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One of the endorsements on the jacket cover of Death Anxiety aptly describes Robert Langs as ‘an esteemed maverick’. I have long been an admirer of Langs's uncompromising pursuit of his disconcerting clinical observations and ensuing theories—and still remember the sense of shock, disorientation and illumination on reading his book The Listening Process over twenty years ago. Langs's message can be overwhelming in its implications for understanding human communication, both in the consulting-room and in life in general—and that is the point. Human beings have, according to Langs, evolved a conscious mind which is protected from the frightening perceptions available to the unconscious emotion-processing mind, precisely because these are overwhelming.
Langs believes that the unconscious emotion-processing mind is developmentally and phylogenetically primary. This system accurately perceives the raw and primitive emotional intentions of others as well as those of the self. In order to deal with the emotional overload of this primary system, there evolved the conscious system which maintains substantial defences against disturbing emotional perceptions. A common observation is that borderline and psychotic patients, whose defences are less stable, are more inclined sometimes to perceive consciously the unconscious harmful intentions of others. Langs's view of the clinical process reverses the more traditional emphasis upon the patient's transferential displacements from other (childhood) figures onto the therapist; instead he draws attention to the ubiquitous tendency for patients to displace onto figures outside therapy their frightening perceptions of, and reactions to, the therapist's remarks and behaviours. The unconscious emotion-processing system appears to be exquisitely attuned to boundary and frame deviations—Langs points out that the maintenance of boundaries is fundamental to life at all levels. Such deviations may be consciously welcomed, whilst unconsciously