OEDIPUS COMPLEX As a psychiatrist, I run into a major difficulty at the outset; how can I go straight to the patients if the words at my disposal keep the patient at a distance from me? How can one demonstrate the general human relevance and significance of the patient's condition if the words one has to use are specially designed to isolate and circumscribe the meaning of the patient's life to a particular clinical entity? It seems extraordinary that whereas the physical and biological sciences of it-processes have generally won the day against tendencies to personalise the world of things or to read human intentions into the animal world, an authentic science of persons has hardly got started by reason of the inveterate tendency to depersonalise or reify persons. R.D. Laing, The Divided Self 1960