# How Timothy Leary is thought of in the mainstream psychology community? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 3, 2015, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-timothy-leary-is-thought-of-in-the-mainstream-psychology-community/711760 "2015-02-03T20:51:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Steken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@Steken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steken)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2015, 8:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-timothy-leary-is-thought-of-in-the-mainstream-psychology-community/711760/21 "2015-02-06T08:06:25Z")
Alrighty then, our experiences differ. Where I live, LSD is still _absolutely_ associated with hippiedom, and I’d wager most people around here do _not_ know about the drug’s, uh, “post-patchouli phase,” and the mainstream research being done, etc. And hey, glad you liked the article, **Renee**. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2015, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-timothy-leary-is-thought-of-in-the-mainstream-psychology-community/711760/22 "2015-02-06T16:30:44Z")
> [@Steken](#): > > Where I live, LSD is still _absolutely_ associated with hippiedom . . . I suppose you live in California, or some such place where hippiedom still actually exists? In most of the country, hippies now are things known only from books and old media. ---
**Author:** ![Stringbean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Stringbean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stringbean)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2015, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-timothy-leary-is-thought-of-in-the-mainstream-psychology-community/711760/23 "2015-02-07T00:37:36Z")
Just go walk up to a co-worker and ask them their thoughts on LSD research if you all are so convinced that the public has evolved on the issue… ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2015, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-timothy-leary-is-thought-of-in-the-mainstream-psychology-community/711760/24 "2015-02-07T03:45:19Z")
> [@Stringbean](#): > > Just go walk up to a co-worker and ask them their thoughts on LSD research if you all are so convinced that the public has evolved on the issue… Depends on where you work. Some will ask, “Well, how much are you charging for this ‘research’? I won’t go above $20 a tab.” ---
**Author:** ![Steken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@Steken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steken)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2015, 7:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-timothy-leary-is-thought-of-in-the-mainstream-psychology-community/711760/25 "2015-02-07T07:06:49Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > I suppose you live in California, or some such place where hippiedom still actually exists? In most of the country, hippies now are things known only from books and old media. I live in Copenhagen, Denmark. Here, there’s a part of town called Christiania - a hold-over from the hippie era, [looking](http://www.theculturemap.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Christiania-colourful-houses-Copehnagen.jpg) [like](http://www.laurieborman.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/DSC017131.jpg) [this](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2f/Going_to_Christiania.jpg). So, yes, they’re still around over here, and the idea of the _christianitter_ - the Christiania hippies - is well-known all across the land. I’d wager that if you gave a thousand random Danes a questionnaire about what they associate with the word “LSD” and put “Christiania” or “_christianitter_” as an option, _that’s_ the one they’ll go for, far far _far_ above “the palliative-care unit at Mt. Sinai Hospital, N.Y.C.”, “psychopharmacology research at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine,” or “the latest issue of _The Lancet_.” ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Pig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c57346/32.png) [@Little\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Pig)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2015, 6:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-timothy-leary-is-thought-of-in-the-mainstream-psychology-community/711760/26 "2015-02-08T06:33:46Z")
Not sure about Timothy, but I hear his brother, Really Leary, is highly regarded in some circles. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2015, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-timothy-leary-is-thought-of-in-the-mainstream-psychology-community/711760/27 "2015-02-09T00:51:07Z")
> [@Steken](#): > > This doesn’t really answer your question, but the prominent pro-LSD types these days do not “wear tie-dye and smell of patchouli.” They’re plain ol’ researchers, psychologists, psychiatrists and the like, and, as is their wont, they perform real and serious research, without all the “counter-cultural” baggage Leary carried around with him. > > The results over the last decade or so are pretty neat. The stuff shows real promise. > > … Wonderful article [here](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/09/trip-treatment), on the state of modern (American) research into psychedelics. Despite being a usually avid reader of the _New Yorker_, I had somehow missed that article, so I join others in saying thanks for posting it. But I disagree with your optimistic assessment, and perhaps to some degree those of the author (much as I respect the _New Yorker_). Such findings as there were from the first wave of research with psychedelics in the 60s were almost entirely negative, and those findings still stand today. No one believes any more that drugs like LSD might help give us useful insights into schizophrenia, for instance, or that they might be of assistance in psychotherapy. The article really seems to focus on “research” whereby such drugs might be of palliative use for the terminally ill. While this could be a very noble cause if it proves broadly beneficial, it’s also a path fraught with peril (the emotionally stressed might be vulnerable to psychosis in those conditions, for instance). It is, in any case, less “scientific research” than a kind of _ad hoc_ experiment in palliative medicine. Consider these quotes from the article: David Nichols, an emeritus professor of pharmacology at Purdue University—and a founder, in 1993, of the Heffter Research Institute, a key funder of psychedelic research—put the pragmatic case most baldly in a recent interview with Science: “If it gives them peace, if it helps people to die peacefully with their friends and their family at their side, I don’t care if it’s real or an illusion.” Telling the subjects apart was not difficult, rendering the double-blind a somewhat hollow conceit: those on the placebo sat sedately in their pews while the others lay down or wandered around the chapel, muttering things like “God is everywhere” and “Oh, the glory!” It’s all very interesting, and maybe even genuinely useful, but what it really amounts to is pharmacologically induced spirituality. It’s being justified for the terminally ill, and perhaps quite rightly so, but far from an illustration of “showing real promise” it seems to me that it is at its core right back full circle to tie-dyed T-shirts, Haight-Ashbury flower children, and the smell of patchouli – even if these things are now figurative rather than literal. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2015, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-timothy-leary-is-thought-of-in-the-mainstream-psychology-community/711760/28 "2015-02-09T02:48:35Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > Such findings as there were from the first wave of research with psychedelics in the 60s were almost entirely negative, and those findings still stand today. This assertion is not accurate and is contradicted by the text of the article as well as by the research itself; the results were generally positive. > [@](#): > > Psychedelics were tested on alcoholics, people struggling with obsessive-compulsive disorder, depressives, autistic children, schizophrenics, terminal cancer patients, and convicts, as well as on perfectly healthy artists and scientists (to study creativity) and divinity students (to study spirituality). The results reported were frequently positive. But many of the studies were, by modern standards, poorly designed. The key is that last sentence: the studies were poorly designed; they lacked sufficient controls to be considered truly scientifically rigorous. ---
**Author:** ![Steken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@Steken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steken)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2015, 7:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-timothy-leary-is-thought-of-in-the-mainstream-psychology-community/711760/29 "2015-02-09T07:44:27Z")
Well-written, **wolfpup** , but I disagree on several points. First, you don’t mention LSD’s or psilocybin’s potential use in curing addiction to more harmful drugs, such as alcohol and tobacco. The article, however, does: > [@](#): > > Since 2006, Griffiths’s lab has conducted a pilot study on the potential of psilocybin to treat smoking addiction, the results of which were published last November in the _Journal of Psychopharmacology_. The sample is tiny—fifteen smokers—but the success rate is striking. Twelve subjects, all of whom had tried to quit multiple times, using various methods, were verified as abstinent six months after treatment, a success rate of eighty per cent. So there’s one potential area of use. (Of course, more research is needed: Fifteen people ain’t much.) You mention the risk of psychosis. So does the article: > [@](#): > > The recreational use of psychedelics is famously associated with instances of psychosis, flashback, and suicide. But these adverse effects have not surfaced in the trials of drugs at N.Y.U. and Johns Hopkins. After nearly five hundred administrations of psilocybin, the researchers have reported no serious negative effects. This is perhaps less surprising than it sounds, since volunteers are self-selected, carefully screened and prepared for the experience, and are then guided through it by therapists well trained to manage the episodes of fear and anxiety that many volunteers do report. So, with proper screenings, comfortable circumstances and the guidance of a well-trained therapist, the risk of psychosis seems very low indeed, and entirely manageable. Certainly nothing to justify shutting down - or limiting - the research. You also mention the risk of “pharmacologically induced spirituality.” I think that, as with any drug, potential patients should be informed about risks, possible side effects, adverse reactions, etc. Part of the screening process could perhaps include a question along the lines of “knowing that the drug might induce moments of ‘spiritual’ or ‘quasi-spiritual’ rapture, would you still like to partake of it?” However, the article also has that bit about how “a spiritual experience does not by itself make a spiritual life.” One might, in the course of an LSD trip, have moments of “spiritual” or “quasi-spiritual” rapture, and yet remain an atheist. Speaking of, that would indeed be an interesting area for further study: Do people who self-identify as theists report different kinds of “trips” than people who self-identify as atheists? Are atheists who take LSD just as likely, or perhaps less likely, to report having “seen God”? Are they at risk of dropping their atheism? Is “ideology” affected in the first place - morals, beliefs, etc.? Again, of course, more research is needed. ---
**Author:** ![Steken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@Steken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steken)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2015, 9:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-timothy-leary-is-thought-of-in-the-mainstream-psychology-community/711760/30 "2015-03-09T09:04:10Z")
> [@Steken](#): > > Again, of course, more research is needed. [… Speak of the devil](http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/03/a-psychedelic-revival/387193/): > [@](#): > > In a massive study published in the _Journal of Psychopharmacology_, scientists at the Norwegian University for Science and Technology at Trondheim concluded that there is no link between use of LSD and psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) and mental health problems. The study selected 135,000 participants at random—including 19,000 who had used psychedelic drugs—and found no evidence linking such drugs to the onset of mental disorders. With regards to Leary’s reputation, here’s a nice little gem (from [here](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/11/18/buzzkill)): > [@](#): > > One of Kleiman’s books is called “Against Excess”—the title refers both to the war on drugs and to drug use. Leary, he told me, was undone by excess: “The tragedy of the sixties is that people managed to apply the drug-use practices of an Irish drunk to a very different chemical.” Zing! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2015, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-timothy-leary-is-thought-of-in-the-mainstream-psychology-community/711760/31 "2015-03-20T22:57:14Z")
> [@FriarTed](#): > > Timothy Leary’s dead. Fantastic deadpan delivery by Ewan McGregor in “Men Who Stare at Goats.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-timothy-leary-is-thought-of-in-the-mainstream-psychology-community/711760.md?page=1)