Editorial

This September edition of the Journal is dedicated to both current and historical topics. The papers herein, through the multiple lenses which analytic psychology affords, examine the history of Jung's attitudes toward the use of psychedelics, as well as his concerns about collective polarizations and the threat of our species' self-annihilation. And they examine how analytical psychology may respond to the seemingly unstoppable forces and drives to achieve, forces that can reside in the unconscious of a single person or the collective unconscious of a culture or nation.

In our first of two papers exploring Jung's scepticism toward psychedelics, Ginny Hill explores the historical context of Jung's consideration of mescaline and his contact with the British pioneers of psychedelic research. In “Jung, the Rebirth Motif and Psychedelics I: Documenting Jung's Contact with the British Pioneers”, Hill traces an illuminating trail of history which considers Jung's views about these drugs and the work of British psychiatrist Ronald Sandison, and his use of LSD in in-patient work. She further explores Sandison and his colleague Margot Cutner's “ground-breaking protocols during the 1950s” and how they were the only practitioners to take an “explicitly Jungian approach”. From this early work came the first documentation of the phenomenon of “spiritual rebirth”.

In keeping with this exploration, authors McDonnell, Moriarty, Mc Cabe and Higgins look specifically at the communications between Jung and Bill Wilson, founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, which, while a longstanding resource for individuals suffering from Alcohol Use Disorder, purports to have a low success rate. McDonnell et al. explore archival material, which includes Bill Wilson's letter to Jung, in which he advocates the use of LSD for alcoholics for whom the spiritual aspect of the 12-step programme could not find purchase. These authors explore Jung's reluctance to support the therapeutic use of psychedelics and Wils