.D. “Ontological Insecurity.” Psychoanalysis and Existential Philosophy, edited by Hendrik M. Ruitenbeek, New York, E.P. Dutton & Co., 1962, 62-63.
- Längle, Alfried. “Existential Analysis: The Search for an Approval of Life.” GLE International, 2017.
- Laing, R.D. “Ontological Insecurity.” Psychoanalysis and Existential Philosophy, edited by Hendrik M. Ruitenbeek, New York, E.P. Dutton & Co., 1962, 64.
- Laing, R.D. “Ontological Insecurity.” Psychoanalysis and Existential Philosophy, edited by Hendrik M. Ruitenbeek, New York, E.P. Dutton & Co., 1962, 47.
- Laing, R.D. “Ontological Insecurity.” Psychoanalysis and Existential Philosophy, edited by Hendrik M. Ruitenbeek, New York, E.P. Dutton & Co., 1962, 47.
- Laing, R.D. “Ontological Insecurity.” Psychoanalysis and Existential Philosophy, edited by Hendrik M. Ruitenbeek, New York, E.P. Dutton & Co., 1962, 51.
- Laing, R.D. “Ontological Insecurity.” Psychoanalysis and Existential Philosophy, edited by Hendrik M. Ruitenbeek, New York, E.P. Dutton & Co., 1962, 58.
- Laing, R.D. “Ontological Insecurity.” Psychoanalysis and Existential Philosophy, edited by Hendrik M. Ruitenbeek, New York, E.P. Dutton & Co., 1962, 59.
