Living a mentally healthy and happy life begins with how secure you feel in your own being and existence, this is one of the claims R.D. Laing makes in his book The Divided Self. Laing’s book on existence and self-identity goes into the effects of not being secure in your own identity has on the mind. He goes through multiple cases and different anxieties and personal dilemmas that can develop in people who are not ontologically secure, and how they all relate to each the rand existence.
To venture through R.D Laing’s thoughts on Ontological security and insecurity it is best to begin where he does, at the beginning. Laing associates the beginning with birth. When we are brought into this world new, Laing argues we are at our most feeling …show more content…
Laing splits the ways we see ourselves and our bodies into two categories, embodiment and unembodiment (66). Laing describes the Embodied person as being connected to their physical being in their body. They believe that who they are is connected to their body, it begins with the birth of their body and they will end with its death. Embodied people are chained to its bodies desires and feeling. The individual has a point by which he can base his entire existence (67-69). In contrast the unembodied person experiences things differently from the embodied person. The person sees their self as being completely separate from their body. Unembodiment may be derived form a feeling of ontological insecurity, in the way they don’t feel that their self is related to the physical world and therefore they have a hard time defining a self(69).They separate who they are from the world as they see the world as false and their physical bodies a false-self concealing their true identity. Rather than participate genuinely in the world they overthink/analyzing things until it’s almost as if their playing a part in a play (74).An unembodied person has trouble seeing their actions as extensions of who they are, their actions feel impersonal and
To venture through R.D Laing’s thoughts on Ontological security and insecurity it is best to begin where he does, at the beginning. Laing associates the beginning with birth. When we are brought into this world new, Laing argues we are at our most feeling …show more content…
Laing splits the ways we see ourselves and our bodies into two categories, embodiment and unembodiment (66). Laing describes the Embodied person as being connected to their physical being in their body. They believe that who they are is connected to their body, it begins with the birth of their body and they will end with its death. Embodied people are chained to its bodies desires and feeling. The individual has a point by which he can base his entire existence (67-69). In contrast the unembodied person experiences things differently from the embodied person. The person sees their self as being completely separate from their body. Unembodiment may be derived form a feeling of ontological insecurity, in the way they don’t feel that their self is related to the physical world and therefore they have a hard time defining a self(69).They separate who they are from the world as they see the world as false and their physical bodies a false-self concealing their true identity. Rather than participate genuinely in the world they overthink/analyzing things until it’s almost as if their playing a part in a play (74).An unembodied person has trouble seeing their actions as extensions of who they are, their actions feel impersonal and