The book comprises two parts – the first a collection of seven articles previously published between 1962 and 1965,[1] the second a free-flowing quasi-autobiographical piece of poetry and prose.

The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise was inspired in part by Laing’s extensive experimentation with LSD;[2] but also owes a debt to authors such as the anthropologist Gregory Bateson and the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

[3] Laing examines the nature of human experience from a phenomenological point of view, as well as the possibilities for psychotherapy in an existentially distorted world.

[4][5] He presents psychosis as "a psychedelic voyage of discovery in which the boundaries of perception were widened, and consciousness expanded".

[7] The Politics of Experience is Laing's best-known book,[4] its literary influence being especially apparent in Doris Lessing's novel, Briefing for a Descent into Hell (1971).