Hallucinogens: antidepressants hype, cubed (2023)
Such hype involves substances furthermore that by their very nature cannot be blinded or masked in rigorous clinical studies – think of masking or blinding a study participant for an hallucinogen – and about which the political hype is very high instead. At the end of each study, participants should routinely be asked a simple…
St. Matthew 5:22, “Whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire” (2022)
“But I say unto you, That whosoever
is angry with his brother without a cause
shall be in danger of judgment : and
whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca,
shall be in danger of the council : but
whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be
in danger of…
‘Geo’, ‘bio’ and ‘psy’ politics (2021)
At present the first traceable use of the term psychopolitics is by the German jurist expert in international law Heinrich Rogge in Psychopolitics and the problem of the leader (Psychopolitik und Führerproblem, 1925).
Rogge’s prominence is also testified by the reviews that at least from 1934 to 1937 his writings on Hitler and on…
Totalitarian “medicine”. George F. Will in the Washington Post, 1987 (2022)
“The Soviet regime applies ‘scientific socialism’, within which psychiatry has a special place.”
“Historian Paul Johnson notes that in 1919 the Moscow Revolutionary Tribunal sentenced an anticommunist leader to treatment in a sanatorium.”
“Glasnost has not involved the release of any dissident from a psychiatric ‘hospital’.”
“Neal Ascherson, in the New York Review of…
‘Entheogens’ and ‘The Road to Eleusis’ (2022)
“When the recent surge of recreational use of so-called ‘hallucinogenic’ or ‘psychedelic’ drugs first came to popular attention in the early 1960’s, it was commonly viewed with suspicion and associated with the behavior of deviant or revolutionary groups.”
“Not only is ‘psychedelic’ an incorrect verbal formation, but it has become so invested with connotations of…
‘Hallucinogens, not psychedelics’. A letter to the Editor of The New England Journal of Medicine (2021)
“Narcotics that induce hallucinations are variously called hallucinogens (hallucination generators), psychotomimetics (psychosis mimickers), psychotaraxics (mind disturbers), and psychedelics (mind manifesters).
No one term fully satisfies scientists, but hallucinogens comes closest. Psychedelic is most widely used in the United States, but it combines two Greek roots incorrectly, is biologically unsound, and has acquired popular meanings…
Leading London psychiatric hospital starts a partnership with Nasdaq-listed hallucinogens company (2022)
“South London and Maudsley has announced a new partnership to launch The Centre for Mental Health Research and Innovation to accelerate psychedelic research and develop new models of care for mental health in the UK.
Working together with the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King’s College London, and COMPASS Pathways, a mental…
Roots of Polish psychiatry (2022)
“The roots of Freemasonry, one of the most important cultural and social phenomena of modern times, are clearly European, but the origins of this fraternal organization are as obscure as they are legendary.”
“There has been very little or no research so far into the impact of the Masonic ideas of tolerance, freedom, equality…
‘The Last King of America’ and proto-psychiatry (2022)
“Though the incapacity of the King had been discussed in Parliament […] the British Constitution (was) not merely shaken, it (was) dissolved, and the reign (was) given to every revolutionary projector, who may seek to raise himself hereafter upon the ruins of his country,” and the situation makes “the sovereign a slave of his servants.”…
Fanon, Third World revolutionary and psychiatrist between Moscow and Washington, D.C. (2022)
“Frantz Fanon’s psychiatric career was crucial to his thinking as an anti-colonialist writer and activist. Much of his iconic work was shaped by his experiences working in hospitals in France, Algeria and Tunisia. [His psychiatric writing] from 1951 to 1960 in tandem with his political work reveals much about how Fanon’s thought developed, showing that,…
Biden: “A phenomenal negative psychological impact that CoViD has had on the public psyche” (2022)
“As Vivek Murthy, the Surgeon General, points out, I think one of the significant things we are going to find ten years from now is a phenomenal negative psychological impact that CoViD has had on the public psyche.
And so you have an awful lot of people who are, notwithstanding the fact that things…
If political psychology becomes epidemiology (2020)
As the great doctor Rudolf Virchow used to say “politics is medicine on a large scale”.
‘Structures of Capital’: Centre d’étude des problèmes humains, CEPH (2022)
“Coutrot was probably the first French businessman to perceive the possible use of psychology and sociology in business.”
“This was the spirit in which he created the Centre d’Etude des Problèmes Humains, CEPH, in association with the writer Aldous Huxley, the archeologist Robert Francillon, and the economist Georges Guillaume. Hyacinthe Dubreuil, Jean Ullmo, Alfred…
Huxley’s introduction to the Bhagavad-Gita (2022)
“Man possesses a double nature, a phenomenal ego and an eternal Self, which is the inner man, the spirit, the spark of divinity within the soul.”
“The evil, folly and ignorance which constitute the thing we call our personality and provent us from becoming aware of the spark of divinity illuminating the inner man.”
“The…
Charles Reade, the Medico-Psychological Association, and “conspiracy theory” (2021)
“The theory of Dr. Sankey – the President concluded – as to the manner in which these injuries to the chest occurred in asylums deserved our careful attention. It was at least more plausible that the conspiracy theory of Mr. Charles Reade, and the precautionary measure suggested by Dr. Sankey of using a padded waistcoat…
Eugen Bleuler and the influence of the Enlightenment (2021)
“A liberal revival movement, under the influence of the French Revolution, began in Switzerland too.”
“The Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler coined several terms such as ‘schizophrenia’, ‘schizoid’, ‘autism’, depth psychology and what Sigmund Freud called “Bleuler’s happily chosen term ‘ambivalence’.”
“He had little interest in the Church and religion. Both Eugen and Hedwig Bleuler didn’t usually go to Church,…
Lady Ida Darwin and the ‘Cambridge Association for the Care of the Feeble-Minded’ (2021)
“In 1912 the Association, jointly with Cambridge University Eugenics Society, held a meeting in the Guildhall, where Ellen Pinsent read a paper on ‘Mental Defect and its Social Dangers’.”
“Since its formation in 1914 the Central Association for Mental Welfare has on numerous occasion drawn public attention to the social problem presented by mental deficiency and to…
“My first audience.” Freud and the genesis of ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’ (2021)
“An audience that had greeted, debated, and discussed Freud’s theoretical construction of psychoanalytic psychology, often before he published the results.”
‘World Revolutionary Elites’, MIT 1965 – book covers (2021)
Contents of such volume and the two book covers of the hardback 1965 and paperback 1966 editions are presented. The importance and “rediscovery” of such book in PsyPolitics is motivated by the extraordinary concordance with some of the themes present in today’s transforming global politics, currently in mass and digital media, as well as in…
‘Russian Psychiatry – Its Historical and Ideological Background’, Zilboorg 1942 (2021)
“Alcoholism in Tsarist Russia was as typical and chronic a disease as was Tsardom itself.”
“Since the Soviet Revolution, psychiatry has become a branch of public health when it is not a field of laboratory research. What is known here as “mental hygiene” has become the chief field of Russian psychiatric endeavor.”
“The whole…
The “prodigious transfer.” From outside to inside, anti-politics (2020)
Psychiatrization of politics and Globalist Revolution
A new global psychiatric power? ‘CNN Talk Show’ – 1/13 (2021)
For Dr. Frances, who was claiming that we should discuss politics instead of psychiatry, language was moving from political to psychological metaphorical, while for Dr. Lee language was moving directly from political to literal technical psychological language and concepts, used to discuss a political theme. Both psychiatrists were moving, despite specific content discussed, language to…
‘World Revolutionary Elites’, MIT 1965 (2021)
“Parallel with these events is the perfecting of conditioning procedures, with or without the aid of drugs and hypnosis. The abolition of privacy – already well along in our day – is placing potent instruments of control in the hands of elites who may see an opportunity to consolidate their position by policing the population…
“What benefit does Russia derive from this Institute?” Tsar Nicholas II on the Psycho-Neurological Institute (2021)
The last Emperor of Russia and Vladimir Bekhterev’s Psycho-Neurological Institute revolutionaries.
The Lancet’s Editor-in-Chief: “We will be transformed into biopolitical citizens” (2021)
Horton, while clearly and unmistakably espousing a globalist and technocratic view, at the same time introduces themes from an author such as Foucault – who worked largely on topics related to psychology and psychiatry – and even appears to criticize the dangers of technocracy at the end of his book. The risk of recuperation -…
‘Psychologie’, ‘politique’. Encyclopédie, 1751-1765 (2021)
“PSYCHOLOGY, the doctrine of the soul is only a part of Pneumatology or the doctrine of spirits, which is itself only a part of Metaphysics.”
“POLITICS, Political philosophy is that which teaches men to behave with prudence, either at the head of a state or at the head of a family.”
Origins of the cyber-psychedelic subculture (2021)
In this article, two covers are presented from conferences proceedings sponsored by the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, about Cybernetics – 1953 Macy Conferences – and Neuropharmacology – 1955 Neuropharmacological Conferences, in which U.S. neurophysiologist and behavioural scientist Ralph Waldo Gerard proposed the term ‘psychotomimetic’.
‘Pneumadelic’? Osmond, 1957: “my own preference being ‘psychelytic’, or ‘psychedelic’ ” /3 (2021)
“There is one golden rule that should be applied in working with model psychoses. One should start with oneself.”
“Our psychotomimetics resemble the hypothetical endotoxin that Carl Jung called toxin-X and that we have called M (mescalinelike) substance.”
Osmond views raise an interesting paradox of experience over logos: if in order to discuss rationally…
‘Freud of the Rings’ (2021)
“In her book The Secret Ring: Freud’s Inner Circle and the Politics of Psychoanalysis, Phyllis Grosskurth explains that around 1912, Freud’s primary disciple and intellectual heir, Carl Jung, split with his mentor and began outlining his own theories which deviated from Freud’s work.
Freud, hoping to keep a grip on the emerging field of…
Karl Gustav Jung, the grandfather (2021)
“C.G. had a difficult relationship with his father but felt a strong rapport with his grandfather Karl Gustav Jung, even though he died before C.G.’s birth.”
‘Pneumadelic’? Osmond, 1957: “my own preference being ‘psychelytic’, or ‘psychedelic’ ” /2 (2021)
“No account of model psychoses would be complete that did not relate those that are induced chemically to those induced by other means, such as the reduced or specialized environments described by Heron, Bexton, and Hebb and by Lilly. These specialized environments have been used since antiquity.”
“The substances in question can be used to…
‘Pneumadelic’? Osmond, 1957: “my own preference being ‘psychelytic’, or ‘psychedelic’ ” (2021)
The broader political meaning of these substances was stated by Osmond from the very birth of the word ‘psychedelic’.
‘Psychelytic’ would appear to be in line with a Gnostic worldview – as presented by Eric Voegelin – requiring the dissolution or disintegration of the psyche. However, instead of psychedelic, for the pneuma to be revealed…
‘The Birth of “Psychedelic”,’ 1981 (2021)
“For most of their history, they have been mysterious, dangerous substances and must be treated respectfully.”
‘Psychiatry’ and ‘antipsychiatry’ (2021)
The word ‘psychiatry’ was coined in 1808 by a German Doctor, Christian Reil, and the word ‘antipsychiatry’ was coined a century later in 1908 by another German Doctor, Bernhard Beyer.
For the first time here – and by way of two portraits – the inventors of the two words are presented together.
‘Life in a Technocracy’, 1933: a soviet of technicians… in America? /14 (2021)
“Probably the one event capable of instigating so fundamental a change would be a major collapse. Only if the present producing and distributing apparatus should definitely break down, only if hunger and cold should spur the minds of a majority of the nation into unaccustomed activity, could a revolution conflicting with nearly every current belief…
‘Life in a Technocracy’, 1933: a soviet of technicians… in America? /13 (2021)
“There is no a priori reason why a sustained, even intelligent, study of the phenomena which induce these visions cannot eventually permit us to attain them at will.” “And when a being is in possession of them, he knows or thinks he knows the meaning of life and thus, as a secondary benefit, reduces, by…
‘Life in a Technocracy’, 1933: a soviet of technicians… in America? /12 (2021)
“Society since the beginning has discouraged by means of church, school, and statutory restrictions all experimentation in the domain of spiritual living. The consequence has been a stultification of the intellect, a frustration of the emotions, and a damming up of nervous energy which is bringing many people to the verge of a nervous breakdown.…
‘Psyspeak’ on PsyPolitics and ‘therapy-speak’ on The New Yorker (2021)
In the summer of 2019, I proposed the use of the terms “psyspeak” or “ideopathological lexicon” to mean psychologized as well as medicalized lexicon used outside of the clinical context especially when applied to the wider societal and political world, during a talk at the Royal College of Psychiatrists in London.
On the 26th of…
‘Life in a Technocracy’, 1933: a soviet of technicians… in America? /11 (2021)
“As a last measure the energy certificate” – a measure reminding of today’s Chinese ‘social credit’ – “could be cancelled. This punishment should prove efficacious in most cases. When an individual proved obstinately recalcitrant for obscure reasons, the psychiatrists would attempt to unravel the trouble. In no case should real punishment, such as solitary confinement…
‘Life in a Technocracy’, 1933: a soviet of technicians… in America? /10 (2021)
“Human energy, applied to finding ways of life that satisfy, to creating values which uplift the spirit, may improve the lot of man on earth as emphatically in the inner psychic sphere as man’s genius, directed toward conquering the outer material world, has ameliorated the conditions of his physical existence.”
‘Life in a Technocracy’, 1933: a soviet of technicians… in America? /9 (2021)
“Man and his environment act upon each other. Both are altered in the process.” “Some men work upon the external world. The remolding of the earth’s crust in order to make it more congenial to human life, and the use of natural materials to satisfy physical needs are functions of men of action.” “Other men…
‘Life in a Technocracy’, 1933: a soviet of technicians… in America? /8 (2021)
“To avoid an enormous increase in discontent and misery of the psychological variety, the consequence of multiplying the individual’s leisure, provision must be made for pleasure stimulation. The intermediate period would be particularly difficult.” “The control of anything the appeal of which is subjective, such as the theater, or painting, should not be entrusted to…
‘Life in a Technocracy’, 1933: a soviet of technicians… in America? /7 (2021)
“One cannot maintain an ethic on a transient certificate of service entitling the possessor to a certain quantity of energy. Ethics requires at least the illusion of eternality. Ethics deprived of the immortal dollar might again interest itself primarily in spiritual values.” “During the period in which the nature of man was adjusting itself to…
‘Life in a Technocracy’, 1933: a soviet of technicians… in America? /6 (2021)
“Some individuals consider periodical health examination an invasion of their private rights; but such invasions are not resented long.” “It is only the suspiciousness of the poor, whom experience teaches to expect no good of the unknown, which makes them recalcitrant to medical advice.” “With doctors assuming the intimate role of family adviser, mental defectives…
‘Life in a Technocracy’, 1933: a soviet of technicians… in America? /5 (2021)
“In a technocracy, the separation of private and public function is clearly defined.” “The alterations in structure are radical but simple. First the present tendency to merge the competing units in each industry must be carried to completion.” “Corporate monopolies would be the government.” “A most undemocratic system!”
‘Life in a Technocracy’, 1933: a soviet of technicians… in America? /4 (2021)
“Man automatically attaches to his ego extraneous elements and calls them his”
‘Life in a Technocracy’, 1933: a soviet of technicians… in America? /3 (2021)
“Six thousand years have been required to harness the forces of nature. Will another six thousand years be necessary to check the forces which have impelled society to found its faith in greed? Economic competition, the free-for-all, called capitalism, is now breeding a condition which is imperiling the complicated structure and the very civilization of…
‘Life in a Technocracy’, 1933: a soviet of technicians… in America? /2 (2021)
“The sole function of conventional politics would be “showmanship” to keep the public amused: “receiving distinguished guests, laying corner stones, making speeches about the rights of man, American initiative, justice. Its offices would be elective, thereby titillating the egos of those who like to think they are running things. Prominent clowns will, doubtless, be frequently…
Were the Vietnam war American generals mentally ill? Jervis on power and madness (2021)
“To attribute the behavior of generals or of the imperialists to a sort of monstrous irrationality commonly accepted as normal means not allowing oneself to consider that the logic of war, or of the bomb, or of hunger, is not the result of particular psychological processes, but of a social system which is neither mad…
‘Life in a Technocracy’, 1933: a soviet of technicians… in America? (2021)
“Americans, their faith in Capitalism unimpaired, deny the illness.”
The ‘Code of Nature’, 1755: collective feelings vs. individual reason (2020)
Loin que la raison nous éclaire Et conduise nos actions, Nous avons trouvé l’art d’en faire L’orateur de nos passions. C’est un Sophiste qui nous joue, Un vil complaisant qui se loue A tous les fous de l’univers, Qui s’habillant du nom de sages, La tiennent sans cesse à leurs gages Pour autoriser leurs travers.…
Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ epigraph and Bolshevik psychiatrist Bogdanov (2020)
The most famous novel by Aldous Leonard Huxley is opened with an epigraph by the man who described how psychiatrist Bogdanov – founder of Bolshevism with Lenin – was treating, surreptitiously, philosophical ideas he disagreed with as a form of mental illness.
Doctor Erasmus Darwin on ‘Cannabis’ (2020)
“Such plant grown in England shot from seed to 14 feet in five months.”
Voegelin’s “Science, Politics and Gnosticism” (2020)
“Gnostic man must carry on the work of salvation himself…. Through his psyche (“soul”) he belongs to the order, the nomos, of the world; what impels him toward deliverance is the pneuma (“spirit”).
The labor of salvation, therefore, entails the dissolution of the worldly constitution of the psyche and at the same time the…
NASDAQ, Oregon, and Washington D.C.: three steps towards 21st century cyber-psychedelic global capitalism (2020)
The cyber turn of 21st century capitalism is becoming more explicitly cyber-psychedelic, digital as well as hallucinogenic, working to modify common sense and our shared sense of reality.
A new global psychiatric power? Intro (2020)
More than one year ago I presented the talk “Are we witnessing the emergence of a new global psychiatric power?” at the Royal College of Psychiatrists in London, in the summer of 2019. The (anti)political, technocratic and revolutionary globalist agenda was clearly and unambiguously presented as the one that would have benefitted from phenomena and…
Paul Goodman, 1945: ‘The Political Meaning of Some Recent Revisions of Freud’ (2020)
“Is it possible to draw any other conclusion from this reasoning than that the goal of therapy is the smooth running of the social machine as it exists?” “And what familiar name shall we call a “therapy” that pretends to create harmony on a mass scale?” “The need does exist in its millions — and…
The economics of ‘ego death’ (2020)
According to Keynes “the essential characteristic of capitalism” is “the dependence upon an intense appeal to the money-making and money-loving instincts of individuals as the main motive force of the economic machine.” Keynes emphasized the role of the irrational in economic life and talked about “the Freudian theory of the love of money.”
‘CyPsy’ mind? Cyber super-ego and psychedelic id. Or digital surveillance, mass hallucinogens, and the new ‘black gold’ of the unconscious (2020)
In the CyPsy hypothesis on the mind, as the mind is currently transformed by cyber-psychedelic capitalism, the super-ego becomes largely externalized onto the surveillance digital system, the ego is dissolved, and the id becomes free of internal constraints only to be regulated by the external substitution of the super-ego, which is the digital panopticon of…
Huxley on Proust and psychology (2020)
“The invention and development of the modern science of psychology has made us regard as important and interesting a multitude of small odds and ends of thought, emotion and sensation which seemed to our ancestors almost negligible. They did not insist on the phenomena because they were interested primarily in what they regarded as the…
Trump, mass hallucinogens, and the cyber-psychedelic transformation of capitalism (2020)
“It was not exactly the emancipation demanded by Karl Marx, who, moreover, did not have the fancy to imagine that the result following industrial capitalism were the states altered by LSD” – Geminello Alvi, ‘Capitalism. Towards the Chinese ideal’ (2011)
“Simply a symbol of national solidarity, the first step towards wearing a uniform.” Orwell on civilians and gas masks (2020)
“As soon as war started, the carrying or not carrying of a gas mask assumed social and political implications…. The extent to which masks are carried will probably be a pretty good index of the impression the war news is making on the public.”
“The peace of Europe hangs on the electro-chemical system in that cranium!” (2020)
Harvard psychologist Murray about Hitler
Psychedelics. Or hallucinogens? (2020)
“What seems a god is actually a devil, what seems a liberation is in fact an enslavement” – Aldous Huxley
Trump, spectacle and psyspeak (2020)
“Zimbardo sees reality TV as a logical format for teaching psychology. “The reason reality TV is so popular is because to observe human behavior is fascinating,” he observed. “I spend my whole life doing this.”
Psychiatry, constitutional law, and political power in a 60s TV debate (2020)
“Would you let such an individual, just because he has the advantage of the Constitution, free in society to infect women, to invoke this delusional system on other people?”
Somalia, a case of reserpine depression (2010)
The patient had continued to take this drug without interruption and without further blood pressure checks and went into a state of so-called “reserpinization”.
The “ultimate revolution” (2019)
The last revolution will be psychedelic and will involve drugs. The prophecy of Aldous Huxley.
Joker: welcome to the era of global political psychiatry (2019)
Joker sanctions in global popular culture the citizen who becomes patient.
Cocaine and Morgan: the lesson of Freud (2010)
Morgan, an Italian pop musician, in an interview with Max magazine in 2010 revealed using cocaine and in particular crack as an antidepressant, claiming that Sigmund Freud also prescribed it for such purpose.
Are we witnessing the emergence of a new global psychiatric power? (2019)
The current public psychiatrization of “the most powerful man in the world,” as the media often describe the President of the United States of America, could be seen as a new paradigm shift in contemporary power.
In addition to the increasing use of a psychologized lexicon in everyday speech, a role might be played…
The political career of Mao, Yale and the “reorientation of thought” (2020)
“Between 1919 and 1920, future Chairman Mao Zedong had several encounters with the school: he edited its student magazine, re-focusing it on “thought reorientation,” and operated a bookshop out of its medical college”.
Viktor Frankl: drugs, LSD and subjective vs. objective meaning (2020)
“One of Frankl’s main topics in the 1960s. When teaching at Harvard University in 1961, he was among few who opposed the experimental use of LSD proposed by Dr. Timothy Leary, stating that “freedom is only one side of a phenomenon whose other side is responsibility.”
In Pisa, professor Vaccà diagnosed Shelley’s drug habit (2020)
“At Eton, after an illness, the doctor who attended him took a liking of him, and Shelley borrowed his medical books and was deeply interested in chemistry from that time, and, unlike doctors, he experimented with some of the drugs on himself.”
From citizens to patients: a threat to resist (2020)
Pandemic Lectures at the International University College of Turin http://www.iuctorino.it/
Ugo Mattei & Federico Soldani, May 4, 2020
“The decline of law as a tool for social control and its supplanting by technological, mental, and medical management aimed at preventing deviant behavior, with nary a concern for such substitution’s deleterious effects.”
Trump, his worst critics, and diagnosis outside of a clinical context (2020)
Opposites playing the same game ?