* Under person, the Oxford English Dictionary gives eight variants: a part played in a drama, or in life; an individual human being; the living body of a human being; the actual self of a human being; a human being or body corporate or corporation with rights or duties recognized in law; theologically applied, the three modes of the Divine Being in the Godhead; grammatically, each of the three classes of pronouns and corresponding distinctions in verbs denoting the person speaking, i.e. in the first, second, third person respectively, and so on; zoologically, each individual of a compound or colonial organism – a zooid. As we are concerned here with human beings, our two most relevant variants are person as persona, mask, part being played; and person as actual self.

* See R. D. Laing, The Self and Others (London: Tavistock Publications, 1961; Chicago: Quadrangle Press, 1962) especially Part I.

* Erving Goffman; Encounters: Two Studies in the Sociology of Interaction (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1961) page 41.

* For developments of my theory of transpersonal defences, see R. D. Laing, H. Phillipson and A. R. Lee, Interpersonal Perception: A Theory and a Method of Research (London: Tavistock Publications, 1966).

† R. D. Laing, ‘Mystification, Confusion and Conflict’ in Intensive Family Therapy, edited by Ivan Bszobrmenyi-Nagy and James L. Framo (New York: Harper & Row, 1965).

* The Journals of Jean Cocteau, translated by Wallace Fowlie (Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1964).