Psychedelics and psychotherapy in Canada: Humphry Osmond and Aldous Huxley.
Erika Dyck, Patrick Farrell
History of psychology August 1, 2018 DOI: 10.1037/hop0000088 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Historical analysis Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | LSD Mescaline Psychedelic-assisted therapy |
| Keywords | Psychotherapy Psychoactive substances Psychedelic approach Mental health solutions Mental health research Foundational insights Canadian medical history 1950s Canadian researchers Isolated canadian hospital Pioneering science Pioneered Innovative collaboration |
| Citations | 21 |
| Key points | Argues that the correspondence between Humphry Osmond and Aldous Huxley illustrates how their isolated setting in a Canadian mental hospital fostered a unique psychedelic approach to therapy in the 1950s. |
Abstract
The decade of the 1950s is well known among historians of psychiatry for the unprecedented shift toward psychopharmacological solutions to mental health problems. More psychiatric medications were introduced than ever before or since (Healy, 2002). While psychiatric researchers later credited these drugs, in part, for controlling psychotic, depressive, and anxious symptoms-and subsequently for emptying decaying psychiatric institutions throughout the Western world-psychiatrists also produced a number of other theories that relied on a more delicate and nuanced blending of psychotherapy and psychopharmacology. Canadian-based researchers were at the forefront of experiments combining mescaline, LSD, and psychoactive substances later described as "psychedelics." From a relatively isolated setting on the Canadian prairies, in one of the most notorious mental hospitals in North America, this blending of traditions generated a unique approach. A close look at the correspondence between the psychiatrist Humphry Osmond and his friend, the writer Aldous Huxley, who shared interests in psychoactive substances and their effects on perception, and the stimulation of empathy, gives us an opportunity to explore how they developed their psychedelic approach to therapy in the 1950s. The combination of working in an isolated hospital, far from the main research powers in North America, produced a sense of regional incubation and required Osmond to look for collaborators well beyond his own field of psychiatry. (PsycINFO Database Record
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on LSD and psychedelic-assisted therapy, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Psychedelics and Psychotherapy: Cognitive-Behavioral Approaches as Default | 2022 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Flashback: psychiatric experimentation with LSD in historical perspective. | 2005 | Historical analysis | |
| LSD therapy in Dutch psychiatry: changing socio-political settings and medical sets. | 2002 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Psychedelic crossings: American mental health and LSD in the 1970s. | 2019 | Historical analysis | |
| Research into Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy for Anorexia Nervosa Should be Funded. | 2023 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |