Often described as part of the "antipsychiatry" movement, Laing struggled to see things in terms of existentialism, emphasising the difference between "being" or "being in this world" and being alive. "An issue essential to an existential analysis of action is to what extent and in what ways the agent is disclosed or concealed...in and through action." Being in the existentialist sense means being an object for others, and having others as objects, in other words carrying a model in our heads of all the significant others in our lives. This model provided the motivation for many of our thoughts and actions, and without it we "cease to be" in a very real sense.