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interesting; as a matter of fact, it is fascinating. There was
some talk at one or two meetings that I have attended,
particularly the one at Keith Ditman's house, concerning the
possibility of self-induction of the LSD state. From what you
describe on page 2 of your letter, this would seem possible. What
seems more important to me, however, are the free associations you
might make to the various perceptual changes observed& 
 This question of regression to antiquity ( Greece, Egypt,
Jerusalem ) that you describe as  a level of the unconscious of
the racial type or humanity-ages is also fascinating. In my own
mescaline experience I vividly recall walking around the pyramids
of ancient Egypt. However, to get others to believe this is
another question; and I doubt if our  scientific minded
colleagues would really believe it.
 I see that we are in agreement on the matter of  what is
psychosis. & 
 The continuation of the discussion I had with Sid concerning
the nature of the unconscious will have to wait until we get
together again in May. This, without question, is a most
extraordinary subject, and studies with LSD and mescaline will go
far towards its clarification.
 Best regards and wishes for the New Year. Sincerely yours,
Hy (Herman C.B. Denber, M.D.)
April 10, 1958
Dear Betty:
 There will indeed be a meeting in Rome from September 8-12.
Under separate cover, I am sending you the first Information
Bulletin and registration cards. Any paper you have to contribute
would be most welcome on the fourth day. I will give you further
details personally& 
 Best regards, Sincerely yours, Herman C.B. Denber per SS
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Long Island Biological Association May 10, 1958
Dear Dr. Eisner:
 Thank you for your letter of April 18. I have been working
with the Macy Foundation on a conference, but things go pretty
slowly in this area. You will be interested to know that Sandoz
has offered to partly subsidize a conference on therapy in
conjunction with supplementary financial support by the Macy
Foundation.
 As far as I know I am on one of the panels in Rome this
summer and hope I shall have the pleasure of seeing you there.
 Several copies of the reprints you requested will be sent to
you shortly.
 I do hope you'll visit New York in the near future. If so,
please let me know a little bit ahead of time so that I can make
suitable plans.
 Sincerely yours, Harold A. Abramson
June 17, 1958
Dear Betty:
 I read over your paper with a great deal of interest. You
have something very original, which certainly bears reporting at
the Rome meeting. I wonder if you would be kind enough to send a
one page abstract to Dr. C. Radouco-Thomas, Route des Acacias 44,
Geneva, Switzerland, for inclusion in the program. Please do this
as soon as possible. As soon as my secretary can retype the
corrections in your paper, I will mail it back to you. It will
only be necessary for you to hand in the final paper at the time
of the Rome meeting& 
 Sincrely yours, Hy
Hy Denber -- another wonderful mentor --for meetings and
later to help me write articles. Also, there was the excitement
and anticipation of meetings discussing what was closest to my
mind and heart -- and with colleagues who were involved in the
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same fascinating work!
There were so many reasons to go, but the trip wasn't
certain. I discussed the possibilities later with Humphry in a
letter dated June 10, 1958:
 & Hy Denber was here just after our return, too, and he also
watered the tender shoots of my wild hypotheses. In fact he was
so sweet and interested that he asked me to give a short paper on
levels of the unconscious in Rome this September. I have written
something up for him to see what he thinks although there is only
a meager possibility of my going. Will has no desire to go, and I
am most reluctant to go without him. Despite the fact that my
dearest friend is in Rome and has a place for me, and my brother
has offered me his Frankfurst apartment and his Thunderbird. It
would be lovely for me, for I could stop and see Sandison, visit
Frederking in Hamburg, and then meet all the people who will be
there in Rome. And the paper is such a one as would never dared
be given in the States; it takes Europe to cushion its iconoclasm.
It is much along the lines that I have written to you, toned down,
and short to the point of just over five pages... There are a few
changes I want to make in semantics at points where Sid objected
to my thesis and I realized that I had not put it precisely enough
to obviate criticisms such as his."
The trip to Rome was not at all certain, despite all the
possibilities of visiting friends, colleagues, and my brother.
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CHAPTER FIVE
Exploring the Mind Through Space: The Trip to Europe
13th February, 1958
Dear Dr. Eisner,
 Thank you very much for your most interesting letter of
January 25th, and for enclosing the details of your personal
thought on the question of LSD treatment. It is very encouraging
to me to find that other people are obtaining much the same
results as we are here with treatment& 
 I think the matter which most interested me in your
communication was the use of music to stimulate the response to
LSD& We should very much like to make use of this suggestion of
yours and will be glad to let you know what results are obtained.
You may recall that Kluver, in his book on mescaline, mentions
that music can stimulate the effects of mescaline.
 You might be interested to hear about the kind of problems
which are exercising our attention at the moment. The first
problem is the necessity to attempt to demonstrate conclusively
whether or not therapy assisted by LSD is an effective method of
treating the psychoneuroses. We have felt for some time that it
would be desirable to devise a controlled trial, but the
difficulties are formidable& 
 The second question concerns the terms in which the LSD
experience can be described. The difficulties arise because those
of us using LSD for therapy tend to describe its effects in
psycho-analytical terms, whilst physiologists describe these
effects in physiological terms, and psychiatrists, whose
orientation is more organic, tend to describe the effects in the
language of orthodox psychiatric symptomology. Thus the average
psychiatrist tends to look upon the LSD experience as a model
psychosis and the psychoanalyst thinks of the LSD phenomena as an
alteration of the ego and the manifestation of the unconscious and
therefore something which is rational and in some way different
from psychosis. The physiologist is naturally more concerned with
changes in the bodily state and he thinks of the LSD experience as
being an alteration of physiological and biochemical balance in
the body which reminds him of intoxication. It has for a long
time been my desire to try to introduce some terminology which
would describe mental processes in terms which could satisfy the
physiologist, the general psychiatrist and the psychoanalyst. If
this could be achieved much of the confusion which exists in
psychiatry would, I think, disappear.
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 The third problem concerns the mode of action of LSD. We
are increasingly noticing that after-reactions may occur some
months after the treatment has been concluded and in some cases
the patient has experienced very little in the way of LSD
phenomena until several treatments have been given& 
 It will be a great pleasure to hear from you again.
 Yours Sincerely, R. A. Sandison
Since there were only a handful of us working with LSD as a
therapeutic tool, it seemed very important for me to make the trip
to Rome, and on the way to try and visit as many researchers who
were using LSD as possible. The correspondence with Ron Sandison
put Powick number one on the agenda, and going to England may well
have turned the decision about making the trip at all. But it was
a pretty extravagant ambition, and just a little unrealistic to
try to manage to visit everyone on the way to Rome. After all,
there was only so much time for a wife and mother leaving family [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]