SOURCE: "The Frontiers of Being Human," in Saturday Review, Vol. L, No. 20, May 20, 1967, pp. 37-9.

May was an internationally known American psychiatrist, minister, and educator who wrote many books on psychology for lay readers. Regarded as the father of existential psychotherapy in the United States, May eschewed many of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic principals and focused on anxiety and its impact on human behavior. In the following favorable review of The Politics of Experience, he applauds Laing's challenge to conventional psychiatric theories and contends that, by emphasizing the importance of life experiences, Laing "humanizes" schizophrenia and takes "important steps toward a science of interpersonal relationship."

Arguing in this book that psychotherapy does not need to become a pseudo-esoteric cult, Ronald Laing writes:

We must continue to struggle through our confusion, to insist on being human. Existence is a flame which constantly melts and recasts our theories…. We hope to...