http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Leary
Timothy Francis Leary (October 22, 1920 – May 31, 1996) was an American psychologist and writer, known for advocating psychedelic drugs, perhaps even to assist psychotherapy. During American legality of LSD and psilocybin, Leary conducted experiments under theHarvard Psilocybin Project, resulting in the Concord Prison Experiment and the Marsh Chapel Experiment. Though obtaining useful data, Leary and his associate Richard Alpert were fired by Harvard University amid controversy surrounding such drugs.
Leary believed LSD showed therapeutic potential for use in psychiatry. He popularized catchphrases that promoted his philosophy such as "turn on, tune in, drop out" (a phrase given to Leary by Marshall McLuhan); "set and setting"; and "think for yourself and question authority". He also wrote and spoke frequently about transhumanist concepts involving space migration, intelligence increase and life extension (SMI²LE), [1] and developed the eight-circuit model of consciousness in his book Exo-Psychology (1977).
During the 1960s and 1970s, he was arrested often enough to see the inside of 29 different prisons worldwide. President Richard Nixononce described Leary as "the most dangerous man in America". [2]
From 1955 to 1958, Leary was director of psychiatric research at the Kaiser Family Foundation. Subsisting on small research grants and insurance policies, Leary — determined to write the great American novel — and his children relocated to Europe in 1958. Overcome by indigence during an unproductive stay in Florence, Leary soon returned to academia in the fall of 1959 as a lecturer in clinical psychology at Harvard University at the behest of Berkeley colleague Frank Barron and David McClelland. He would reside with his children in nearby Newton, Massachusetts. In addition to his teaching duties, Leary was affiliated with the Harvard Center for Research in Personality under McClelland and oversaw the Harvard Psilocybin Project and concomitant experiments in conjunction with assistant professor Richard Alpert. In 1963, Leary was terminated for failing to give his scheduled class lectures [11] against his position that he had fulfilled his teaching obligations in full. The decision to dismiss him may have been influenced by his role in the popularity of then-legal psychedelicsubstances among Harvard students and faculty members. [12]
His early work in psychology expanded on the research of Harry Stack Sullivan and Karen Horney regarding the importance of interpersonal forces in mental health, focusing on how understanding interpersonal processes might facilitate diagnosing disorders and identifying human personality patterns. He developed a complex and respected interpersonal circumplex model, published in The Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality, [13] demonstrating how psychologists could methodically use Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory(MMPI) scores to predict respondents' interpersonal response characteristics, or ways they might respond to various interpersonal situations.
On May 13, 1957, Life magazine published an article by R. Gordon Wasson that documented the use of psilocybin mushrooms in religious rites of the indigenous Mazatec people of Mexico. [14] Anthony Russo, a colleague of Leary's, had experimented withpsychedelic (or entheogenic) psilocybe mexicana mushrooms on a trip to Mexico and told Leary about it. In August 1960, [15] Leary traveled to Cuernavaca, Mexico with Russo and consumed psilocybin mushrooms for the first time, an experience that drastically altered the course of his life. [16] In 1965, Leary commented that he had "learned more about ... (his) brain and its possibilities ... [and] more about psychology in the five hours after taking these mushrooms than ... in the preceding 15 years of studying and doing research in psychology." [16]
Returning from Mexico to Harvard in 1960, Leary and his associates, notably Richard Alpert (later known as Ram Dass), began a research program known as the Harvard Psilocybin Project. The goal was to analyze the effects of psilocybin on human subjects (first prisoners, and later Andover Newton Theological Seminary students) from a synthesized version of the then-legal drug — one of two active compounds found in a wide variety of hallucinogenic mushrooms, including psilocybe mexicana. The compound in question was produced by a process developed by Albert Hofmann of Sandoz Pharmaceuticals, who was famous for synthesizing LSD.
Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, after hearing about the Harvard research project, asked to join the experiments. Leary was inspired by Ginsberg's enthusiasm, and the two shared an optimism in the benefit of psychedelic substances to help people "turn on" (i.e., discover a higher level of consciousness). Together they began a campaign of introducing other intellectuals and artists to psychedelics. [17]
Leary argued that psychedelic substances, in proper doses and in a stable setting, could, under the guidance of psychologists, alter behavior in beneficial ways not easily attainable through regular therapy. His research focused on treating alcoholism and reforming criminals. Many of his research subjects told of profound mystical and spiritual experiences which they said permanently, and very positively, altered their lives. According to Leary's autobiography Flashbacks, after 300 professors, graduate students, writers and philosophers had taken LSD, 75% reported the experience as one of the most educational and revealing ones of their lives.
The Concord Prison Experiment was designed to evaluate the effects of psilocybin combined with psychotherapy on rehabilitation of released prisoners. After being guided through the psychedelic experience, or "trips," by Leary and his associates, 36 prisoners were reported to have repented and sworn to give up future criminal activity. Compared to the averagerecidivism rate of 60 percent for American prisoners in general, the recidivism rate for those involved in Leary's project dropped to 20 percent. The experimenters concluded that long-term reduction in overall criminal recidivism rates could be effected with a combination of psilocybin-assisted group psychotherapy (inside the prison) along with a comprehensive post-release follow-up support program modeled on Alcoholics Anonymous......