Episode 05: Fierce Compassion - Mystification, and the Living Lineage of R.D. Laing

psychophobia* podcast · May 19, 2026 · 2h 1m · transcript

psychophobia* podcast

'“Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves." — Etty Hillesum

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In a Rome Bookstore, Nita stumbled on R.D. Laing’s The Divided Self in her early twenties. She never quite recovered. What followed wasn’t a career path - it was a calling. Drawn to London in the early 1970s, Nita Gage entered the orbit of Laing’s radical communities, living inside households where people emerging from psychiatric institutions were met not with control, but with curiosity and compassion. Those years dismantled everything she thought she knew…