Psychedelics in an Age of Freud and Pharmacology: What Happened Before, What is Happenning Now, Why it Matters

In the 1940s, drug company Sandoz sponsored a study of LSD that came to the conclusion that LSD was a drug making normal people temporarily schizophrenic. Sandoz decided to promote LSD as a research drug for experimental investigations of schizophrenia. But the company also suggested that the psychoanalysts also take another look at LSD, noting evidence that it could be therapeutic. This event tracks the contradictions and ambiguities structuring mid-20th-century clinical conversations about the meaning and uses of psychedelics. A lofty goal: To identify legacies from an earlier era and highlight the ways they shape current efforts and conversations.