Knots by R. D. Laing.
ISBN 0-394-43211-8
As I read it this is a book about common psychological
problems, presented as a series of patterns. Here is the text of the introduction:
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- The patterns delineated here have not yet been classified by a Linnaeus of human bondage. They are all, perhaps, strangely familiar. In these pages 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 formal elegance in these webs of maya.
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- -- RDL, April 1969
Here is the first pattern:
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.
Is it just a coincidence that knots means nuts in Dutch?
CategoryBook
Knots Book