Abstract
This chapter addresses nascent discourse around psychedelics from the 1960s. It connects notions of play to earlier European and the popularity of Vedanta with thinkers like Aldous Huxley. It gives a more detailed discussion of the framing of the term “psychedelic.” As well as an account of professional psychological discourse on the uses of psychedelics during the 1960s. It shows a blend of secular humanist optimism native to the United States in the discourse.
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Notes
- 1.
Ram Dass, Remember Be Here Now, New Mexico: Lama Foundation, 1971, 126.
- 2.
Phillip Goldberg, American Veda, New York: Harmony Press, 2010, 67.
- 3.
Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy, New York: Meridian Books, 1962, vii.
- 4.
Ibid., vi.
- 5.
Ibid., iv.
- 6.
R. A. Durr, Poetic Vision and the Psychedelic Experience , New York: Syracuse University Press, 1970, 195.
- 7.
Malden Grange Bishop, The Discovery of Love: A Psychedelic Experience with LSD 25. Torquil, 1963, 8.
- 8.
C. G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990), 60.
- 9.
Antonin Artaud, The Theater and Its Double (New York: Grove Press, 1958), 77.
- 10.
David Riesman, Nathan Glazer and Reuel Denney, The Lonely Crowd (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 6.
- 11.
Martin A. Lee & Bruce Shlain. Acid Dreams: The Complete Social history of LSD : The CIA , the Sixties, and Beyond. New York: Grove, 1985, 20.
- 12.
Ibid., 27.
- 13.
Norman Ohler, Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2017), 211.
- 14.
Ibid., 24.
- 15.
Aldous Huxley, Moksha: Classic Writings on Psychedelics and the Visionary Experience. Ed. Michael Horowitz and Cynthia Palmer. Rochester: Park Street P, 1977, 107.
- 16.
Ibid., 29–30.
- 17.
Ibid., 30.
- 18.
Ibid.
- 19.
Aldous Huxley, “Drugs that Shape Men’s Minds.” The Doors of Perception. New York: HarperCollins, 2009, 9.
- 20.
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, New York: Dover, 2002, 387.
- 21.
Aldous Huxley, “Drugs that Shape Men’s Minds.” The Doors of Perception. New York: HarperCollins, 2009, 10.
- 22.
United States Government, The Project MKULTRA Compendium, ed. Stephen Foster. Morrisville: Lulu, 2009, 11–12.
- 23.
Ibid., 32–33.
- 24.
Martin A. Lee & Bruce Shlain. Acid Dreams: The Complete Social history of LSD : The CIA , the Sixties, and Beyond. New York: Grove, 1985, 49.
- 25.
Ibid., 56.
- 26.
Donald S. Lopez Jr., Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
- 27.
Leary Timothy, Ralph Metzner, and Richard Alpert. The Psychedelic Experience : A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. New York: Citadel, 1964, 11.
- 28.
Henry K. Beecher, “Psychotomimetic Drugs,” Journal of Chronic Diseases 8.2 (1958): 254.
- 29.
Ibid., 280.
- 30.
Charles Hayes, Tripping: An Anthology of True-Life Psychedelic Adventures. New York: Penguin Compass, 2000, 9.
- 31.
C. G. Costello, “Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD 25) and Behaviour Therapy.” Behaviour Research and Therapy 2.2–4 (1964): 119.
- 32.
Ibid.
- 33.
Ibid., 128.
- 34.
Jerome Levine and Arnold M. Ludwig. “The LSD Controversy.” Comprehensive Psychiatry 5.5 (1964): 316.
- 35.
Jourard , Sidney M. “Some Psychological Aspects of Privacy.” Law and Contemporary Problems 31.2 (1966): 313.
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Green, R.K. (2019). Theorizing the Psychedelic Experience. In: A Transatlantic Political Theology of Psychedelic Aesthetics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15318-2_5
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