“I see you, and you see me. I experience you, and you experience me. I see your behaviour. You see my behaviour. But I do not and never have and never will see your experience of me. Just as you cannot "see" my experience of you.”
Source: The Politics of Experience (1967), Ch. 1 : Experience as evidence
Context: I see you, and you see me. I experience you, and you experience me. I see your behaviour. You see my behaviour. But I do not and never have and never will see your experience of me. Just as you cannot "see" my experience of you. My experience of you is not "inside" me. It is simply you, as I experience you. And I do not experience you as inside me. Similarly, I take it that you do not experience me as inside you.
"My experience of you" is just another form of words for "you-as-l-experience-you", and "your experience of me" equals "me-as-you-experience-me". Your experience of me is not inside you and my experience of you is not inside me, but your experience of me is invisible to me and my experience of you is invisible to you.
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Ronald David Laing30
Scottish psychiatrist and author 1927–1989Related quotes
Peter Sellers (1925–1980) British film actor, comedian and singer
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“[…] You see, you are an optimist and live on hope. I am a pessimist and live on experience.”
Malcolm Bradbury (1932–2000) English author and academic
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Jane Ellen Harrison (1850–1928) British classical scholar, linguist and feminist
Nothing could be more profoundly false. History does not repeat itself. Evolution forbids. When you are my age, you will not know what I know, but something quite different.<br><br> p. 18 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015011434878;view=1up;seq=30 <br class="br">Alpha and omega (1915)
“We can see other people's behaviour, but not their experience.”
Ronald David Laing book The Politics of Experience
Ch. 1 : Experience as evidence http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/en/laing.htm <br class="br">The Politics of Experience (1967) <br class="br">Context: Even facts become fictions without adequate ways of seeing "the facts". We do not need theories so much as the experience that is the source of the theory. We are not satisfied with faith, in the sense of an implausible hypothesis irrationally held: we demand to experience the "evidence".<br>We can see other people's behaviour, but not their experience. This has led some people to insist that psychology has nothing to do with the other person's experience, but only with his behaviour.<br>The other person's behaviour is an experience of mine. My behaviour is an experience of the other. The task of social phenomenology is to relate my experience of the other's behaviour to the other's experience of my behaviour. Its study is the relation between experience and experience: its true field is inter-experience.
Ronald David Laing book The Politics of Experience
Source: The Politics of Experience (1967), Ch. 1 : Experience as evidence
Context: I cannot experience your experience. You cannot experience my experience. We are both invisible men. All men are invisible to one another. Experience used to be called The Soul. Experience as invisibility of man to man is at the same time more evident than anything. Only experience is evident. Experience is the only evidence. Psychology is the logos of experience. Psychology is the structure of the evidence, and hence psychology is the science of sciences.
Lionel Richie (1949) American singer-songwriter, musician, record producer and actor
Hello.
Song lyrics, Can't Slow Down (1983)
“Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.”
Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince
Variant trans: Everybody sees what you seem, but few know what thou art.
Ch. 18
Variant: Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are
Source: The Prince (1513)
Context: Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are, and those few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them.