Mad to be Normal (Previously titled ‘Metanoia’) is the story of controversial Scottish psychiatrist, R.D. Laing and the infamous anti-psychiatry experiment he ran at Kingsley Hall- a medication-free sanctuary which made headlines around the world. During the 1960s and 1970s Laing was an international celebrity. In Santa Monica, 4,000 people turned out to see him perform a lecture, a week after Bob Dylan had pulled in the same number. A radio journalist confidently referred to him as the “white Martin Luther King.” His books topped student reading lists the world over, as his language excited and enthralled them: “a child born today stands a 10 times greater chance of being admitted to a mental hospital than to a university….perhaps it is our very way of educating them that is driving them mad… [and]…”so- called ‘normal men’ have in the last 50 years killed perhaps 100 million of their fellow normal men”. It was opinions like these which turned the psychiatric establishment against him.
Director: Robert Mullan
Producer: Charlotte Arden
Executive Producer: Peter Dunphy
Starring:
DAVID TENNANT
ELISABETH MOSS
GABRIEL BYRNE
MICHAEL GAMBON
DAVID BAMBER
