The facts of life: An essay in feelings, facts, and fantasy by R Laing

Laing was a psychiatrist from Scotland who wrote extensively about mental disease, particularly psychosis. Laing's views on the origins and treatment of major mental illness, which were informed by existential philosophy, went against psychiatric orthodoxy at the time by accepting the reported sentiments of the individual patient or client as genuine representations of lived experience rather than just as symptoms of a distinct or underlying condition. Laing went to Glasgow University to study medicine. In 1989, he passed away.