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This is the kind of book that is relatively infrequent in the literature of behavioral science and psychiatry. It subjects one situation to intensive scrutiny from different points of views on the part of persons with various backgrounds and interests. The phenomenon under study is the use of LSD by the group of researchers who were originally based at Harvard University, and who subsequently went to Mexico and most recently have moved to Millbrook, New York. Drs. Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, and Ralph Metzner are the three researchers with LSD who are still continuing their work in Millbrook via their Castalia Foundation in Millbrook.
The persons commenting on their work, in addition to the three principals, and the nature of their comments are: Richard and Eva Blum, psychologists, who give the background of LSD use and compare users with former users; pharmacologist Keith Killam who makes some brief comments; psychiatrist Joseph J. Downing, who visited the Mexican site which represented an experiment in transpersonative living and evaluated it; Drs. Leary, Alpert, and Metzner who briefly comment on the Mexican center; Dr. Downing and Protestant minister William Wygant, Jr., who collaborated in relating the psychedelic experience to religious belief; psychiatrist Joel Fort, who gave an overview of the subject; Dr. Richard Blum and Jeanne Wahl, who interviewed a sample of policemen with respect to their attitudes toward drug use; and Edward Comber, a police officer who commented on the drug movement.
The whole LSD phenomenon is subject, in this book, to the kind of scrutiny that is seldom possible for a social movement of this kind. Perhaps the most significant comment that can be made about the LSD enterprise is that in many ways, it is best understood as a social movement. There is the same