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R. D. Laing—loquacious eccentric or credible psychiatrist? Daniel Burston’s new biography paints a decidedly positive picture of the man renowned for bringing sufferers back to childhood and then forward again to adulthood. Burston argues that Laing’s complex and contradictory personality both fuelled his genius and was the cause of his downfall. The Wing of Madness (Harvard University Press, $35, ISBN 0 674 95358 4) pieces together the factors that catapulted Laing to global fame, from his first book, The Divided Self, to his bizarre experiments with psychotic patients at Kingsley Hall.