R.D. Laing was Britain's most famous psychoanlayst and a hugely contentious figure. His ambition to make madness intelligible was reached through unorthodox means and despite being a gifted professional, he was sneered at by the establishment. In this biography, John Clay traces Laing's colourful life from his childhood in Glasgow to the heights of fame in the 1960s and assesses the influence his ideas had on the future of psychiatry.