Son of RD Laing - psychiatrist who blamed madness on poor parenting - found dead in a tent beside an empty vodka bottle

The son of Sixties cult psychiatrist RD Laing, who championed the use of LSD and claimed families create madness, has been found dead in a tent on a Mediterranean island.

An empty vodka bottle and a quantity of drugs were found at the feet of the badly- decomposed body of 40-year-old Adam Laing.

Spanish police have yet to establish the exact circumstances of Mr Laing's death. But his half-brother said yesterday his sibling had died after 'a wild night gone wrong' on the tiny island of Formentera, near Ibiza.

His maverick father, a heavy drinker who regularly took LSD with his patients, was an icon of the 1960s counter-culture movement.

The Glasgow-born doctor argued that insanity was a perfectly understandable reaction to the madness of society and famously linked psychosis to bad parenting  -  while fathering ten children with four women.

Adam Laing, whose mother was a German graphic designer, was found on Tuesday. It is thought his body had lain in the tent for at least a week.

His half-brother Adrian, a London barrister who wrote a biography of their father, said: 'It is a terrible shock to us all, we all loved him dearly.

'Adam was a chip off the old block, he was a free spirit and very much like our father.

'We know relatively little at the moment but it seems as though it was a wild night gone wrong. Adam's mother has flown out to Spain to find out more.'

Spanish authorities are waiting for the results of a post mortem examination but said one possibility was that Mr Laing, who had never married and had no children, had mixed drink with drugs. Mr Laing was prieducated but he dropped out of school to sail yachts across the Atlantic as a skipper for hire.

'He crossed the Atlantic 11 times. He was an adventurer like my father  -  they were very close,' said his brother.

RD Laing believed psychosis was caused by bad parenting

Mr Laing had been living on the island for several years.

His brother said: 'I understand he met a lady over there who had a family and he was helping them to renovate their home but from what I can establish that relationship broke down fairly recently.

'I'm convinced Adam did not take his own life because there was no suicide note.

'I spoke to him not long ago and he was bubbly and in good spirits. He was full of plans.'

Ronald David Laing was born in 1927 and studied medicine at Glasgow University.

In 1960, after setting up a private practice at Wimpole Street in London, he published his first book The Divided Self and began to experiment with drugs, especially LSD.

By the mid-Sixties Laing was regularly appearing on radio and television preaching against the 'medicalisationof insanity. He regarded society-as crazy and argued that psychosis was a legitimate response to the surrounding madness.

At the height of his fame in the 1960s he wrote a bestseller called The Bird of Paradise, but despite his success he became cynical and turned to alcohol.

In 1987 he was forced to resign from the medical register of the General Medical Council.

He died in August 1989 of a heart attack while playing tennis in St Tropez.