Word: lsd
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...editor of this anthology concludes his arguments for wider distribution of LSD with the statement, "No social authority can successfully arrogate unto itself the right to dictate and fix the levels of consciousness to which men might aspire... Die Gedanken sind frei." Later in the book Dan Wakefield notes, "It has been reported that a pound of LSD dropped into a city's water supply could produce a psychosis of the population that would last long enough for enemy troops to take over...
Almost every contributor to this book has his own optimistic theory about LSD's application. The book contains more answers than questions. Reading it one gets the disturbing picture of a lot of children playing with fire: Timothy Leary proposing psychedelic colonies, one researcher giving LSD to psychotics, another giving it to people approaching death. Psychologists play with philosophy and novelists toy with psychology...
Solomon's anthology covers two possible approaches to LSD. Timothy Leary, Alan Watts, and Aldous Huxley speak for visionary, mystical use of the drug. The medical contributors have made isolated experiments in the use of LSD in psychiatric therapy, both in a psychoanalytic framework and in group rehabilitation...
...which are neither self-evident nor even consistent. In various places he speaks of the goal of psychedelic therapy as "the freedom from helplessness...the religious experience...the love experience...expansion of consciousness, freedom of the brain from the mind ...survival and peace of mind." Leary explains that the LSD experience frees men from the egotistic frustration of cultural "games". "Anger and anxiety are irrelevant because you see your small game in the context of the great evolutionary game which no one can win and no one can lose...
...obvious question is whether it is necessary to take LSD to gain Leary's insights into culture. Leary's LSD sessions at the Concord state prison apparently helped some convicts to readjust. But this is a fairly specific rehabilitative use of the drug...