AMST 3100 The 1960s

AMST 3100 The 1960s The Psychedelic Movement Primary source is Jay Stevens, Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream, 1998

Spiritual Lag? • Jay Stevens argues that, in a sense, the hippies were an attempt to push evolution – to raise consciousness to new levels. • The psychedelic movement, of which hippies were a central element, was an attempt to restore spirituality and humanity to Western cultures that had become uprooted by the force of modernity. • Modernity: Social patterns resulting from industrialization, urbanization, rationalization, and other changes that have occurred over the last few centuries. • The argument is that the rapid shift toward modernity came at the expense of the environment and human spirituality - or humanity itself.

The Problem • Rapid industrialization and mass society have transformed and uprooted our spiritual roots. • The emphasis on materialism and consumerism detract us from our spiritual health. • The rise of weapons of mass destruction (particularly The Bomb), brought by modernity, suggest that the human race may be headed toward apocalypse unless we develop our spiritual health and connect with our humanity. • Einstein felt that in the dangerous nuclear age, we were like children playing with loaded weapons. We needed to grow - very quickly - if we were to avoid disaster.

Aldous HuxleyJuly 26, 1894 – November 22, 1963 • Writer of Brave New World (1932), a fictional novel featuring a dystopian culture where the masses were given “happy pills” to keep them content and passive while elites ran the world. This drug (soma) was used for escapism rather than growth. • Huxley wondered if in real life there might be a drug that could be used to create utopia, not dystopia. Such a drug would not be an escapist drug – it would be an engaging drug that facilitated our connections to humanity and life. • Huxley felt a sense of urgency in the need for social change and growth, given the events of World War II, the emergence of the Cold War, and the nuclear arms race that was so frightening.

The Crisis of Modernity • This sense of crisis led many thinkers to argue that we are doomed unless we find a way to speed up evolution, or to raise consciousness to a higher level. • This raised the question of whether we can consciously “evolve” ourselves. Hence, the interest in finding a key to unlock the doors of perception. • They asked: is there a door in the mind we can pass thru, and if so, does a key exist to unlock it? • These thinkers thought that perhaps LSD and other psychedelic drugs were the key to raising consciousness.

LSD • LSD was viewed as a “mind detergent” capable of washing away years of social programming. It was a tool to help push us up the evolutionary ladder. • By 1967, during the peak of the psychedelic movement, a countercultural momentum had developed in which the hippies began to see themselves as the true revolutionaries of the mind and spirit. • LSD was one of the sacred sacraments of this movement.

LSD • By 1967, LSD had been one of the most extensively studied chemicals in our society. • Yet despite this, there was no consensus about LSD. • It was linked to madness, yet also to curing madness. • It was linked to mystical experiences and profound insights, yet it merely chemically scrambled neurons. • Was it a source of enlightenment? Or was it just a way to get the neurons to malfunction?

LSD • From a spiritual perspective, the question was whether the psychedelic state of consciousness was an affirmation of the mystic’s argument that the kingdom of Nirvana is inside all of us, waiting to be discovered. • The history of LSD has a religious component, a scientific component, and a cultural component.

The Scientific Aspect of LSD • LSD is the product of scientific research. • In 1943 Albert Hofmann was searching for a new headache powder and revisited a drug he had synthesized in 1938 - LSD. This time he discovered (accidentally) that LSD was capable of producing fantastic hallucinations. • However, it was unclear what it could be used for. • Sandoz, the drug firm Hofmann worked for, then sent the LSD to psychiatrists seeking to get their feedback. • Could LSD help patients release repressed material? • The psychiatric testing of LSD had begun. It it arrived in the U.S. in 1949.

Post WWII Rise in Psychology • The post-war rise in psychology contributed to an interest in LSD. • Given what the Nazis had done during the war, researchers were greatly interested in the mind and human behavior. • Freudians especially were interested in the unconscious – in releasing the inner mind. They were attracted to mind drugs for this purpose. • Freudians treated the wealthy more than any other demographic. Consequently wealthy people would be among the first to take LSD.

Timothy Leary • By the mid-1950s scientists became interested in scientifically testing the effectiveness of traditional therapy – psychotherapy. • Timothy Leary was one of the first scientists involved. • Leary found that those receiving traditional therapy were no more likely to improve than the control group. • However, he found that where successful therapy had occurred, something else had occurred: these patients had experienced a “vitalizing transaction” – a moment of epiphany type of realization. • The key to these vitalizing transactions lay somewhere in the unconscious mind, according to Leary.

1950s Research of LSD • The 1950s research of LSD revealed that it made people extremely sensitive to nuance – it heightened awareness of other’s moods as well as heightening the moods of the subjects. • LSD was found to produce astonishing effects in both normal and crazy people. • A catatonic on acid would sometimes come out of their shell, only to return after the effects wore off. • LSD made some people become selfless, yet at other times they became egocentric. The selfless state was similar to the spiritual state called Nirvana.

Historical Backdrop • Historically, the use of mind drugs is associated with • 1. Pleasure, and/or • 2. Healing and spiritual enlightenment. • Psychedelic drugs are less associated with a third motivating factor for drug use – escapism. • The drugs that work best for escapism tend to dull rather than awaken or sharpen the mind. Drugs like alcohol, heroin, cocaine, barbiturates, etc., are typically used for • 1. Pleasure, and/or • 2. Escapism.

Historical Backdrop • The first scientific approach toward mind-altering drugs occurred in 1855, when these drugs began to be cataloged. • By the late 1800s, artists and intellectuals had discovered the potentials of peyote and magic mushrooms. • They used these psychedelic drugs for both pleasure and mind stimulation. • In the 1800’s Victorian culture, experiences of the body were viewed in a moralizing tone as immoral – as a threat to civilization and decency.

Historical Backdrop • The U.S. was particularly influenced by conservative mores, given its Christian and Victorian influences. • There was even a Prohibition Era between 1920-1933 that outlawed alcohol consumption (the 18th Amendment, later repealed by the 21st Amendment). • Consequently, the U.S. even today is unusually moralistic in its approach toward sex, drugs, rock’n’roll, and other pleasures of the body.

Historical Backdrop • Yet nearly all societies use mind-altering drugs of some kind. • One reason may be that the human mind is constantly dulled by the inflow of everyday data. Consequently the mind seeks out sensation in the way we use grit to sharpen a dull blade. • In other words, mind-altering drugs may be intrinsically appealing because they function to simulate new sensations that sharpen the brain.

Historical Backdrop • It took less than 30 years for peyote to pass from the hands of scientists to the hands of artists and intellectuals. • For LSD the period was even shorter. • Aldous Huxley was one of the artists/intellectuals who was an important catalyst for the spread of LSD.

Aldous Huxley • Fascinated by mind drugs. • Huxley was searching for an ideal drug which did not pollute the body the way alcohol does. • Huxley became interested in the scientific reports on the effects of psychedelic drugs and he sent a note to two of the key researchers – Humphrey Osmond and John Smythies. • Huxley wanted to try mescaline, and Osmond agreed. So in 1953 Osmond turned Huxley on.

Aldous Huxley • Huxley’s philosophical interests: • 1. The gap between rational technology and wisdom. • 2. Evolution (or the misapplication of evolution). • Particularly the dangers of engineering human nature with new technologies. See also the novel Frankenstein for this indictment. • 3. The failure of education to create the whole man. • 4. The increasing concentration of power in the form of Big Government and Big Business. • In Brave New World the all-powerful corporate state issued a mind-altering drug which induced euphoria. Here, the drug was used for diabolical purposes.

Aldous Huxley • Huxley was interested in a drug which could be used for enlightenment rather than entrapment. • He had dabbled in many forms of psychic awareness – chanting, meditation, hypnosis, and Eastern philosophy. What he discovered is that widely divergent mystical experiences had some core similarities: • They blended a physiological experience into the very structure of the mind to produce a moment of deep mystical revelation. • The physical sensation of dancing and chanting around a bonfire could serve as a catalyst toward achieving the mental state of selflessness where a person becomes “at one” with the universe. The physical and the mental are connected.

Aldous Huxley • By the 1950s, Huxley was considering psychedelic drugs as a tool to raise consciousness. • His first mescaline trip in 1953 excited him to the possibilities – he thought he may have found the key to the doors of perception. • Huxley wrote an essay titled after William Blake’s poem, “The Doors of Perception” which became a classic among later psychedelic drug users.

The Psychedelic Experience • The psychedelic experience transcends words. • Huxley likened the psychedelic experience to a journey or a “trip” where the perceiver sailed beyond the horizon. • Tripping is paradoxical. It is a social experience on the one hand, because of the heightened skill at nonverbal communication; yet no two people found themselves in the same part of this “other world.” Sometimes one felt distinctly alone. • Some people had powerful mystical experiences; others didn’t.

The Psychedelic Experience • Some trippers began to distinguish between a mere “visionary experience” and the more powerful “mystical experience.” • Both Huxley and Timothy Leary were interested in the mystical experience because of its transformational powers. • By 1956 Huxley was at the center of an emerging movement, part scientific and part religious/aesthetic. • This movement was spurred on by Al Hubbard (Captain Al), who turned Huxley on to acid in 1955.

The Psychedelic Experience • Al Hubbard was a flamboyant millionaire who had taken an interest in psychedelic drugs and had experienced a mystical vision. • Thereafter, he devoted his time to spreading the good word. By 1959, he had turned on 1700 people. • Hubbard was an excellent guide for acid trips. He emphasized the importance of set and setting on the trip. • He attended to the set of preconceptions, moods, etc of the tripper, along with the proper setting in which to make the trip most rewarding. Hubbard got people in the right mood and provided the right setting for a rewarding trip. • To Jay Stevens, he played the role of the ancient shaman who guides tribal members on their trips using techniques passed down thru time.

Which way to go? • While scientists studied LSD in the laboratory under careful scientific conditions, Hubbard used a more informal mystical approach to the acid trip. • Huxley opted for Hubbard’s approach. If the goal was to speed up human evolution and raise consciousness, Huxley concluded it was important to select the right mix of brilliant and influential people and turn them on informally. • This technique would hopefully cause a snowball throughout the culture. • After all, Huxley felt the human race didn’t have much time.

Emergence of an LSD Subculture • By 1956 LSD researchers had become an informal fraternity of trippers who got together and shared their stories. • They even began to have LSD parties among themselves. • LSD was beginning to take off, especially in California. • California provide the right cultural climate for acid because it was a “hip” place even in the 1950s. • Eventually the scientists shared acid with the artists and intellectuals, and by the early 1960s many famous people had tripped. • LSD became the fashionable party drug among the Hollywood elite.

A Short Cut to Wisdom? • Among the intellectuals, the debate over acid was whether it was indeed possible to mass produce the mystical experience. • To writers like Anais Nin, you couldn’t take a short cut to wisdom. • But to Huxley, humans did not have the luxury to ignore short cuts. • The world of the 1950s was already too close to the nightmarish dystopia of Brave New World. • Huxley did not promote the wholesale distribution of LSD. He was selective about who should be turned on. LSD was too powerful to give to just anybody. • Huxley was interested in turning on Beat artists particularly.

The CIA • While Al Hubbard was celebrating the mystical properties of psychedelic drugs like LSD, the CIA was looking for a drug they could use for mind control. • The Cold War drove both the Americans and Soviets toward diabolical methods of warfare, including chemical and psychological warfare. • The CIA needed a domestic supplier of LSD so they contracted with Sandoz for huge local supplies of the drug, which eventually contributed to LSD’s cheap and ready availability in the U.S. (LSD was not illegal until 1966).

The CIA Experiments • The CIA experiments with LSD were so bizarre they seem like science fiction. • Driving a car thru New York City and randomly dosing unsuspecting civilians. • Dosing unsuspecting soldiers and, in one experiment, faking that their plane was about to crash to see how they reacted. • These experiments on unsuspecting American citizens were not alarming to the U.S. Inspector General – after all, we were at war!

The Importance of Set and Setting • What the CIA, psychologists, and artists began to agree on was how crucial set and setting are in influencing the quality of the psychedelic experience.

What made LSD so attractive to the kids of the 1960s? • The kids of the 60s grew up with messages of rigid conformity. Any deviation from cultural norms was viewed as a sign of mental instability. • 1. This rigidity led kids to develop a fascination with the surreal superheroes found in comic books. • Plasticman, the Human Torch, Captain Marvel – they were all nonconformists. But they had started out as ordinary conformists until a chemical accident transformed them. • They affirmed the idea of chemically-induced evolution or transformation. This made comic book superheroes subversive.

What made LSD so attractive to the kids of the 1960s? • 2. Mad Magazine emerged during the 1950s and 60s to goof the adult world and encouraged an irreverent attitude toward authority. • 3. Elvis Presley and rock’n’roll bypassed rational thinking and conformity in favor of kinetic, emotionalized body music. • 4. Hollywood’s new antiheroes, like James Dean and Marlon Brando, were role models of teen alienation and rebellion. They were nonconformists. • 5. The Beatniks, bored with bland conformity, were gluttons for new and alternative experiences. The more intense the better. They were ripe for LSD and helped lead the way.

The Beats • Many of the Beatniks tripped. Beats sought the same state of selflessness that Huxley sought. • Beats like William Burroughs were concerned with shedding their social skin to explore their asocial self. • They felt that the socially-constructed self of Western culture was a conformist straightjacket. It was trapped by repressive societal mores. They advocated shedding the repressed social self for something freer. LSD liberated people by de-constructing the socially constructed self. • Beats viewed traveling as a means of not being held down by oppressive social structures. Tripping was a form of traveling. • California was the promised land – a place free from the stifling moralistic norms of the East Coast.

Neal Cassady • Jack Kerouac was a chronicler of the Beat culture, and he portrayed Neal Cassady as the closest thing to a genuine beatnik. • Cassady was different. He had charisma and spoke in long, flowing, intense rushes of words. Everyone liked him, he was full of life, and he lived in the moment. • Most importantly, Neal Cassady seemed to have no ego. He was as close to selfless as Kerouac had ever seen. • He was a role model for how to achieve Nirvana. • He was existentially free. • Kerouac’s On the Road was a tone poem to Jack Cassady (Dean Moriarty).

Allen Ginsberg • One of the leading Beats of the era was Allen Ginsberg. • His poem “Howl” became a classic among the emerging underground. • San Francisco was fast becoming the new Mecca. • Ginsberg took acid and became an immediate advocate of LSD. • He felt everyone should use it as a de-contamination tool.

The Emerging Counterculture • The Beats were “hip.” They excelled at producing existential vaudeville: theater experiences that were surreal. • The Beats loved absurdity. • In doing so, they were morphing into what would later be called hippies. • A distinguishing feature of the hippies was the presentation of the absurd self. • It was the emerging fashion to push things to their extreme, including all kinds of sexual and drug experimentation, and this became a hallmark of the 1960s counterculture.

Timothy Leary • Leary was a product of the 1950s backlash movement called humanistic psychology. • It was time to ask what made people healthy – not just what made them sick. • Leary’s humanism led him to have contempt for the Organization Man conformity of that era. • When he discovered psychedelic drugs for himself in 1960 he felt that he had discovered a tool to unleash the intuitive mind and to experience profound transformations. • And he couldn’t wait to share his discovery.

Timothy Leary • Leary experimented with psychedelic drugs at Harvard, using his students as assistants. • Their first experiment was to give psilocybin to 175 people in a naturalistic study. • Over 50% of the participants claimed the experience taught them something about themselves, and 90% wanted to try it again. • By 1961 it was less clear whether Leary was running a scientific experiment or whether he was trying to start a cultural revolution. • By 1962 Leary was experimenting with LSD. If psilocybin was all about love, LSD was all about death and rebirth. It was much more powerful.

Timothy Leary • Leary and Huxley exchanged enthusiastic correspondence over Leary’s research. • They discussed the proper strategy to introduce mind expansion to a culture of Organization Men. • Huxley argued that they should turn on artistic, intellectual and economic elites, and Leary initially agreed. • However, after listening to Allen Ginsberg, Leary would later shift toward making LSD available to a wider array of people. • Ginsberg stressed that it should be up to the individual and that everyone, not just elites, should have access to LSD. Ginsberg was an egalitarian. • By turning everyone on, they would generate a snowball effect of mass change.

LSD Crosses Over • Eventually psychedelic drug use spread across different groups, including the wealthy and the avant garde, who mingled at the same drug parties that Beats, artists, and intellectuals attended. • Note: the motivations for drug use varied by the group. Some took the drugs mainly for pleasure purposes while others took them for spiritual growth purposes. • Gradually the West Coast parties began to emphasize the pleasure purposes. • This was not a problem for Timothy Leary, who felt that American culture was too rigid and sexually hung-up. Leary believed pleasure and spirituality were linked.

Social Change • At the core of the egalitarian philosophy was that true social change begins from the bottom – among the masses - and moves up to the elite. This view opposes the more elitist view that change must stem from elites and their institutions, and the masses will follow. • The problem with the egalitarian approach was that by giving everyone access to acid, there would be many casualties. This debate relates to a deeper debate. • The most important debate among the counterculture involved whether to place the emphasis upon Nirvana or Utopia as the primary goal of The Movement.

Personal Politics versus Institutional Politics • The 1960s protestors felt that both personal (psychological) and institutional (social structural) changes were needed, but which was more important – making people at peace with themselves or making institutions more humanistic? • Hippies and Radicals were split on this issue. • Hippies favored a personal-change emphasis, with LSD as the tool for personal introspection. Their goal was Nirvana. • Radicals favored an institutional-change emphasis, with organized social activism as the tool for change. The radical’s goal was Utopia.

Personal Politics versus Institutional Politics • Regardless of whether the emphasis was on Nirvana or Utopia, the two are interrelated. • Under a Nirvana emphasis, we would expect that as minds became loving, institutions would eventually be reconstructed to be more humanistic. • Under a Utopian emphasis, we would expect that as institutions became more humane, minds would eventually be reconstructed to be more loving and compassionate toward others. • Both approaches are valid.

Timothy Leary • By 1962, Leary was beginning to see himself as a spiritual prophet of sorts – that he needed to lead society to a higher consciousness. • Leary’s research had confirmed that psychedelic drugs produced forms of the mystical experience. • His mission was assuming an increasingly religious or spiritual tone. • According to his friends’ characterization, he saw himself as having “evolved” from his earlier - more scientific - self into a spiritual Guru self. He was losing interest in the scientific component of psychedelics. For this reason, Harvard would eventually boot him out.

The Politics of Consciousness • “Lysergic acid hits the spot. Forty billion neurons, that’s a lot.” – Marshall McLuhan. • By 1962, the mood began to change. • Some psychiatrists began to feel that LSD was a dagger pointed at the heart of psychiatry. They were fearful that Leary would bring down the house. • LSD had become easy to get, and it was now associated with an emerging hedonistic California subculture. • Others in psychiatry advocated continued LSD experimentation.

Research into Safety of LSD • By the mid-60s, qualms about the safety of LSD were being put to rest. • Researcher Sidney Cohen surveyed a sample of 5000 LSD users and learned that an average of 1.8 psychotic episodes occurred per 1000 ingestions – far less than the anti-drug forces had argued. LSD was fairly safe.

LSD as a therapy tool • With the question of safety out of the way, interest now focused on the best way to use LSD. • There were 2 schools of thought in psychiatry: • 1. LSD could be used as a facilitator of traditional Freudian psychiatry, or • 2. LSD could be used in huge doses to try to produce an integrative or mystical insight that would lead to a radical change in behavior. This was called “psychedelic therapy.” • If successful, the effects could be dramatic. Humphrey Osmond claimed a success rate of 50-70% for chronic alcoholics, while Dr. Al Hubbard (by now a PhD) reported a success rate of 80%.

LSD therapy • What some trippers discovered was that, underneath the fragile ego, there exists an “imperishable self” that is at one with nature, death, and the universe. • Much therapy involved moving past the vain ego into this selfless state. If successful, neurotic patterns die away because much neurosis stems from an “insecure” ego. This is how the Freudians see it.

Different Interpretations of LSD • However, LSD’s effects were seen differently by different researchers. • One researcher might see LSD “dissolving” the ego while another might see it as a form of depersonalization, while Timothy Leary saw the same effects as a mystical union or an integrative experience. • A hallucination to one was a vision to another. • These discrepant interpretations represented turf wars between various types of psychologists, spiritualists, artists and others.

1962: LSD Research is Curtailed • To conservative representatives of the Establishment, LSD was harmful. Period. In 1962, Congress passed a law that gave the FDA approval over all new experimental drugs. • This law was aimed mostly at speed, but it could be used against LSD too. LSD was no longer so readily available for research after 1962. • The research machine was being turned off by the authorities. • However, it was too late to turn off the publicity machine.

AMST 3100 The 1960s