Her philosophical approach to therapy has become a global phenomenon, and inspired a new book. Could a session with her change Sophie McBain\u2019s life?<\/p>\n
The existential therapist Emmy van Deurzen moved to the UK inspired by RD Laing, the Scottish anti-psychiatrist who said insanity is a \u201cperfectly rational adjustment to an insane world\u201d. It was 1977 and Van Deurzen, who is Dutch and had studied philosophy and psychology in France, found work with the Arbours Association in London, a\u00a0therapeutic community based on Laing\u2019s ideas, in which people in crisis, psychiatrists and therapists lived together\u00a0as equals. It was a rude\u00a0awakening.<\/p>\n
Arbours aimed to create space for people to \u201cexplore their madness\u201d. \u201cNow that was a very interesting idea,\u201d Van Duerzen says, \u201cbut in practice it meant that people self-medicated, with alcohol and pot, and it was not a happy situation.\u201d The residents were often very depressed or psychotic, and it was common to be woken up at night because someone was seeing things or had become suicidal. Van Deurzen came to believe that anti-psychiatry had \u201clost courage\u201d: it had proposed a different way of thinking about madness, but having released people from asylums and taken them off neuroleptic drugs, it was \u201ckind of leaving them to it\u201d. \u201cAnd this is what I realised wasn\u2019t good enough,\u201d she says. When people are experiencing a mental health crisis, they need help to make sense of what has happened to them, and to find their way to healing. \u201cFrom that moment on I just knew: nobody\u2019s doing this. I\u2019m going to have to do it myself,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
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