In Laing's opinion, "what is called a psychotic episode in one person, can often be understood as a crisis of a peculiar kind in the inter-experience of the nexus.
"[3] Often described as part of the "antipsychiatry" movement, Laing strived to see things in terms of existentialism, emphasising the difference between "being" or "being in this world" and being alive.
[8] Laing argued that a closed nexus would use its energy so as to unconsciously block out any threats to its identity, keeping all interchanges at a boring, repetitive level.
"[12] Further light was shed on such interactions by Gregory Bateson's concept of the double bind - "a situation in which contradictory demands are being put upon a child (or patient) in such a way that there is no avenue of escape or challenge".
The untenable position, the 'can't win' double-bind, the situation of checkmate, is by definition not obvious to the protagonists...The man at the bottom of the heap may be being crushed and suffocated to death without anyone noticing, much less intending it".
[18] In much of his writing Laing assumed an uncorrupted natural state for the human mind, and tended to condemn society for causing mental illness, in rather (early) Marxist terms.
Psychoanalysis emphasises childhood experience, and left-over feelings, though Freud did point to the role of society in his later works like Civilization and its Discontents.