K n o t s

R.D.  Laing (1927 - 1989) was a Scottish psychiatrist who wrote much on mental illness - often controversially -  specialising in psychosis.  
His collection of Knots appeared in 1969. 
In the Introduction he writes :

The patterns delineated here have not yet been classified by a Linnaeus of human bondage.

They are all, perhaps, strangely, familiar.   I have confined myself to laying out only some of those I actually have seen. Words that come to mind to name them are: knots, tangles, fankles, impasses, disjunctions, whirligogs, binds. I could have remained closer to the ‘raw’ data in which these patterns appear. I could have distilled them further towards an abstract logico-mathematical calculus. I hope they are not so schematized that one may not refer back to the very specific experiences from which they derive; yet that they are sufficiently independent of ‘content’, for one to divine the final formal elegance in these webs of maya.

April 1969

R.D.L.

Knot 1
They are playing a game. 
They are playing at not playing a game. 
If I show them I see they are, I shall break the rules and they will punish me.
I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game.

Knot  2
There must be something the matter with him
because he would not be acting as he does
unless there was;
therefore he is acting as he is
because there is something the matter with him
He does not think there is anything the matter with him
because one of the things that is
the matter with him
is that he does not think that there is anything
the matter with him
therefore,
we have to help him realize that,
the fact that he does not think there is anything
the matter with him
is one of the things that is
the matter with him
there is something the matter with him
because he thinks
there must be something the matter with us
for trying to help him to see
that there must be something the matter with him
to think that there is something the matter with us
for trying to help him to see that
we are helping him
to see that
we are not persecuting him
by helping him
to see we are not persecuting him
by helping him
to see that
he is refusing to see
that there is something the matter with
him
for not seing there is something the matter
with him
for not being grateful to us
for at least trying to help him
to see that there is something the matter with him
for not seeing that must be something the
matter with him
for not seeing that there must be something the
matter with him
for not seeing that there is something the matter with him
for not seeing that there is something the
matter with him
for not being grateful
that we never tried to make him  
feel grateful 


                                         


Sources
Quotation - www.oikos.org/knotsen1.htm
Image -  en.wikipedia.org