In Self and Others, the anti-psychiatrist Ronald Laing tells the story of a schizophrenic woman to whom a nurse gave a cup of tea. "This is the first time in my life that anyone has ever given me a cup of tea," the patient told her.
Since this scene took place in Great Britain where drinking tea is a daily ritual, it seemed impossible that the patient was telling the truth. But she was. Laing explains that her extreme sensitivity about being recognized or not recognized as a human being, as a human body, allowed her to express a simple and profound truth: "It is not so easy for one person to give another a cup of tea. If a lady gives me a cup of tea, she might be showing off her teapot, or her tea-set; she might be trying to put me in a good mood in order to get something out of me; she may be trying to get me to like her; she may be wanting me as an ally for her own purposes against others. She might pour tea from a teapot into a cup and shove out her hand with cup and saucer in it, whereupon I am expected to grab them within the two seconds before they will become a dead weight. The action could be a mechanical one in which there is no recognition of me in it. A cup of tea could be handed me with me being given a cup of tea."*
To be there, behind the cup of tea . . . to be there, in our body, for ourself and for others . . . to live in our body . . . . [I]t is essential for us to feel within our bodies who we are, that we are. Be a body first of all. Be a body at last. Be.
from The Body Has Its Reasons, by Therese Bertherat and Carol Bernstein (1989)
* R.D. Laing, Self and Others (1961)