TRANSCRIPT
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I worked for a number of years in mental hospitals, and I came to realize that this was not a way to treat people in distress. They needed something completely different. I was criticized by my, uh, workmates for not doing my job. They said, “This Mr. Foss is, uh, talking too much with the patients.” I thought that was a compliment, but it was criticism, really. I was sitting down with patients and walking around with them and talking with them, taking them seriously. That was not my job. No, I was to clean the floors and make coffee and, uh, keep everyone under control.
Do you remember the first time you met R.D. Laing?
Yeah, I do. Uh, that was in London in, uh, 1965. And when I returned in 19, uh, 75, I managed to get him on the phone. At first, he had no time for me, but I, I didn’t give up. And, uh, so he, uh, finally agreed to meet me at 8:00 in the morning for an hour, uh, meeting in his home.
What was your impression of him when you first met him?
Oh, he was, I mean, I had seen him on film, but, uh, he was a much more accommodating, uh, lively, expressive person than I had expected. And I think what, uh, broke the ice between us was that I told him that I had, uh, read a book he had written about Jean-Paul Sartre and his second main work, which was called “The Critique of Dialectical Reason.” He had met no one else who had read it. And when I started talking with him about it and showed him that, uh, I actually had read it and even to some extent, I suppose, understood.
And you read it in English?
In English, yeah. But, uh, he became very interested, and then he took me seriously, you know, because he saw, well, maybe there is something about this strange guy.
Anyway, so let me ask you this: seven months you lived in one of R.D. Laing’s houses, which was called Archway Community.
I lived there from October of ’76 till, uh, May of, uh, ’77, till the middle of the filming, which I was carrying on at that time.
And you had a bedroom there?
Yeah, yeah. So you wake up and had your breakfast with people and stuff like that. We all shared everything together. You just came down, and, uh, sometimes, uh, everyone made their breakfast themselves. Sometimes, depending on who was in the kitchen at the time, you struck a conversation with someone—just ordinary life.
But what struck me after a while was that those people who lived in the houses, which were by ordinary psychiatry labeled as mentally ill, they were not threatened by the other residents of the house. But they sometimes felt very much threatened when they were being visited by mental health professionals. Those who lived in the houses could see immediately if you put on, uh, a, uh, pretense about anything. If you were trying to impress them with your professional knowledge and understanding, uh, they would just take you down, you know, and, uh, ask you, “Well, okay, you, you are a psychologist, okay, you are a psychiatrist, but who are you?”
But you were filming in those houses?
Oh yeah, sure, sure. And that didn’t threaten people, ’cause it’s going to be pretty to have a camera in their face.
No, not when they got to know me. But, you know, at first, I felt that I was not one of them because I could not hide the fact that I was there in order to make a film, right? But at the same time, I wanted to make a film about them because I believed in what Laing and they were doing, right? So that was a kind of dilemma for a long time.
And it was only a crisis which happened in the first house I lived in where we had to deal with a very dangerous situation together. And I was there a participant like all the others. And after that, uh, that crisis, uh, was over, we were sitting down, everyone, and, uh, discussing what had happened. And then, without anything tangible having happened at all, I just knew that I was inside.
You asked me what is most significant. I guess it was that after a while, it was completely irrelevant to put the label on anyone for thinking or feeling or acting in a way, uh, that would perhaps, uh, for an untrained eye, look pretty crazy. You had to enter into the personal space of people you didn’t understand. You were a part of their personal space.
They never used the term psychosis when somebody which we today would call psychotic had lived out that kind of, uh, experience. They said that this person is spaced out. “Is spaced out” means he is now including you in his personal space. And you have to be very aware of that. Like, his space is now out. He’s, it is outside himself. He includes you and everybody else in the household in his personal space. He experiences you.
I’m simplifying now, I know.
Yeah, but it’s pretty darn good. I’m, I’m into what you’re saying. Go on.
Yeah, yeah. And so, like, his personal boundaries have extended beyond what would normally be considered his personal. Whatever you did had a personal meaning to him or her because you were within his, uh, his, uh, universe of meaning. The consequence of that was that if you did something within his personal space, which he or she, uh, could see because they were very sensitive, could see was false or was somehow, uh, you putting up defenses, you pretending something, they could see through you at once.
I didn’t realize it in the beginning that I also came there with my own agenda and with a lot of defenses. And they had to, uh, break through those defenses, and I had to allow them to do that. And that is always, that is always a painful process. Always.
When was the last time you saw your film?
Thirty years ago. It’s, uh, I know the Philadelphia Association has a, uh, copy of it, and the other copy is, uh, in the vaults of the Swedish Film Institute. They financed the film.
Do you want to see it again?
Yeah, and I shall. Uh, it’s good that you ask me that because I must really pull myself up by my bootstraps and, uh, get that film. I shouldn’t, uh, be concerned about whether it is, uh, uh, technically as good as I today would have liked it to be.
Is that a fear of yours? That’s not good enough?
It was earlier, but now I’m, now I don’t care. Now I don’t care. I, I know what I did.
But Laing supported your film?
Yeah, that was, and that was, that’s a very good question. I guess he must have trusted me. For what reason? I mean, it wasn’t just that you read all his books. Lots of people—
No, no, no, no, no. He saw that I was getting along with, uh, the people in Porton Road Community. I was getting along very well with them.
I have no idea where we’re going, by the way. I, I have not looked at the environment. I don’t know where we are. We shall look at the sun or something.
So let me ask you this.
Yeah, uh, would you say you became friends with Laing in a way?
Yes, but to the extent that anyone became a friend with him because he was, he was, in his own way, he was, he could be very distant, very enigmatic, um, except in a therapy situation where he was totally open to you. And, uh, that’s what, uh, people who were in therapy with him told me, that, uh, together with Laing, they felt completely, completely safe. And they could say whatever they wanted, no matter how personal it was, and he would just, uh, listen to you, and he noticed everything you said. He had such a presence in that context.
Is it okay if I ask a really random question?
Anything.
If R.D. Laing were listening to what you’re saying right now, what would you say to him?
I would say that, uh, Mr. Laing, you are the most extraordinary person I have met in my whole life, and nobody has, uh, on a personal level, impacted me and transformed me more than you did. That’s what I really mean.
And how did he transform you?
What would you say to him?
By actually daring to confront things within myself that I didn’t usually want to see, and that it was not, it, there was nothing threatening about it. That I would open up things in myself that I didn’t know about, and that was, that’s why I call his therapy liberating. In not therapy, in the usual sense.
And he wasn’t even your therapist, right? Or was he?
Pardon, was he your therapist?
No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I was not in therapy. The households were my therapists.
Anything else you’d want to say to him?
Well, rest in peace, my dear friend.
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