History of Psychiatry
May 19, 2016
Matthew Oram
32 citations
The decline of LSD-assisted psychotherapy research in the USA during the 1960s is often attributed to prohibitive federal regulations aimed at curbing recreational use. However, a close examination of the Food and Drug Administration's regulation of LSD research shows that research was never prohibited and was supported more than previously recognized. Instead, the decline reflected complex changes in the regulation of pharmaceutical research and development, rather than a simple ban on LSD studies.
History of Psychiatry
March 10, 2016
Jens Knud Larsen
29 citations
LSD was introduced in psychiatry in the 1950s, and between 1960 and 1973 nearly 400 patients were treated with LSD in Denmark. By 1964, one homicide, two suicides, and four suicide attempts had been reported. In 1986, the Danish LSD Damages Law was passed after complaints by only one patient, and all 154 applicants received financial compensation for LSD-inflicted harm. Most patients suffered severe side effects many years afterward; two-thirds had flashbacks. With renewed interest in LSD therapy, the neurotoxic potential of LSD should be considered.
History of Psychiatry
June 1, 2012
Gavin Miller
13 citations
R.D. Laing's psychiatry drew on two distinct Christian theologies: mystical theology, which he combined with psychoanalysis to offer a New Age psychotherapeutic path to authentic selfhood through metanoia, and corporate, incarnational theology, which drove his advocacy for social inclusion of the mentally ill via therapeutic communities. For Laing and other post-war British Christians, both a turn inward toward mysticism and self-sacralization and a turn outward toward social and political activism were strategies for coping with the decline of traditional Christianity.
History of Psychiatry
December 1, 2005
Fernando Tola, Carmen Dragonetti
9 citations
In Yogacara Buddhist idealism, the mind has two parts: receptacle consciousness, which holds unconscious traces (vasanas) from past experiences, and function consciousness, where those traces become conscious ideas of a self and objects. These vasanas have been produced since beginningless time without any real basis, in a fantasmagorical process.
History of Psychiatry
July 7, 2017
Colin A. Ross
7 citations
Between 1955 and 1967, the US Army conducted extensive LSD testing on soldiers at Edgewood Arsenal and other sites. Official reports, including the 2003 Veterans Health Initiative Report, have minimized the short- and long-term side effects of this testing, but the reports themselves document frequent and severe complications that the Army attributed directly to LSD exposure. Given renewed psychiatric interest in hallucinogens, the authors argue that the sanitized official account should be replaced with a more accurate description of the harm suffered by soldiers.
History of Psychiatry
December 1, 2023
Filippo Besana
2 citations
Danilo Cargnello was a major figure in Italian phenomenological psychopathology, first writing on the subject in 1947-48. He introduced and spread Binswanger's ideas in Italy, emphasizing the anthropological nature of Daseinsanalyse. His book on experimental psychosis is a key psychopathological report of substance-induced psychosis. Keeping knowledge of such phenomenological authors alive is clinically and psychopathologically important, and their teachings should be integrated into professional training.
History of Psychiatry
April 28, 2025
Casimir Klim, Bryan VanDreese, Terence Meyerhoefer et al.
In the 1950s and 1960s, researchers at the Mayo Clinic conducted studies with psychedelic drugs, including LSD and psilocybin. Their work sometimes prioritized scientific advancement over the rights and safety of participants, raising ethical concerns about informed consent and equitable treatment. These historical problems continue to challenge contemporary psychedelic research.
History of Psychiatry
June 1, 2025
Marcelo Gulão Pimentel, Klaus Chaves Alberto, Alexander Moreira-Almeida
Allan Kardec (1804-1869), a French educator, was an early proponent of scientifically investigating psychical experiences and had significant influence in 19th-century Europe, though his life and research outcomes are now little known and often misunderstood. The paper presents Kardec's biography and his initial inquiries into psychical phenomena, especially mediumship. He raised and tested multiple hypotheses on the causes of mediumistic phenomena, including fraud, hallucinations, a new physical force, somnambulism (including unconscious cerebration), thought reflection (including telepathy and super-psi), and discarnate minds.
History of Psychiatry
September 1, 2023
Joseph Gough
The distinction between understanding and explanation, originally used to defend history from physics, was foundational to Karl Jaspers' phenomenological psychiatry and remains influential. This paper examines what 'understanding' means in this context, why it persists in psychiatry, and what insights it offers. The author argues that while the notion is unhelpfully tied to the view that the mental is epistemologically and methodologically autonomous, it nonetheless highlights a significant gap in many approaches to psychiatry and the scientific study of humans.
History of Psychiatry
September 1, 2021
Enrico Berti
The author examines the history of the concepts of mind and soul through the lens of the Aristotelian notion of 'Form', contrasting it with the ontologized versions assumed by conventional science. He argues that contemporary neuroscience does not have the necessary conceptual tools to address the meaning of mind and soul, nor their agential implications such as free will and moral decision-making.
History of Psychiatry
June 1, 2020
A historical analysis examines a large-scale psychedelic therapy program at Modum Bad Nervesanatorium in Norway, where 379 inpatients were treated with psychedelic drugs from 1961 to 1976. Initially, psychiatrists there considered the treatment effective and free of serious negative reactions, but later reports of long-term harm emerged. The article discusses how lessons from this program could inform contemporary psychedelic treatment efforts, highlighting the need to consider both benefits and potential risks.
History of Psychiatry
June 1, 2018
G E Berrios
Henry Calderwood, a nineteenth-century Scottish philosopher, published an 1879 work examining the interaction between philosophy of mind, early neuroscience, and mental disease. Holding a spiritual view of the mind, he argued that the phrase 'mental disease' is a misleading metaphor. His detailed analysis of contemporary research by Ferrier, Clouston, Crichton-Browne, Maudsley, Tuke, and Sankey concluded that their findings offered very limited explanatory power for understanding madness. The authors contend that Calderwood's conceptual contribution should be added to the growing list of nineteenth-century writers who began constructing a 'philosophy of alienism' (now 'philosophy of psychiatry').