Depersonalization - Laing

"The individual may attempt to forestall these dangers by turning
the other into stone. Unfortunately, since one cannot be seen
by a stone, one becomes, in so far as others have been successfully
reduced to things in one's own eyes, the only person who can see
oneself. The process now swings in the reverse direction, culminating
in the longing to be rid of the deadening and intolerable selfawareness
so that the prospect of being a passive thing penetrated
and controlled by the other may come as a welcome relief. Within
such oscillation there is no position of peace."

"He is, therefore, driven compulsively to seek company, but never
allows himself to 'be himself in the presence of anyone else. He
avoids social anxiety by never really being with others. He never
quite says what he means or means what he says. The part he plays
is always not quite himself. He takes care to laugh when he thinks
a joke is not funny, and look bored when he is amused. He makes
friends with people he does not really like and is rather cool to
those with whom he would 'really' like to be friends. No one,
therefore, really knows him, or understands him. He can be himself
in safety only in isolation, albeit with a sense of emptiness and
unreality. With others, he plays an elaborate game of pretence and
equivocation. His social self is felt to be false and futile. What he
longs for most is the possibility of 'a moment of recognition', but
whenever this by chance occurs, when he has by accident 'given
himself away', he is covered in confusion and suffused with panic."

"The more he keeps his 'true self in hiding, concealed, unseen,
and the more he presents to others a false front, the more compulsive
this false presentation of himself becomes. He appears to be
extremely narcissistic and exhibitionistic. In fact he hates himself
and is terrified to reveal himself to others. Instead, he compulsively
exhibits what he regards as mere extraneous trappings to others;
he dresses ostentatiously, speaks loudly and insistently. He is constantly
drawing attention to himself, and at the same time drawing
attention away from his self. His behaviour is compulsive. All his
thoughts are occupied with being seen. His longing is to be known.
But this is also what is most dreaded.
Here the 'self has become an invisible transcendent entity,
known only to itself. The body in action is no longer the expression
of the self. The self is not actualized in and through the body. It is
distinct and dissociated. The implicit meaning of Mrs R.'s (p. 54)
actions was: ' I am only what other people regard me as being.'
James played on the opposite possibility. 'I am not what anyone
can see.' His apparent exhibitionism was, therefore, a way of
avoiding people discovering what or who he felt he really was."