Revival, resurgence, renaissance—call it what you will, we are bearing witness to a second age of psychedelia in the West. It is well understood that the fruits borne of today's great scientific, therapeutic, and cultural advancements owe much to the seeds planted by the giants of the past. Yet when that past is discussed, the conversation is often dominated by the influence of only a select few parties—namely, prominent individuals and groups in the United States during “the sixties.” In a new edited collection by Erika Dyck and Chris Elcock, Expanding Mindscapes: A Global History of Psychedelics, that dominant narrative is set aside to make way for a new chronicling of some of the neglected or forgotten, but vital, episodes of psychedelic history. In a past book, Psychedelic Psychiatry, Dyck recounts the history of Canada's most prominent psychedelic figures (e.g., Humphrey Osmond and Abram Hoffer), and last year, in Psychedelic New York, Elcock describes a branch of psychedelic history from that storied city. In this new work, these two historians of psychedelia bring together authors from around the world with 20 dense yet accessible chapters that are sure to contribute to a better awareness of just how international and interconnected our psychedelic past is.
It may come as a surprise that in a collection of essays promising to go against the grain of popular history, the Introduction kicks off with the likes of Timothy Leary, Charles Manson, San Francisco, and Woodstock. Yet just before the Introduction, three beautiful maps highlight the flow of scientific research on both naturally derived and synthetic psychedelics, giving the reader a visual primer on their historical origination and dissemination across the globe—from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East to Europe and North and South America. It is through these flows, as the reader is oft reminded throughout the text, that diverse forms of knowledge and culture can be created in one area, land in the hands and minds of scientists, therapists, and counterculturalists in another, blend with local cultures and contexts, and then reemerge somewhere else having undergone yet another transformation. This is the historical portrait Expanding Mindscapes presents.
The chapters are split into three parts, though the boundaries between them are not always easy to discern. The chapters contained in Part I, “Evaluating Evidence/Experience,” demonstrate just how distinct the historical, cultural, and ideological contexts were behind experimental traditions in mid-century psychedelic research, and how those contexts in turn could intimately shape psychedelic experiences, interpretations, and insight. Both chapters two and three, for example, delve into the lesser-explored (psychedelic) history of the renowned Sainte-Anne Hospital in post-World War II France. Gautier Dassonneville's essay, “Mescaline, Between Psychopathology and Phenomenology: Sartre and Experimentation in 1930s France,” illuminates the eminent philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre's mescaline experimentation during his inquiries into the realm of imagination. The chapter offers insights into an obscure story of psychedelic research situated at the intersection of philosophical discourse and medical discussions surrounding psychopathology and phenomenology. Next, in one of my favorite chapters, Zoë Dubus, in “Women, Mental Illness, and Psychedelic Therapy in Postwar France,” uses Sainte-Anne's LSD research to expose a series of problems ingrained within French psychiatry. Within the prevailing psychiatric culture, emphasis was placed on biological over social factors, scientific rigor over therapeutic effectiveness, detached over compassionate approaches, patriarchal over egalitarian principles, and stoic demeanor over empathy. Despite awareness of alternative therapeutic procedures developing elsewhere, these inclinations permeated French psychedelic therapy, leading researchers to neglect the crucial factors of set and setting and treat female patients unethically. This chapter underscores some of the commonly overlooked aspects of set and setting like identity, class, and community dynamics.
In chapters four and five, the geographical focus moves to the development of therapeutic models in Czechoslovakia and Britain, respectively. Ross Crockford details the rise and fall of Milan Hausner, a Czech psychiatrist “who supervised more than 3,000 LSD sessions, published research in more than 100 articles and books, and yet remains largely unknown, even in his homeland” (p. 100). Unlike his French counterparts, Hausner spent considerable effort developing a thorough understanding of set and setting, advising staff and nurses on the importance of context in psychedelic-assisted (psycho)therapy, and encouraging sitters to have personal experiences with the drug. In chapter five, “Remembering to Forget: How the UK Disappeared from the Psychedelic Map,” Wendy Kline provides brief biographies of Ronald Sandison, the British psychiatrist and psychotherapist, and the Powick Psychiatric Hospital in Worcester, England. Sandison arrived at the hospital in 1951 intending to build a therapeutic community where the gates could be “left unlocked and patients [would be] encouraged to actively participate in their own treatment” (p. 125). By the next year, he received 100 ampoules of LSD from the famed Sandoz and quickly recognized that his “destiny lay with this substance.” He would spend the next several years striving to “master its mysteries” in the hopes that it “would unlock secrets and enable healing” (p. 126). The chapter details Sandison's journey from 1952 to 1964 where he treated over 500 patients with LSD (often in group settings), developed the “psycholytic” method (“small-to-substantial” doses given alongside psychotherapy), and established a friendship with Betty Eisner, whose early work incorporating music into the therapeutic regimen goes largely unnoticed today.
In Part II, “Global Networks of Psychedelic Knowledge,” the chapters provide a clearer understanding of how early psychedelic knowledge was generated, influenced by global trends, and disseminated internationally, where it became intimately infused with local histories, cultures, and practices. For example, in chapter nine, Beat Bächi moves beyond the typical focus of LSD consumption to investigate the details of its original production in Switzerland. The chapter title, “Psychotropic Drugs From and In the Field,” cleverly alludes to the author's intervention into the origin story of LSD, which comes not only from the Swiss fields (i.e., ergot) but was taken by Hoffman in the field (three times while in the military). Bächi also provides new details on how through the French botanist, Roger Heim, Sandoz was able to receive teonanacatl (the “Flesh of the Gods,” or Psilocybe Mexicana), effectively reproducing it under artificial conditions and sending it back to the Sierra Mazateca region of Oaxaca, Mexico where none other than Maria Sabina tested it. It is for these lesser-known reasons—as compared to Hoffman's famous bicycle ride—that LSD was ultimately able to enter another field: psychiatry.
Chapter twelve by Andrew Jones examines LSD's role in the development of “clinical theology” through the tale of two medical missionaries: Florence Nichols, a Canadian psychiatrist, and the more renowned Frank Lake, a British physician. Their encounter in southern India in the late 1940s sparked Lake's interest in Nichols's Christian-based psychiatry, leading to the development of “clinical theology,” where Nichols played a crucial but uncredited role. Lake, exposed to LSD by Sandison, introduced the substance to Nichols and supported her during her first session. The rest of the chapter illustrates how clinical theology evolved alongside LSD therapy and psychoanalytic frameworks like object-relations theory, and how psychedelic-induced experiences—for instance, the resurfacing of repressed memories—came to be conceptualized through such frameworks. In chapter thirteen, Hallam Roffey continues the focus on the transnational flow of knowledge with his provocative essay on LSD's contribution to countercultural thought, alternative living, and radical leftist politics in 1970s England. The story of Irishman Bill “Ubi” Dwyer is told as a means of countering the heavy-handed critique of the “hippie values” and utopianism held by the 1960s Left, with Roffey showing how LSD, in producing “ego dissolution, unity, and connectedness” (310), was instrumental amongst acid-anarchists in their attempt to build a “militant anti-materialism” and “break… the patterns of bourgeois society to underpin a new kind of social movement” (p. 310). For Dwyer, LSD carried “subversive possibilities” and was to be employed under one condition: “use only with love” (322).
Finally, in Part III, “Psychedelics as Cultural Phenomena,” readers are given a new look at the history of psychedelics as a cultural transmitter of creativity, innovation, and artistic influence. In chapter fourteen, “Video as Powerful as LSD,” Peter Sachs Collopy brings together psychedelics and technical innovation as “technologies of consciousness” (Fred Turner), showing how authors, artists, and intellectuals considered psychedelics and advancements like the computer and the videotape as cultural analogues: “tools that could deliver… altered states of consciousness… or dissolve it” (p. 338). The chapter synthesizes the works of writers like Aldous Huxley, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Marshall McLuhan, and others who reasoned that both psychedelics and technology—each capable of enhancing creativity, thinking, and innovation—worked in parallel fashion to facilitate a techno-cultural evolution in Western society. Keeping the theme of innovative technology close, chapters fifteen, seventeen, and eighteen outline international examples (e.g., the Netherlands, Israel, and Britain, respectively) of LSD's role in generating cultural change as it moved from tool of psychiatry to merge with global currents of knowledge and culture and influence local contexts. For instance, in “From Psychiatric Clinics to Magical Center,” Stephen Snelder explains how though LSD arrived in Holland through psychoanalytically trained Dutch psychiatrists like Arendsen Hein, Jan Bastiaans, and Frank van Ree, over time artists, writers, and bohemians began to develop their own relationships with, and interpretations of, the drug. Snelder shows how, through Leary and company's Psychedelic Review journal and The Psychedelic Experience book, theories like seeing reality as a “game” came to be deployed in countercultural movements (e.g., protests, activism, public performances) that sought to transform Amsterdam into a “magical center.”
In chapter seventeen, Ido Hartogsohn and Itamar Zadoff establish how LSD played a central role in the development of an Israeli counterculture. Merging local contexts with global forces, LSD-using groups produced subversive forms of music, art, poetry, and literature that offered, in one instance, “an escape from the dreary, uninspiring, and sometimes oppressive reality of Zionist society” (p. 405), and in another, a revolt against those who were “disappointed with their experiences in the Israeli military” (p. 411). The chapter follows collectives—the Lul Group, the Third Eye Group, and the Israeli backpacker scene—that ultimately led to the country becoming a “psytrance powerhouse” (p. 411) and today, a “significant psychedelic research center” (p. 399). And in chapter eighteen, Mark Gallagher provides a last and fascinating tale of LSD's escape from the clinic and transformation into “a weapon of countercultural subversion turned against the psychiatric authorities.” In “Did the Master's Tools Dismantle the Master's House?”, the story follows Robin Farquharson, the Oxford-educated game theorist and bipolar sufferer, who after being inspired by Leary to “drop out” and experiment with LSD, became a leading activist in the famous antipsychiatry movement and what developed into “acid anarchism” (see also chapter thirteen).
In summary, this fantastic collection accomplishes the objective its already esteemed editors set out to achieve: it is an interesting, important, timely, and necessary addition to the history—the global history—of psychedelic scholarship. This book will satisfy a broad range of audiences, from psychedelic scholars, therapists, scientists, and enthusiasts alike.
