Tim Leary Essay Research Paper Timothy Leary — страница 2

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scientific credibility. Shortly after, David McClelland, the director of the Harvard Center for Personality Research, was in Florence and interviewed Tim for a teaching post. During the interview Tim explained his theory on existential transaction, informing that the whole relationship between patient/therapist should be changed to a more egalitarian information exchange. McClelland was impressed saying that “There is no question that what your advocating is going to be the future of American psychology. You’re spelling out front-line tactics. You’re exactly what we need to shake things up at Harvard.” In the spring of 1960 Tim started teaching at Harvard. That summer he went on vacation to Cuernavaca Mexico. An anthropologist from the University of Mexico, who was a

frequent visitor to the villa where Tim was staying, offered some of the religious mushrooms. Remembering Barron’s stories, he tried them hoping they could be the key to psychological transformation. They had that effect. “I gave way to delight, as mystics have for centuries when they peeked through the curtains and discovered that this world-so manifestly real-was actually a tiny stage set constructed by the mind. We discover abruptly that everything we accept as reality is just social fabrication.” He was so amazed by the experience that he persuaded Harvard to allow him to conduct research with psilocybin. Along with Barron, Tim conducted the first studies with grad students at Harvard. The test expanded into Concord state prison where Tim and some grad students were

allowed to administer psilocybin to selected prisoners. They formed support groups for the inmates when they got out and had a 90% success rate at helping these people stay out of prison. His experiments also included a group of divinity students on Good Friday. The aim was to see if chemical mind alteration could produce a more mystical experience. The results were clear. The students who took the drug experienced what they saw as true spiritual experiences, while the ones who took nothing did not. The results seemed terrific but Tim never got the response that was appropriate. The thought of people being able to directly communicate with God was very unappealing to the religious institutions of the country. Also at Harvard Tim met Aldus Huxley and Allen Ginsburg where they

started turning on notable intellectuals such as William Burroughs, Thelonious Monk and Jack Kerouac. Huxley suggested that the drugs should only be used by artists and the elite. Tim believed psychedelics should be shared with everyone and thought that the non-elite would benefit most from its use. Barron went back to Berkeley and Tim started working closer with an assistant professor named Richard Alpert. Then, a British philosophy student named Michael Hollingshead called Tim with revelations about LSD and showed up at Harvard with a mayonnaise jar of powdered sugar laced with it. This was an incredibly powerful hallucinogen discovered by Swiss Scientist Dr. Albert Hoffman in the 1940’s. When Tim took LSD he said it “was something different. It was the most shattering

experience of my life.” Many of the other professors became uneasy with Tim administering drugs to students. So McClelland called a staff meeting early in1962. It turned into a scalding indictment of Tim’s work and they insisted that the drugs be given back to the University?s control and that there be more supervision of his research. More controversy erupted when the Narcotics Bureau got involved and Tim learned that the CIA was aware of their activities. Moreover, many of the undergraduates who couldn’t get into the research program obtained the drugs through other means and started their own experiments. Many of the parents were becoming alarmed finding out that their children, who they had enrolled in school to become the power elite, where seeing God and going to

India. This put pressure on the College and in 1963 Tim and Alpert were “relieved” from their positions at Harvard. Leary and Alpert didn’t think much of their dismissal and in the spring of 1962, Leary and Alpert continued their research of psychedelics in a mansion not far from New York known as Millbrook. Baroque on the outside and Middle Eastern on the inside, this was a place for the hip and elite to get away for the weekend and test the boundaries of their own souls. In 1964 Tim was married again for a short time and while he was away from Millbrook some changes occurred. Tim thought Alpert let the place get out of hand and they had a split in their relationships. Alpert changed his name to Baba Ram Dass and became a respected teacher of Eastern Disciplines. Needing