L’Allegoria del Buon Governo e’ anche la rappresentazione che si trova in apertura del sito e del blog PsyPolitics sin dalla sua nascita nel giugno 2020.
Gli anni in cui l’affresco venne commissionato e realizzato erano anche gli anni in cui si stava diffondendo la peste nera. Come si legge ad esampio su Wikipedia, accesso 16 agosto 2021 “una pandemia, quasi sicuramente di peste, generatasi in Asia centrale settentrionale durante gli anni trenta del XIV secolo e diffusasi in Europa a partire dal 1346, dando origine alla cosiddetta seconda pandemia di peste.”
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Nel Prologo del libro ci viene spiegato che “Nel Medioevo il diritto di essere rappresentati spettava abitualmente a protagonisti della storia della Chiesa oppure a laici di primo piano di cui conosciamo il nome e i fatti. La grande novita’ degli affreschi di Lorenzetti e’ che i rappresentanti sono invece tutti anonimi, persone comuni che svolgono occupazioni comuni.”
Sul sito del Comune di Siena si puo’ leggere che “Si tratta del primo ciclo profano della storia dell’arte e si sviluppa per vari gradi descrittivi con una meticolosa determinazione didascalica, come a dire che non vi dovesse essere alcun dubbio sulla comprensione del messaggio proposto.
L’Allegoria del Buon Governo “si basa sul concetto della divisione dei poteri tra il “Governo“, raffigurato attraverso un vecchio saggio vestito dei colori di Siena (bianco e nero), e la “Giustizia” dotata della simbolica bilancia. I due protagonisti dell’ amministrazione dello Stato agiscono sullo stesso piano, pur lavorando in ambiti diversi.”
“La sala incarna appieno la mentalità dei Nove, la forma di governo che più a lungo e meglio resse a Siena, dal 1287 al 1355, garantendole uno sviluppo economico e artistico con pochi eguali al mondo.
I Nove incaricarono nel 1337, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, che dopo la partenza di Simone Martini per la corte papale ad Avignone, era rimasto il principale interprete della Scuola senese, di decorare l’ambiente.
In esso i Nove ricevevano gli ospiti, volendo che fosse immediatamente chiaro quali erano gli ideali che ispiravano il loro agire.”
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“Come il fratello Pietro” – si legge sulla pagina Wikipedia in italiano – “anche Ambrogio Lorenzetti morì nel 1348” – anno in cui Boccaccio inizia la stesura del Decameron – “per la terribile ondata di pestilenza che decimò le popolazioni dell’Europa occidentale. Rimane infatti un testamento, scritto dall’artista il 9 giugno 1348, in cui Ambrogio dispone, in maniera convulsa e in lingua volgare (in genere si usavano convenzionali formule in lingua latina per i documenti notarili), che tutti i suoi averi andassero in eredità alla Compagnia della Vergine Maria, temendo la morte imminente di sé stesso, della moglie e delle sue tre figlie. Nel 1348 e nel 1349 alcuni beni di Ambrogio Lorenzetti risultano effettivamente venduti dalla Compagnia, potendosi concludere che la peste abbia davvero decimato la sua famiglia.”
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(1 – primo articolo di una serie)
[Nell’immagine all’inizio dell’articolo la cosiddetta Allegoria del Mal Governo – “come ancora impropriamente si dice”, ci informa l’autrice del libro – anche conosciuta come Allegoria della Tirannide]
‘The Lancet’, besides being one of the oldest and most prominent medical journals, has been traditionally the most cited British medical journal and the second most cited peer-reviewed journal in medicine worldwide, according for instance to the bibliographic metric called “impact factor”.
The second edition includes an Introduction and an Epilogue in addition to the seven chapters already present in the first one as well as topics previously largely or entirely absent such as an emphasis on mental health and psychiatry – see among other examples Horton mentioning of Levy’s “The virus in the age of madness” (2020) – and a final emphasis on “technocracy” a topic previously completely absent that now takes the last four pages of the book and grand finale.
The new Introduction, ends with the quotation of a 1960 lecture delivered in London by French sociologist Raymond Aron entitled “The Dawn of Universal History” and a stance that clarifies Horton’s ideological framework:
“He argued” – Horton writes – “that countries were converging towards one and the same history – a history in which all humankind had access to the same tools. The spread of this industrial society meant, Aron claimed, that the world was moving from a time characterised by division to one defined by unification – ‘the beginning of a united mankind engaged in the only worthwhile struggle, the one for mastery over nature and the wellbeing of all humanity.’ His optimism was premature. The past sixty years have seen neither the diminution of conflict nor the erasure of ideology. But perhaps COVID-19, an acute global phenomenon, will usher in a single universal history. Not the end of history, but the beginning of a new history – one in which humanity will join and act together for the interests of all in the name of all. A dreamy and quixotic imagining? No, I think necessary and inevitable.”
The global nature of the phenomenon under examination is clear since chapter one “From Wuhan to the World”. The next three chapters are about how the 2020 coronavirus pandemic could have happened: “Why Were We Not Prepared?”, then “Science: The Paradox of Success and Failure”, and “First Lines of Defence”.
In the fifth chapter entitled “The Politics of COVID-19” the topic of politics is explicitly introduced. Chapter six “The Risk Society Revisited” is entitled after an expression initially used during the 80s and 90s including by sociologist Ulrich Beck in his “Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity” (a title similar to Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World Revisited”, an essay in which Huxley re-examined his 1932 dystopia, some thirty years later). The term ‘risk society’ is usually also associated with Anthony Giddens of the London School of Economics who was also a co-founder of Polity Press, the publisher of Horton’s book.
A relevant concept not discussed by Horton but present in Beck’s work was that of “cognitive sovereignty”, which is that in a complex interconnected world the ordinary citizen would have to rely more and more on the knowledge of experts instead of his or her own more directly appraised knowledge. A concept that in my view could possibly be better expressed not by resorting to the idea of ‘cognition’ but to that of ‘knowledge’.
Finally Horton warns us about a future that in his book sounds certain in the seventh chapter “Towards the Next Pandemic”.
If he is pointing in the right direction here – as other well connected people appear to reiterate recently – are we then going to be governed not via democratic politics anymore but via medicine and “public health” broadly speaking, including via epidemiology and psychology?
In the first, June 2020, edition there was no Epilogue which instead is present in the January 2021 second edition: in this update the topics of mental health and psychology as well as of technocracybecome prominent.
Criticism of Horton’s article was published in PsyPolitics at the beginning of November 2020 in an article – about a 2019 London talk of mine on the rise of medical and psychological global power – largely centred on technocracy: “the (anti)political, technocratic and revolutionary globalist agenda was clearly and unambiguously presented as the one that would have benefitted from phenomena and discourses of mass global psychiatrization. The prospects of ‘technocracy, techno-fascism, scientific dictatorship or totalitarianism‘ were prefigured as the possible outcomes.”
Horton, by writing about Foucault, indirectly highlights the fact that in the Anglophone world Foucault is completely ignored in medical circles. In my experience, for instance, when I sent to some colleagues in academic medicine in Boston the aforementioned 2019 London talk, although the content was largely appreciated, the choice of a Foucauldian approach was criticized as “post modern.” This is in my view a label usually employed, especially in the U.S., to disqualify Foucault’s work as if he did not believe in a distinction between true vs. false facts, seen as basic in modern science in the Anglo-American medical world.
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From my perspective, about the knowledge of Foucault’s oeuvre in the Anglo-American medical world, it took me twenty years in the medical and scientific fields, including doctoral studies in Boston and work at the FDA in the Washington, D.C. area as a medical reviewer and epidemiologist, to properly encounter Foucault’s work and to appreciate its relevance to modern medicine and politics. Previously I only heard occasionally about his debate with Chomsky or about his ‘History of Madness’, however usually presented as boring or invalid. I found this hard to believe, especially when I came to know that Foucault is one of the most cited – if not, depending on the metric, the most cited – authors of the 20th century overall. Similar metrics, more recently in 2019, revealed a similar trend.
My encounter with Foucault’s work was fortuitous: when I started working in London, arriving from the U.S., as I described how psychiatry worked in the clinic to someone who was in media studies, a recommendation was given to me to read some of Foucault’s work. The genealogical approach and also discourse analysis are two of the Foucauldian tools I have since found extraordinarily helpful. Indeed, Foucault did not attempt to develop a coherent methodology but by studying specific historical instances he aimed, in his own words, at providing “tools” for understanding.
Nowadays, during the past year and half, authors with no previous familiarity with Foucault’s work and ideas started talking – because of the coronavirus pandemic and especially because of the media, policy and governmental responses to it – about biopolitics. A concept that was mentioned by authors before Foucault but that he developed in his lectures series, such as “Society must be defended” and later “The birth of biopolitics.”
It is important to highlight – and this is remarkable in my view – that initially Foucault began to work on psychology and psychiatry. Indeed his very first publications were Maladie mentale et Personnalité (1954) and later his Folie et Déraison: histoire de la folie à l’âge classique (1961).
When I read his lectures on “Psychiatric Power” (1973-1974), published only in 2003 (and, by the way, its 2006 English translation included to my knowledge the very first English translation of Pinel openly talking about King George III of England – the “mad king” – after more than 200 years from the original in French, an observation that I am making here for the very first time) I found Foucault’s genealogical method quite helpful. He analyzed the texts of the first French psychiatrists – which is, practically speaking, of some of the most prominent very first psychiatrist tout court – showing how the discipline developed and how it could be seen primarily as a disciplinary technique which developed precisely at the opposite pole of surgery and pathological anatomy (eg, Bichat). Surgery started in his view as an effective body of knowledge, while psychiatry started out with the figure of the doctor and essentially without a medical body of knowledge.
Applying some of the concepts and tools derived from Foucault’s work to medicine of course would require a multidisciplinary approach. So probably no single expert or scholar might have all of the required historical and technical knowledge for Foucauldian studies to be better known, applied and appreciated in the larger medical anglophone community.
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Horton’s book is not only about medicine or public health. It has a political dimension and is situated in an ideological context in which, for instance, Horton informs the reader about how “at the Lancet, a COVID-19 Commission” was “led by the economist Jeff Sachs“.
Among other things, such as being a prominent economic adviser to several countries of the former Soviet Union or more recently to the Vatican, Jeffrey Sachs – an intellectual clearly informed by a globalist ideology – wrote in 2019 about politics and psychiatry in the second edition of the book “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump”:
“Those who pretend that we are in the realm of politics when we are really in the realm of psychopathology make the situation even more dangerous, because they will not be prepared while the future of the planet and the human race are at stake.”
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About twenty years ago, I can recall how refreshing was to read Dr. Horton’s critiques of conflicts of interest in medicine and medical journals and publications. However, judging from his current book, there appears to be no trace of such issue when clearly huge interests are at stake. Would now the discovery of an author such as Michel Foucault, promoted by Dr. Horton on the Lancet as well as in his latest book here reviewed, be a genuine change in perspective, or would it be more similar to what Guy Debord – author of ‘The Society of Spectacle’ and co-founder of the Situationist International – called recuperation?
Recuperation somehow means “the process by which politically radical ideas and images are twisted, co-opted, absorbed, defused, incorporated, annexed or commodified within media culture and bourgeois society, and thus become interpreted through a neutralized, innocuous or more socially conventional perspective. More broadly, it may refer to the cultural appropriation of any subversive symbols or ideas by mainstream culture.”
Horton ends its second 2021 edition of the book, as mentioned above, with a topic previously absent from the first edition, that of technocracy with a much stronger emphasis on topics related to mental health, madness, and psychiatry. Foucault not only started out his career publishing work about psychology, personality and madness, but he was also characterized by a political figure such as Brzezinsky in his 1969-1970 essay “Between Two Ages. America’s role in the technetronic era” in the following manner in relation to the concept of technocracy:
“Foucault‘s views, associated with a school of thought called “structuralism,” have been characterized by a critic as the ideology of contemporary technocracy, for Foucault sees man as the object of a process which deprives him of any autonomy and rules him impersonally, according to a structural dynamic.”
As already highlighted elsewhere in PsyPolitics, for Brzezinski, Foucault’s views could be used to understand at some level contemporary technocratic views.
So, 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 – of Foucauldian themes and tools radically challenging the rising ‘biomedical’ as well as ‘psy’ global power – into mainstream globalist and technocratic discourse is definitely present, in my view, in Horton’s latest book.
(1 – first of a series of articles)
[In the photo at the top, a cover of ‘The Lancet’ Vol. I, 1823]
[Questo breve scritto, tratto da un video del dicembre 2019 circolato tra diversi amici dell’autore per avere un parere e iniziare una discussione sul tema della psicologizzazione della politica, viene pubblicato qui per la prima volta oltre un anno e mezzo dopo nel luglio 2021.
Era inteso come introduzione per una discussione sul tema del rapporto tra psico-discipline e politica e in particolare sul ruolo della psicologizzazione dilagante nel discorso politico in Italia.
Il testo e’ la trascrizione da un breve video di circa tre minuti e mezzo realizzato il 28 dicembre 2019 in Italia.
“[…] Provero’ a spiegare perche’ e’ importante concentrare l’attenzione nel momento presente, siamo a fine 2019, sulla psicologizzazione della politica e del discorso politico.
Questa psicologizzazione si svolge in molti modi, puo’ essere sia una psicologizzazione vera e propria – dal termine psicologia – che una psichiatrizzazione – una disciplina collegata ma diversa che e’ la psichiatria, con una storia diversa e con degli scopi diversi dalla psicologia.
Oppure alle volte si utilizza anche un linguaggio e si utilizzano dei concetti che vengono dalla psicoanalisi.
Tutto questo e’ un fenomeno non del tutto nuovo, pero’ in anni recenti, diciamo piu’ o meno nel decennio passato, che sta per concludersi e soprattutto verso la fine di questo decennio, e io direi addirittura soprattutto in questi mesi, negli ultimi mesi del 2019, in Italia in particolar modo, perche’ all’estero era gia’ avvenuto prima, abbiamo assistito a un’ esplosione dei concetti psicologici, dell’uso di concetti psicologici, e psichiatrici addirittura, e psicoanalitici [in] politica.
Cosa si intende per politica? Diciamo che si intende sia i politici, le persone elette a livello locale, a livello nazionale, a livello regionale, a livello internazionale e quindi coloro che solitamente identifichiamo come politici, sia coloro che votano questi politici, quindi i cittadini, coloro che nel mondo moderno sono dei soggetti politici con una capacita’ di voto che nei duegento anni passati si e’ piano piano estesa quindi fino ad arrivare in molti paesi europei e cosiddetti occidentali al suffragio universale.
Perche’ sta avvenendo questa psicologizzazione o psichiatrizzazione della politica? E quali sono le funzioni di questa psicologizzazione e di questa psichiatrizzazione della politica?
E’ soltanto un caso che questa stia avvenendo? Le persone stanno impazzendo perche’ c’e’ una crisi? E’ per questo che si usano questi termini?
Io non credo che la spiegazione sia quest’ultima. Non credo che sia perche’ le persone stiano impazzendo, come invece il discorso dominante ci sta raccontando.
E quindi cerchero’ di spiegare […] un tema per volta, in modo semplice il piu’ possibile, perche’ tutto questo stia avvenendo.”
The following are the entries – with bold added for emphasis – for the terms ‘psychology’ and ‘politics’ in the Encyclopaedia (‘Encyclopédie’, in full Encyclopédie, Ou Dictionnaire Raisonné Des Sciences, Des Arts Et Des Métiers, in English “Encyclopaedia, or Classified Dictionary of Sciences, Arts, and Trades”) co-edited by Denis Diderot and Jean-Baptiste le Rond d’Alembert and published initially between 1751 and 1765.
Only the initial part of the entry for ‘politics’ is reported here, while the full entry for ‘psychology’ is reported. There are links to the original French version as well as to an English translation for ‘psychology’.
According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica online “the 18th-century French encyclopaedia that was one of the chief works of the Philosophes, men dedicated to the advancement of science and secular thought and the new tolerance and open-mindedness of the Enlightenment. The Encyclopédie was a literary and philosophical enterprise with profound political, social, and intellectual repercussions in France just prior to the Revolution. Its contributors were called Encyclopédistes.”
“The Encyclopédie was inspired by the success of Ephraim Chambers’ Cyclopaedia; or An Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (London, 1728). Indeed, the work originated in an abortive attempt to put out a five-volume French translation of Chambers’ Cyclopaedia.
When this project collapsed in 1745, its intended publisher, André Le Breton, immediately embarked on plans for an expanded Encyclopédie. He secured the services of the mathematician Jean d’Alembert in 1745 and of the translator and philosopher Denis Diderot in 1746 to assist in the project. In 1747 Diderot undertook the general direction of work on the Encyclopédie, except for its mathematical parts, which were edited by d’Alembert. (D’Alembert resigned in 1758.) Seventeen volumes of the Encyclopédie’s text were published between 1751 and 1765; 11 volumes of plates were also published between the years 1762 and 1772, making a total of 28 volumes. These were supplemented in 1776–77 by five more volumes — four of text and one of illustration plates — and by two volumes of index in 1780, all compiled under other editors, since Diderot had refused to edit the supplementary materials. These seven volumes, plus the 28 prepared by Diderot, constituted the first edition of the Encyclopédie in 35 folio volumes.”
We have already encountered the name of Diderot on PsyPolitics as a possible author of the ‘Code de la Nature’ of 1755.
“The group of writers that Diderot and d’Alembert assembled for the production of the Encyclopédie” – the Encyclopaedia Britannica online reports – “were at first relatively unknown, with the exception of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Baron d’Holbach. But as both the fame of the Encyclopédie and the attacks upon it grew, distinguished and expert contributors were attracted, including A.-R.-J. Turgot, Voltaire, J.-F. Marmontel, and Jacques Necker. Diderot himself contributed innumerable articles, especially on philosophy, social theory, and the trades, proving to be both an energetic general editor and the driving force behind the crisis-ridden project. It was he who compiled and supervised the preparation of the work’s 3,000 to 4,000 plates, many of which vividly illustrated industrial arts and processes.”
Montesquieu, who died in 1755 in Paris, left behind an unfinished essay on taste for the Encyclopédie of Diderot and D’Alembert. In his major work ‘De l’esprit des loix’ (‘The Spirit of the Laws’, 1748), he developed a theory of the separation of powers which “had an enormous impact on liberal political theory, and on the framers of the constitution of the United States of America.”
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PSYCHOLOGY(a), (Metaphysics) the part of Philosophy that deals with the human soul, defining its essence and accounting for its operations.
It can be divided into Empirical Psychology (or Experimental) and Theoretical Psychology.
The former draws on experience to develop its principles, by which it explains what takes place in the soul, while Theoretical Psychology, using these principles of experience to define the soul, infers then from this definition the diverse faculties and operations that befit the soul.
This double method, a posteriori and a priori combined, produces the most exact proof that anyone can claim.
Psychology contributes principles to various other parts of Philosophy: to natural law(b), to Natural Theology(c), to Practical Philosophy(d) and to Logic(e).
There is nothing more appropriate than the study of Psychology for fulfilling the most vivid of pleasures: a spirit that loves solid and useful knowledge. It’s the greatest delight to which man is susceptible here on Earth, consisting of the knowledge of the truth as it is bound to the practice of virtue; man cannot know how to arrive there without a prior knowledge of the soul, which is called to acquire this knowledge and to practice these virtues.
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(a) PSYCHOLOGY, in ordinary courses, the doctrine of the soul is only a part of Pneumatology or the doctrine of spirits, which is itself only a part of Metaphysics. But Mr. Wolff in the philosophical disposition of his course, made Psychology a distinct part of Philosophy, to which he devoted two volumes; one for Empyric Psychology; the other for Reasoned Psychology, & he placed this deal immediately after his Cosmology, because it follows principles for almost all the other parts, as the following notes justify it.
(b)Natural law. We demonstrate in natural law, what are the good and the bad actions. Now the reason for this qualification of actions can only be deduced from human nature, and in particular from the properties of the soul. Knowledge of the soul must precede the study of natural law.
(c)Natural Theology. We can only arrive at the notion of divine attributes by freeing up the notion of the properties of our soul, of its imperfections & its limitations. We must therefore begin by acquiring in Psychology, distinct ideas of what suits our soul, to abstract from them the general principles, which determine what suits all minds, and therefore God.
(d)Practical Philosophy. The main object of Ethics or Morality is to engage men to practice virtues, and to flee vices, that is to say, to determine in general the appetites of the soul in a suitable manner. Who, then, does not see that this determination of appetites requires that we distinctly represent the substance in which they reside?
(e)Logic. Although for particular reasons, we have kept to Logic the first rank among the parts of Philosophy, it does not fail to be subordinated to Psychology, as long as it borrows from it principles without which it could not make sense of the difference of ideas, nor to establish the rules of reasoning which are founded on the nature and the operations of the soul.
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POLITICS, (Philosophy) 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.
This important part of Philosophy was not neglected by the ancients, and especially by the school of Aristotle. This philosopher raised at the court of Philippe, and witness to those great political blows which made this king so famous, did not miss such a favorable opportunity to penetrate the secrets of this science so useful and so dangerous; but he did not amuse himself, like Plato his master, by giving birth to an imaginary republic, nor by making laws for men who do not exist: on the contrary, he made use of the light which he drew from the familiar trade which he had with Alexander the Great, with Antipater, and with Antiochus, to prescribe laws in conformity with the state of men, and the nature of each government. See its morality & its politics.
However estimable the precepts one finds in the writings of this philosopher, it must be admitted that most of them would not be well suited to governing the states which now share the world. The face of the earth has undergone so many revolutions, and customs have changed so greatly that what was very wise at the time when Aristotle was writing would be nothing less than that if it were now put into practice. And this is undoubtedly the reason why of all the parts of Philosophy, politics is that which has undergone the most changes, & why, among the great number of authors who have treated of this science, there is none who did not propose a different way of governing.
We will only speak here of those of the moderns who have made themselves most famous for their works on politics.
Extract from the frontispiece of the Encyclopédie (1772). It was drawn by Charles-Nicolas Cochin and engraved by Bonaventure-Louis Prévost. The work is laden with symbolism: The figure in the centre represents truth—surrounded by bright light (the central symbol of the Enlightenment). Two other figures on the right, reason and philosophy, are tearing the veil from truth – Encyclopédie – Wikipedia
The word ‘cybernetics’, according to the popular online encyclopaedia Wikipedia (accessed 18th June 2021, emphasis added) “comes from Ancient Greek κυβερνητική (kybernētikḗ), meaning “governance”, i.e., all that are pertinent to κυβερνάω (kybernáō), the latter meaning “to steer, navigate or govern”, hence κυβέρνησις (kybérnēsis), meaning “government”, is the government while κυβερνήτης (kybernḗtēs) is the governor, pilot, or “helmsperson” of the “ship.”
French physicist and mathematician André-Marie Ampère first coined the word “cybernetique” in his 1834 essay Essai sur la philosophie des sciences to describe the science of civil government. The term was used by Norbert Wiener, in his book Cybernetics, to define the study of control and communication in the animal and the machine. In the book, he states: “Although the term cybernetics does not date further back than the summer of 1947, we shall find it convenient to use in referring to earlier epochs of the development of the field.”
The word ‘psychedelic’ was coined by British psychiatrist Humphry Osmond, working in North America, in a rhyme exchange with writer Aldous Leonard Huxley and presented for the first time at a conference in 1957, as described and discussed in four previous articles (1, 2, 3, and 4) in PsyPolitics.
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The two concepts and words ‘cybernetics’ and ‘psychedelic’ came to be increasingly associated to the point of allowing coining the term ‘cyberdelic’, which I prefer to spell out for clarity as ‘cyber-psychedelic’, to characterize the cyberdelic subculture.
Such cyberdelic or cyber-psychedelic subculture, “of which former Harvard psychologist Timothy Leary became a guru, is about associating hallucinogens and digital technologies in various ways conceptually as well as practically (see, for instance, Leary’s 1990 From Psychedelics to Cybernetics, lecture tour or the Lecture at Sonoma State University in 1992 From LSD to Virtual Reality).”
In his 1957 paper in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences – as noted in a previous article in PsyPolitics – in which the name ‘psychedelic’ was first presented in print, Osmond noted:
“Heinrich Klüver (“a member of the ‘core group’ of cybernetics pioneers that participated in the Macy Conferences of the 1940s and 1950s”, ed.) pioneered so many trails that it will be no surprise to discover that nearly 30 years ago he was emphasizing the importance of mescaline to psychology in an admirable book (‘Mescal: The Divine Plant and Its Psychological Effects’, ed.) now unhappily out of print.”
Among other works, in addition to the 1928 book encomiastically mentioned by Osmond ‘Mescal: The Divine Plant and Its Psychological Effects’, Klüver – who gave its name to the Klüver–Bucy syndrome – also wrote in 1966 a revised book on mescal: ‘Mescal and Mechanisms of Hallucinations’ (book cover in the photo above).
“There is one golden rule that should be applied in working with model psychoses. One should start with oneself.”
by Federico Soldani – 15th June 2021
In the previous twoarticles in this series, on Dr. Osmond’s paper “A review of the clinical effects of psychotomimetic agents” (1957) in which the British psychiatrist working in North America first proposed the name ‘psychedelic’: [1] the name ‘pneumadelic’ was proposed – based on Voegelin’s view of Gnosticism – and [2] the broad political meaning of the use of hallucinogens, as outlined by Osmond himself, was reviewed.
The word “politics” was mentioned three times in Osmond’s paper, while there were numerous other references to the sphere of the polis and beyond.
This last article in a series of three about the paper in which the word ‘psychedelic’ was first proposed in 1957 is organized according to the titles there were used in the original paper to divide it into paragraphs or sections. It presents and discusses several remaining issues not yet included in the previous two articles. Occasionally, such as for Aurelio or Ugo Cerletti, an additional section is included as well as an introductory part is present about the paradox of experience over logos in discussing hallucinogens or psychotomymetics.
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The paradox of experience over logos
Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung and his psychotherapy were mentioned four times in the text of Osmond 1957 paper, in a positive manner – contrary to comments about the founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freudand his views and followers, for instance, mentioned an equal number of times – and two times in the bibliography, including a “personal communication” by C. G. Jung.
“Nearly everyone who works with psychotomimetics and allied compounds agrees there is something special about them. Such words as “unforgettable” and “indescribable” abound in the literature,” Osmond wrote. The following are eight points in the paper in which Osmond discussed the need to to use psychotomimetic or hallucinogenic substances in order to be able to talk validly about them (bold, other emphasis and links added):
[1] “There is one golden rule that should be applied in working with model psychoses. One should start with oneself. Unless this is done, one cannot expect to make sense of someone else’s communications and, consequently, the value of the work is greatly reduced. Stefaniuk told me how much his attitude changed after he had himself taken LSD during the course of a series of experiments. I am still unsure in what way patients should participate in these investigations. Rinkel has observed that mentally ill patients can be made worse by LSD.”
[2] “Let me emphasize again that those who have not themselves taken the particular substance with which they wish to work, preferably several times, would be wise not to use these agents in therapy. Possibly no one has done this, but no paper that I have read has made it the essential precondition for such work.”
Osmond highlighted the “extraordinary possibilities available to the therapist who has himself endured these experiences.”
[3] “Such a journey of self-discovery may one day be obligatory for those working in psychiatry. Although it might not always be pleasant, with care and understanding this experience would be very useful to the trainee.”
[4] “Working with these substances, as in psychoanalysis, we must often be our own instruments.”
[5] “For the social psychologist there are group studies springing from observations already made with peyote takers. We have made tentative explorations of the experiences of group use of LSD-25. The effects are strange and impressive. We seem to have almost no language suitable for communicating them. It is as if new dimensions of human relationship are revealed. Such work can be done only by those who are used to these substances.”
[6] “Accounts of the effect of these agents, ranging in time from that of Havelock Ellis in 1897 to the more recent reports of Aldous Huxley, are many, and they emphasize the unique quality of the experience. One or more sensory modalities combined with mood, thinking and, often to a marked degree, empathy, usually change.
Most subjects find the experience valuable, some find it frightening, and many say that it is uniquely lovely. All, from Slotkin’s unsophisticated Indians to men of great learning, agree that much of it is beyond verbal description. Our subjects, who include many who have drunk deep of life, including authors, artists, a junior cabinet minister, scientists, a hero, philosophers, and businessmen, are nearly all in agreement in this respect.
For myself, my experiences with these substances have been the most strange, most awesome, and among the most beautiful things in a varied and fortunate life. These are not escapes from but enlargements, burgeonings of reality. In so far as I can judge they occur in violation of Hughlings Jackson‘s principle, because the brain, although its functioning is impaired, acts more subtly and complexly than when it is normaI. Yet surely, when poisoned, the brain’s actions should be less complex, rather than more so?
I cannot argue about this because one must undergo the experience himself. Those who have had these experiences know, and those who have not had them cannot know and, what is more, the latter are in no position to offer a useful explanation.”
[7] “Is this phenomenon of chemically induced mental aberration something wholly new? It is not, as I have suggested earlier. It has been sought and studied since the earliest times and has played a notable part in the development of religion, art, philosophy, and even science. Systems such as yoga have sprung from it. Enormous effort has been expended to induce these states easily so as to put them to use. Although occasionally trivial and sometimes frightening, their like seems to have been at least part of the experience of visionaries and mystics the world over.
These states deserve thought and pondering because until we understand them no account of the mind can be accurate. It is foolish to expect a single exploration to bring back as much information as 20 of them. It is equally foolish to expect an untrained, inept, or sick person to play the combined part of observer, experiencer, and recorder as well as a trained and skilled individual. Those who have no taste for this work can help by freely admitting their shortcomings rather than disguising them by some imposing ascription.
This may seem mere nonsense but, before closing his mind, the reader should reflect that something unusual ought to seem irrational because it transcends those fashionable ruts of thinking that we dignify by calling them logic and reason.
We prefer such rationalized explanations because they provide an illusory sense of predictability. Little harm is done so long as we do not let our sybaritism blind us to the primacy of experience, especially in psychology.”
[8] “There have always been risks in discovery. Splendid rashness such as John Hunter’s should be avoided, yet we must be prepared for calculated risks such as those that Walter Reed and his colleagues took in their conquest of yellow fever.
The mind cannot be explored by proxy. To deepen our understanding, not simply of great madnesses but of the nature of mind itself, we must use our instruments as coolly and boldly as those who force their aircraft through other invisible barriers. Disaster may overtake the most skilled. Today and in the past, for much lesser prizes, men have taken much greater risks.”
If in order to discuss rationally about these hallucinogenic, psychotomimetic substances one has to use them – in psychiatrist Osmond’s view – as many times as possible, and if these substances disorganize the psyche – in the writings for instance of authors such as Huxley or Evola and of Osmond himself when he proposes to call them generically ‘pschelytic’ – would it be ever in fact possible to discuss rationally about hallucinogens? Or the move to use such substances implies per se – a priori – an abandonment of human rationality?
~~~
“The Psychotomymetic Agents”
“There are few substances that, in large enough doses will not produce changes in body and mind resembling some mental illness.” Osmond wrote in his 1957 paper on the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (bold, other emphasis and links added).
In PsyPolitics, it was observed for the first time in 2020 how the epigraph of “Brave New World” was by Russian philosopher Berdyaev, a man who in his writings reported how he was psychiatricized by his acquaintance – Lenin’s co-founder of Bolshevism – psychiatrist Alexander Bogdanov (born Malinovsky): “The most famous novel by Aldous Leonard Huxley is opened with a quote, used as 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.”
“As I list these treasures of 5000 years of perilous and sometimes fatal searching” – Osmond continued in his 1957 paper – “think upon those nameless discoverers and rediscoverers, Aztec and Assassin, Carib and berserker, Siberian and Red Indian, Brahmin and African, and many others of whose endeavours even scholars do not know. We inherit their secrets and profit by their curiosity, their courage, and even from their errors and excesses. Let us honor them. They do not appear in any list of references.
Who knows what other compounds await the keen inquiries of ethnobotanists such as R. E. Schultes or mycologists such as Gordon Wasson?
With our modern synthetics we are a little safer, though the ground quakes beneath us. These synthetics include mescaline, introduced by Heffter in 1896, the first, I believe, of these agents to be synthesized; harmine or telepathine, an alluring name whose significance I have never understood; Hoffman’s (sic, ed.) astonishing lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), whose great activity has made homeopathy seem less improbable; hashish, whose still-uncertain active principles should surely be ascertained; TMA, synthesized by Scott and his co-workers of Imperial Chemicals Ltd., Manchester, England, a synthetic that lies in an area intermediate between mescaline and amphetamine and has recently been the subject of a report by J. R. Smythies; bufotenin, isolated from cohoba, a West Indian snuff; unstableadrenochrome; and the subtle adrenolutin.
What an array of substances for daring inquiry ! What work for generations to come !”
~~~
“In What Way Are These Substances Important?”
“The primary interest of these drugs for the psychiatrist lies in their capacity to mimic more or less closely some aspects of grave mental illnesses, particularly of schizophrenia. The fact that medical men have been preoccupied with transient states resembling mental illnesses that have been called model psychoses, however, does not mean that the only use for these compounds is in the study of pathological conditions. This misunderstanding, unless corrected, can deprive us of much knowledge and prevent the growth of new and fascinating researches. Model psychoses allow us to correlate human experience with animal behavior. We can learn how to aggravate and alleviate these model illnesses, and thus we can devise “model therapies” that may later have wider application.
Psychiatrists have found that these agents have a place in psychotherapy. This practice may sound like carrying the idea of “a hair of the dog that bit you” rather far, but it seems to be justified.
Another potentiality of these substances is their use in training and in educating those who work in psychiatry and psychology, especially in understanding strange ways of the mind.
These drugs are of value in exploring the normal mind under unusual circumstances.”
~~~
“The Model Psychoses”
About “The Model Psychoses”, Osmond wrote: “Over a century ago B. A. Morel, according to Ellenberger, used hashish to show his students the sort of world that might be endured by some mentally ill people.
According to Osmond, differences in experiences with psychotomimetic or hallucinogenic substances, should consider “obvious variables such as body type, height and weight, or skin and eye color, let alone subtle personality or cultural, social, and biochemical factors that may be very important.”
Osmond quoted experiments by Aurelio Cerletti of Sandoz in using Hoffman’s LSD: “The minute concentration of it required to produce its effect and the fact that, according to Cerletti, most of the drug is excreted from the body within 1 hour while its effects last 12 hours or more is an unsolved mystery. How does the drug continue to act although it is no longer present?”
Aurelio Cerletti is not to be confused with Ugo Cerletti, a neuropsychiatrist and Professor in Rome, who with Lucio Bini during the 1930s officially invented the electro-shock method for psychoses, a convulsive therapy induced by electrical shocks which was also proposed for “annihilation therapy” – “l’anéantissement” – and is nowadays known as electro-convulsive therapy; both Cerletti (34 times) and Bini (5 times) were nominated for the Nobel Prize in Medicine.
“After the discovery of its extraordinary psychic effects, the substance LSD-25, which five years earlier had been excluded from further investigation after the first trials on animals, was again admitted into the series of experimental preparations. Most of the fundamental studies on animals were carried out by Dr. Aurelio Cerletti in the Sandoz pharmacological department, headed by Professor Rothlin.”
Hofmann described how Sandoz, at one point, stopped LSD distribution: “In view of this situation, the management of Sandoz was forced to make a public statement on the LSD problem and to publish accounts of the corresponding measures that had been taken. The pertinent letter, dated 23 August 1965, by Dr. A. Cerletti, at the time director of the Pharmaceutical Department of Sandoz, is reproduced below: “Decision Regarding LSD 25 and Other Hallucinogenic Substances.” The text from Cerletti’s letter followed in Hofmann’s book.
“With Prof. Dr. Aurelio Cerletti, one of the most respected research politicians (‘Forschungspolitiker’) in our country became president of the academy. Aurelio Cerletti from Graubünden, Burger von Vals, was born in Ilanz in 1918 and graduated as a doctor of medicine in Basel in 1945, had a steep career as a pharmacologist. After a stay in the USA, he joined the Sandoz company in Basel in 1951 and became a member of the management after just five years. In the years 1956-1968 he was the overall head of medical-biological research, and from 1969-1977 he was head of basic medical research.
In 1966 he became a private lecturer in pharmacology at the Medical Faculty of Basel and three years later Professor. He was a member of the Federal Commission for the Promotion of Scientific Research, Vice-President and President of the Swiss Science Council and President of the Commission for Science and Research of the Swiss Trade and Industry Association. He was a member of the research council of the Swiss National Science Foundation.
The spectrum of his knowledge ranged from philosophy to the technical sciences.
From 1972 he was a member of the Senate of the Academy as a representative of the Medical Faculty of Basel, which elected him President in 1980. Aurelio Cerletti is the only President in the Academy’s 50-year history to have held two terms in office. During his presidential tenure, he mainly devoted himself to ethical problems, and medical ethics became the main focus of the academy’s activities. After he was replaced as president, he unfortunately died a few months later on 23 November 1988 at the age of 70.”
Aurelio Cerletti‘s 1956 bibliographic reference in Osmond’s 1957 paper was from “Neuropharmacology: Transactions of the Second Conference” Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation, New York. This was, as already mentioned about Gerard’s term ‘psychotomimetic’ in the previous article in this series, the same foundation of the Macy conferences on cybernetics.
~~~
“A recent letter from J. Harley Mason of Cambridge University, England” – Osmond continued in his 1957 paper – “states that the causes of these difficulties are not yet clear. I hope that this will be a challenge to organic chemists to sort out and classify these indolic derivatives of adrenalin whose very instability makes them excellent prospects for use as natural psychotomimetic agents. The changes that they induce, although sometimes very striking, are more subtle and less florid than those induced by mescaline or LSD. Consequently, these changes are harder to detect, delineate, and measure and, for persons who are used to mescaline and LSD, they may seem very small.
We are trying, however, to reproduce a cross section of an illness that is insidious, that seeps into its victim over a period of weeks and months, so that these characteristics that make the experiment so difficult to perform are perhaps encouraging. The more our psychotomimetics resemble the hypothetical endotoxin that Carl Jung called toxin-X and that we have called M (mescalinelike) substance, the harder they will be to test and the more attention they will require in experimental design.”
“There are other difficulties, such as finding regular supplies of a particular agent, uncertainties about the proper route for administration, individual differences in absorption and susceptibility, the dearth of subjects skilled in self observation, and the effects of placebo on both the observer and the observed. Before all this comes the task of designing testing schedules to measure and correlate physiological, electrophysiological, biochemical, psychological, and social changes, and then the task of relating these changes to a naturally occurring illness – schizophrenia.”
“It has long been known that hashish and dhatura make a very deadly mixture that may well enhance endogenous psychotomimetics.”
“With so many possible factors to take into consideration, much patient investigation is needed, and one suspects that many unexpected changes in perception would escape notice simply because they cover so many fields. Do such changes actually occur? I do not know. I do know, however, that the only occasion on which I have ever been unable to relate time to distance was after taking adrenochrome. The reaction made it impossible to drive a car, and it even made being driven very unpleasant. I wonder what it would have been like trying to land a jet plane?”
~~~
“Uses in Psychotherapy”
“I have read Sandison’s, Abramson’s, and Frederking’s accounts of the use of LSD-25 and mescaline in psychotherapy, but I have not been able to see the reports of Buschand Johnson.”
“Abramson, using a modified psychoanalytical approach, gives small doses of LSD-25 in repeated sessions. He aims to resolve early conflicts by abreaction, free association, and re-education.
Sandison gives a varying dose of LSD-25 to chronic neurotic patients in a mental hospital. He uses the experience for group discussion and psychotherapy of a Jungian nature.
Frederking whose account is the most sophisticated, compares mescaline and LSD- 25, and he discusses about 200 treatments. He uses psychoanalytical methods.
Our work started with the idea that a single overwhelming experience might be beneficial to alcoholics, the idea springing from James (‘The Varieties of Religious Experience‘, ed.) and Tiebout (‘Ego factors in surrender in alcoholism’, ed.). Thus far it seems that a high dose may be valuable, but that repeated treatment is necessary. At this stage of our investigations we have not yet observed enough patients to be able to give any hard and fast rules as to prescribing these drugs.
Hubbard, whose large unpublished series of cases has been most kindly placed at my disposal, has treated a number of gravely ill alcoholics. All seem benefited to some extent, and a number of them to a degree that the patients themselves consider miraculous. Looking over the records it is hard not to agree with the appraisal these patients gave of themselves.
All new therapies enjoy an early period of high success, so that cautious optimism seems to be our wisest attitude, yet there are exciting, indeed, extraordinary possibilities available to the therapist who has himself endured these experiences.
~~~
“Psychotomimetics and Training”
I know of no study dealing specifically with the application of these substances to the training of the workers engaged in many different disciplines who work together in psychiatry.
Such training has resulted from experimental work, but only incidentally.
Hyde and others have used these substances to enlarge the sympathy of members of a psychiatric staff for patients in their care.
~~~
“The Model Therapies and the Reverse”
“Schueler seems to have been the founder of model therapies when, in 1934, he gave some of his mescalinized medical studentssodium succinate by vein.”
Hyde, during the course of some elegant work, discovered that a social setting that is protective and nutritive results in a reduction of paranoid tendencies and perceptual changes.” […] “It is said that schizophrenia and diabetes rarely occur together. This may be a lead worth following.” […] “Hyde found that cold and, particularly, inquisitorial attitudes increase perceptual disorders and paranoid trends.”
“The effect of dhatura on hashish has been known for many years in India, and is said to have been used by professional robbers in that country to produce temporary madness in their victims.”
“Smythies, using a stroboscope and, latterly, a variable-speed shutter, finds that this enhances some aspects of the mescaline model. I have mentioned earlier in this paper that some people who have had infective hepatitis many years previously endure greatly prolonged responses to mescaline and adrenochrome. I should like to see these models combined with a reduced or specialized environment. We also need to know within what limits hypnosis can eliminate, aggravate, and facilitate these psychic changes.”
~~~
“Psychotomimetic Agents and Psychology”
“Heinrich Klüver (“a member of the ‘core group’ of cybernetics pioneers that participated in the Macy Conferences of the 1940s and 1950s”, ed.) pioneered so many trails that it will be no surprise to discover that nearly 30 years ago he was emphasizing the importance of mescaline to psychology in an admirable book (‘Mescal: The Divine Plant and Its Psychological Effects’, ed.) now unhappily out of print.
The advances in our understanding of the hallucinatory, the illusional, and the delusional that Klüver considered could be made by studying the effects of mescaline and similar experiences are, for the most part, still undone. During an experiment with adrenochrome I found myself an “it,” a thing. The sensation was not one of unreality. It might be called “depersonalization,” but I am not sure that a great variety of self-perceptions is not subsumed under that label. Only comparison and careful classification will tell us.
Let us consider empathy, that feeling for, in, or with other creatures or even things that seems to be so poorly described in psychological texts. Yet when it is lacking to any great degree something essentially human is lost. Empathy, I know, can increase until one is “involved in mankinde,” something that most of us feel only when deeply in love.
Saints have had such experience sustained for a lifetime, but for the rest of us a few moments of it are ever remembered as supreme exaltation. When members of the Native American Church, peyote takers, say that in their meetings this happens frequently, I believe them. It may seem unlikely that the usually insensitive can become acutely and exquisitely aware of the feelings of others, but they can do so.
The development of synesthesia, that strange fusing of 2 or more sensory modalities, has received some attention, but we know little about minor degrees of this sort of perception and the problems of communicating them.
How might this affect schizophrenics?Bleuler (Manfred, Swiss psychiatrist, son of Eugene Bleuler, who coined among several other important words in the field the term ‘schizophrenia’, ed.) in an account of the existentialist psychotherapy gives a hint of the possibilities here.”
~~~
“Other Inquiries Arising from This Work”
“We also need a means of temporarily enhancing the effect of psychotomimetics so that while avoiding a model psychosis we can nevertheless spot their presence in the volunteer. Smythies, using the stroboscope, has given us a valuable clue here, and he is following this lead at Cambridge University, Cambridge, England.
If we are to succeed, close cooperation between many varied disciplines will be necessary. I hope that foundations, governments, and large firms will keep this thought continually in mind. Let us encourage people from distant and often hostile groups to meet, talk, and listen together. Let us lure them into making those essential friendships. The attempt will be worth it.
~~~
“The Exploration of Experience”
“In the perspective of history, our psychiatric and pathological bias is the unusual one.
The great William James (considered a “father” figure of American psychology, ed.) endured much uncalled-for criticism for suggesting that in some people inhalations of nitrous oxide allowed a psychic disposition that is always potentially present to manifest itself briefly. Has our comparative neglect of these experiences, recognized by James and Bergson as being of great value, rendered psychology stale and savorless? Our preoccupation with behavior, because it is measurable, has led us to assume that what can be measured must be valuable, and vice versa. During the 20th century we have seen, except for a few notables such as Carl Jung, an abandoning of the psyche by psychologists and psychiatrists. Recently they have been joined by certain philosophers.
Pavlov, Binet(born Binetti, ed.), Freud, and a host of distinguished followers legitimately limited the field to fit their requirements, but later expanded their formulations from a limited inquiry to embrace the whole of existence. An emphasis on the measurable and the reductive has resulted in the limitation of interest by psychiatrists and psychologists to aspects of experience that fit in with this concept.
These and many others have said that in this work, as in any other, science is applicable if one defines it in Dingle’s term, “the rational ordering of the facts of experience.” We must not fall into the pitfall of supposing that any explanation, however ingenious, can be a substitute for observation and experiment. The experience must be there before the rational ordering.
Work on the potentialities of mescaline and the rest of these agents fell on the stony ground of behaviorism and doctrinaire psychoanalysis. Over the years we have been deluged with explanations, while observation has become less sharp. This will doubtless continue to be the case as long as the observer and the observed do not realize that splendor, terror, wonder, and beauty, far from being the epiphenomena of “objective” happenings, may be of central importance.”
~~~
“Psychoanalysts claim that their ideas cannot be fully understood without a personal analysis. Not everyone accepts this claim, but can one ever understand something one has never done? A eunuch could write an authoritative book on sexual behavior, but a book on sexual experience by the same author would inspire less confidence. Working with these substances, as in psychoanalysis, we must often be our own instruments. Psychoanalysis resembles Galileo’s telescope, which lets one see a somewhat magnified image of an object the wrong way round and upside down. The telescope changed our whole idea of the solar system and revolutionized navigation. Psychotomimetic agents, whose collective name is still undecided, are more like the radar telescopes now being built to scan the deeps of outer, invisible space.”
Freud has told us much about many important matters. However, I believe that he and his pupils tried illegitimately to extrapolate from his data far beyond their proper limit in an attempt to account for the whole of human endeavor and, beyond this, into the nature of man and God. This was magnificent bravado. It is not science, for it is as vain to use Freud’s system for these greatest questions as it is to search for the galaxies with Galileo’s hand telescope. Jung, using what I consider the very inadequate tools of dream and myth, has shown such skill and dexterity that he has penetrated as deep into these mysteries as his equipment allows. Our newer instruments, employed with skill and reverence, allow us to explore a greater range of experience more intensively.
~~~
“How Should We Name Them?”
In the paragraph “How Should We Name Them?,” Osmond reflected on a consideration of health that appears in line with the positive definition of health written in the 1946 Constitution of the World Health Organization – a specialized agency of the United Nations located in Geneva, Switzerland – in which the main principle in the preamble is “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” As I discussed in 2019 at the Royal College of Psychiatrists in London, this principle might look quite good, at a first glance at least, while at the same time not posing a limit to the reach of ‘health’ intended this way, which could end up including any elements of the political sphere.
“If mimicking mental illness were the main characteristic of these agents” – Osmond wrote – “psychotomimetics” would indeed be a suitable generic term. It is true that they do so, but they do much more.
Why are we always preoccupied with the pathological, the negative? Is health only the lack of sickness? Is good merely the absence of evil? Is pathology the only yardstick? Must we ape Freud’s gloomier moods that persuaded him that a happy man is a self-deceiver evading the heartache for which there is no anodyne?”
“I have tried to find an appropriate name for the agents under discussion: a name that will include the concepts of enriching the mind and enlarging the vision. Some possibilities are: psychephoric, mind-moving; psychehormic, mind-rousing; and psycheplastic, mind-molding. Psychezymic, mind-fermenting, is indeed appropriate. Psycherhexic, mind bursting forth, though difficult, is memorable.”
“We can perceive ourselves as the stampings of an automatic socioeconomic process; as highly plastic and conditionable animals; as congeries of instinctive strivings ending in loss of sexual drive and death; as cybernetic gadgets; or even as semantic conundrums. All of these concepts have their supporters and they all have some degree of truth in them.
We may also be something more, “a part of the main,” a striving sliver of a creative process, a manifestation of Brahma in Atman, an aspect of an infinite God imminent and transcendent within and without us.”
“Recently I was asked by a senior colleague if this area of investigation lies within the scope of science and, if it does not, should not religion, philosophy, or politics take the responsibility for it? But politics, philosophy, religion, and even art are dancing more and more to the tune of science and, as scientists, it is our responsibility to see that our tune does not become a death march, either physical or spiritual. We cannot evade our responsibilities.”
“I believe that the psychedelics provide a chance, perhaps only a slender one, for homo faber, the cunning, ruthless, foolhardy, pleasure-greedy toolmaker to merge into that other creature whose presence we have so rashly presumed, homo sapiens, the wise, the understanding, the compassionate, in whose fourfold vision art, politics, science, and religion are one. Surely we must seize that chance.”
~~~
“Summary”
In the summary closing the 1957 paper, Osmond wrote: “After indicating that there are a number of substances at present subsumed as psychotomimetic agents I have indicated that these are not yet clearly defined, and I have suggested that while mimicking psychoses is one aspect of these agents, it is not the only or even the most important one. I have discussed their great antiquity and have shown how they have attracted man since the dawn of history. Since many drugs produce changes in both body and mind, I consider that some working definition is required that will exclude anesthetics, hypnotics, alcohol, and the derivatives of morphine, atropine, and cocaine.
I have suggested as a definition: “psychotomimetic agents are substances that produce changes in thought, perception, mood and sometimes posture, occurring alone or in concert, without causing either major disturbances of the autonomic nervous system or addictive craving, and although, with overdosage, disorientation, memory disturbance, stupor, and even narcosis may occur, these reactions are not characteristic.”
“I have discussed model psychoses induced by means of these agents.”
“I believe that there is a place for the use of these substances in the training of psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, and others working with the mentally ill. I have linked these agents with recent work on the reduced and specialized environment by Hebb and Lilly, and I have discussed some psychological, social, and philosophical implications inherent in this inquiry, relating them to the newer work on perception.
In view of all these considerations, I have suggested that “psychotomimetic” is far too narrow a generic term, and I have suggested several that imply alterations in the normal mind.
Among these proposed designations are “psychehormic,” “psycherhexic,” and “psychezymic,” my own preference being “psychelytic,” or “psychedelic” – mind-manifesting.”
Cover of ‘How to Live with Schizophrenia’, 1966 book co-authored by psychiatrists Humphry Osmond and Abram Hoffer
~~~
A selection of notable references (emphasis added) from the seventy-six present in Osmond 1957 paper:
ABRAMSON, H. A. 1955. Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD25). III. As an adjunct to psychotherapy. J. Psychol. 39: 127-155.
CERLETTI, A. 1956. Neuropharmacology: Transactions of the Second Conference. Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation. New York, N. Y.
DEVEREUX, G. 1953. Psychoanalysis and the Occult. International Universities Press. New York, N. Y.
ELLISH, AVELOCK. 1897. Mescal: a new artificial paradise. Ann. Rept. Smithsonian Inst. : 537
FELICE, P. DE. 1936. Poisons Sacrés, Ivresses Divines. A. Michel. Paris, France.
FREDERKING, W. 1955. Intoxicant drugs (LSD25 and mescaline) in psychotherapy. J. Nervous Mental Disease. 121: 262.
GERARD, RALPH W. 1956. Neuropharmacology: Transactions of the Second Conference. Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation. New York, N. Y.
GIBERTI, F. & L. GREGORETTI. 1955. Lsd. psychosis treated with chlorpromazine and reserpine. Sistema Nervosa. 4: 301-310.
HARRISON, C. G. 1894. The Transcendental Universe. Six Lectures. Elliot. London, England.
HERON, W., W. H. BEXTON & D. O. HEBB. 1953. Cognitive effects of a decreased variation to the sensory environment. The American Psychologist. 8(8): 366.
HOFFER, A., H. OSMOND & J. R. SMYTHIES. 1954. Schizophrenia: a new approach II. J. Mental Sci. 100: 2945.
HUBBARD, A. M. 1955 & 1956. Personal communications.
HUXLEY, A. L. 1954. The Doors of Perception. Harper and Brothers. New York, N.Y.
HUXLEY, A. L. 1956. Heaven and Hell. Chatto and Windus. London, England.
HUXLEY, T. H. In W. I. B. Beveridge. 1950. The Art of Scientific Investigation. Heinemann, London, England.
JACKSON, J. HUGHLINGS. 1887. Remarks on Evolution and Dissolution of the Nervous System. Selected writings (1932 ed.). 2: 92-118. Hodder & Stoughton. London, England.
JOHNSON, D. McI. 1953. The Hallucinogenic Drugs. : 15-18. Christopher Johnson. London, England.
JAMES, W. 1906. The Varieties of Religious Experience (Twelfth Impression). Longmans, Green. London, England.
JUNG, C. G. 1906. Psychology of dementia praecox (translated by A. A. Brill). Neur. and Mental Disease. New York, N.Y.
JUNG, C. G. 1955. Personal communication.
KLUVER, H. 1928. Mescal: The Divine Plant. Kegan Paul. London, England.
LILLY, J. C. 1956. Effects of physical restraint and of reduction of physical stimuli on intact healthy persons. Symposium No. 2. Illustrative strategies for research on psychopathology. Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry. : 13-20.
LILLY, J. C. 1956. Personal communication.
OSMOND, H. & J. R. SMYTHIES. 1952. Schizophrenia: a new approach. J. Mental Sci. 98: 309-315.
OSMOND, H. 1956. Neuropharmacology: Transactions of the Second Conference. Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation. New York, N.Y.
PENNES, H. H. 1956. Clinical experiences with new hallucinogens. Presented at the American Psychiatric Association Ann. Meeting. Chicago, Ill.
PERETZ, D. I., J. R. SMYTHIES & W. C. GIBSON. 1955. A new hallucinogen: 3, 4, 5, trimethoxyphenyl-himinopropane, with notes on the stroboscopic phenomena. J. Mental Sci. 101:423.
PETRULLO, V. 1936. The Diabolic Root. U. of Pa. Press. Philadelphia, Pa.
SMYTHIES, J. R. 1953. The mescaline phenomena. Brit. J. Phil. Sci. 3(12) : 339-347.
STOCKING, G. T. 1940. A clinical study of the mescalin psychosis. J. Mental Sci. 86: 29.
TIEBOUT, H. 1954. Ego factors in surrender in alcoholism. Quart. J. Studies Alc. 15: 610-621.
TONINI, G. & C. MONTANARI. 1955. Effects of experimentally induced psychoses on artistic expression. 15: 4.
~~~
For a bibliography including papers and books by Humphry Osmond, see here.
(3 – third and last of a series, previous articles here and here)
‘Freud of the Rings’ was the title of a temporary exhibition that took place between 2018 and 2019 at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem.
“A ring that Freud had given to a psychoanalyst from his group of students found its way into the museum collection” – the museum website, accessed on the 10th of June 2021 (emphasis added), reports – “and sparked the exhibition curator’s imagination. Following an in-depth study, she managed to track down five sister-rings from around the world; all of them gifts from Freud to his inner circle of pupils. The rings are set with ancient gems engraved with images from Roman mythology, each one selected for a specific student. This is the first time the rings are displayed side by side. Next to Freud’s own ring, and those that he gave to his pupils, are objects from his antiquities collection, related to psychoanalytic theory and his personal life. A contemporary video work looking at how his personal possessions are invested with power accompanies the exhibition.”
~~~
“The publicity surrounding this exhibition has led so far to the discovery of six additional rings from around the world” – the exhibition webpage reports – “one of which is presented here. It apparently belonged to Ernest Jones, a member of the secret committee, one of the founders of the British Psychoanalytic Society, and author of a biography of Freud. Though a few sources report that his ring was stolen from his car, it is possible that it resurfaced after a period of time. Alternatively, this may be the ring that Freud presented to Katherine, Jones’s wife. Years later, the ring was given by Ernest and Katherine’s son Mervyn to his friend Irma Brenman Pick, a London psychoanalyst.
The figure on the gem – a bearded man with a wrinkled brow and hair falling over his temples – probably represents Hippocrates, the ancient Greek physician, regarded as the father of modern medicine. Among the topics he discussed was a female disease that manifested itself in a wide variety of symptoms and was attributed to the wandering of the womb within the body. The name of the disease – hysteria – is commonly ascribed to him. Though the first psychoanalysts viewed this condition as a psychological phenomenon resulting from trauma, it is not surprising to find Hippocrates’s figure on one of the rings bestowed by Freud upon the members of his close circle, since the topic of hysteria was of great interest to them.”
~~~
Ernest Jones, the last man standing on the right in the 1922 photo above, was also the psychoanalyst who obtained from Freud rights to the English translation of his works; Jones edited with others such as James Strachey the translations for the standard edition of Freud’s work.
About hysteria in the history of neurology and later of psychoanalysis, we have discussed in PsyPolitics how in Freud’s London studio the place of honor above the famous couch was reserved for one of the founding moments in the history of the ‘neuro’ and ‘psy’ disciplines, now part of the classic iconography of these fields: the famous Parisian neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, under whom Freud studied at the Salpêtrière hospital between 1885 and 1886, showed a case of hysterical paralysis. The patient was supported by Charcot’s favorite pupil, Joseph Babinski, while the master practiced the hypnosis technique.
~~~
According to Smithsonian Magazine online (emphasis added), “Freud began handing out signet rings, usually ancient carvings reset in modern bands, to his inner circle of students, friends and colleagues, which he called a “Secret Committee.”
In her book The Secret Ring: Freud’s Inner Circle and the Politics of Psychoanalysis (1991), 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 study, brought together six prominent students and created a “Secret Committee” to propagate and defend his work against Jungian psychoanalysis. To seal the deal, Freud gifted each committee member a signet ring with a Greek or Roman god from antiquity taken from his collection. He later gifted other rings to friends and students, in total handing out about 20 of the signets during his life.
The exhibit of the rings at the Israel Museum is the brainchild of assistant curator Morag Wilhelm. AFP reports she found in the museum’s collections a small box with the words “Freud Nike” on it. Inside was a ring with an inset stone depicting the goddess of triumph. It had been gifted to Eva Rosenfeld, one of Freud’s patients and a psychoanalyst who collaborated with his daughter Anna Freud.
Wilhelm decided to investigate more, leading to the exhibit which includes six rings, including Rosenfeld’s ring, one given to Anna Freud as well as those owned by Hungarian disciple Sandor Ferenczi, German psychoanalyst Ernst Simmel, a ring given to an anonymous psychoanalyst and a ring owned by Freud himself.
Several of Freud’s ancient statues as well as one of his cigar boxes are on display in the exhibit. The curators hope that the exhibit will raise awareness of the rings and might help other rings to come to light.
According to the AFP, Freud was interested in making connections between different cultural fields. This exhibit embodies that idea, bringing together archaeology, art, history and psychoanalysis. It also fits the spirit of Freud’s work, which delved into a person’s past to understand their current ailments says Ido Bruno, director of the Israel Museum. “We look at the past but constantly see the present and fantasize, or seek sources of inspiration, for our future.”
Freud’s Secret Committee lasted until 1927, though its membership fluctuated in its last years. It was disbanded after Freudian psychoanalysis had won the day over its rivals to become a global phenomenon, according to Grosskurth.”
~~~
At the exhibition, several objects from Freud’s collection were on display as well. As previously discussed in PsyPolitics, quoting a 2010 article, Freud himself said that he had read more about archeology than about psychology – an instance that is actually highlighted at the Freud Museum London – and in fact his creation, psychoanalysis, can be understood with a parallelism – or a metaphor – as an archaeological exploration of the psyche.
The analyst, in the manner of the archaeologist, tries to find traces of the origins of psychopathological phenomena in the narration of past individual events. “The psychoanalyst – said Freud to one of his patients, influenced by the reading of Heinrich Schliemann, discoverer of the remains of the city of Troy – like the archaeologist in his excavations must discover layer by layer the patient’s psyche before being able to arrive to the deepest and most precious treasures“.
The French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, wrote: “Ernest Jones, the last survivor of those to whom the seven rings of the master were given and who attested by his presence in the highest places of an international association that they were not reserved simply for bearers of relics.”
[In the photo at the top, as described on the website of the exhibition “The members of the secret committee at the Seventh International Psychoanalytic Congress held in Berlin in 1922. Standing (from left to right): Otto Rank, Karl Abraham, Max Eitingon, and Ernest Jones; seated: Sigmund Freud, Sándor Ferenczi, and Hanns Sachs.”]
In a 2011 paper in the journal of the Society for Analytical Psychology, the grandson of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung (emphasis added) “architect and historian, resident in the Küsnacht house, offers perspectives on the role of the grandfather.”
“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.”
The author of the paper – grandson of the psychiatrist Carl Gustav, abstract available on PubMed.gov of the U.S. National Library of Medicine – “notes that there were many parallels in the lives of the two men; C.G.’s memories and the touching personal diary left behind by Karl Gustav will be discussed. Many of Jung’s other ancestors will be described from his own personal angle. The paper also encompasses C.G.’s spiritual forerunners and finally the dead, our common nameless ancestors.”
Karl Gustav(1795 – 1864) was a doctor and a professor of medicine, also active in politics, who spent time in prison. Karl was a friend of Alexander von Humboldt, who was in turn involved in his academic career.
His grandson, the psychiatrist Carl, born Karl – ‘Karl Gustav II’ (1875-1961), usually referred to with C instead of K as this change to his name was made later in life – became the founder of analytic psychology, a psychoanalytic method.
Carl entertained the idea which is also contained in his correspondence with Sigmund Freud that his grandfather Karl might have been the illegitimate biological son of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
For more about Carl as well as Karl Gustav Jung biographies, here are a few links from Wikipedia (accessed 7th June 2021), the New York Times, and other related bibliographic references, for the interested reader.
“I believe that these agents have a part to play in our survival as a species”
by Federico Soldani – 26th May 2021
In the previous article on Dr. Osmond’s paper “A review of the clinical effects of psychotomimetic agents” (1957) in which he formally proposed for hallucinogens or psychotomimetics the names ‘psychelytic’ and especially ‘psychedelic’, I wondered whether a substance or a class of substances could be both psyche ‘lytic’ – dissolving – and ‘delic’ – manifesting. Following Eric Voegelin’s line of reasoning in “Science, Politics, and Gnosticism” (1959), I also wondered if instead of the psyche, such substances would in such view make manifest what, according to Voegelin, in a Gnostic worldview is the spirit – as distinct from the mind or psyche – which is also called pneuma.
Hence, instead of psychedelic or, perhaps more correctly, psychodelic, a more appropriate name could be pneumodelic or pneumadelic.
~~~
Osmond‘s 1957 paper on the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences acknowledged on the first page that funds were provided by The Rockefeller Foundation, New York.
It began with the following words: “We are using Gerard’s term “psychotomimetics” generically for compounds that have been called schizogens, psychotica, psychotogens, phantastica, hallucinogens, and elixirs.” Gerard‘s 1956 bibliographic reference was from “Neuropharmacology: Transactions of the Second Conference” Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation, New York. This was the same foundation of the Macy conferences on cybernetics.
~~~
In his 1957 paper, Osmond wrote that (bold added for emphasis) “Psychotomimetic agents are substances that produce changes in thought, perception, mood and, sometimes, in posture, occurring alone or in concert, without causing” – this is in my view a truly interesting point he made here – “major disturbances of the autonomic nervous system.” He also noted how such agents were not causing addictive craving and “although, with overdosage, disorientation, memory disturbance, stupor, and even narcosis may occur, these reactions are not characteristic.”
“No account of model psychoses” – Osmond wrote- “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, and they raise a host of questions, one of which is of sufficient urgency to discuss briefly. Most people can adjust themselves to small changes in perception quickly enough for these changes to be of no importance. There are a few situations in which even these small changes can be dangerous and, unless they are expected and sought for, they might not be recognized.” Then he mentioned the examples of high-speed flying and “flight into outer space.”
A search of the engine Google on the 25th of May 2021 of “reduced or specialized environment” (with either ‘and’ or ‘or’) only produced 4 results! One from the website hofmann.org of the Albert Hofmann Foundation, one on psilocybin-research.com reporting Osmond’s original 1957 article on the Annals of the NYAS, and two reporting the 1957 article by Osmond from the .pdf online version of the same book on two different websites (epdf.pub and cista.net): “LSD, the consciousness-expanding drug” edited by David Solomon and with an introduction by Timothy Leary, the media guru of LSD during the 60s and of the fusion of LSD and the digital world in the new cyber-psychedelic sub-culture of the 90s (see for instance A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace by John Perry Barlow).
Just like astronauts, people using hallucinogens systematically call themselves psychonauts, see for instance Psychonautics. Psychonauts is also the name of a popular videogame originally released in 2005. And there are websites dedicated to this topic such as the Italian psiconauti.net where one of the articles published on PsyPolitics, the one about Frankl on LSD, was discussed, see Critica all’LSD – Psiconauti.
“Despite the epidemic of demonstrations since Heron et al (1953) hypothesized that varied sensory input was required for maintaining normal cognitive, motivational, and perceptual behavior, few investigators have shed light on the specific nature of the behavioral changes occurring as a consequence of perceptual isolation (Siprelle et al, 1963; Brownfield, 1964). The procedure of perceptual isolation is distinguished from that of sensory deprivation in that stimulation in the former is invariant, boring, and monotonous, while in sensory deprivation stimulation is absent or markedly reduced (Kubzansky, 1961). Hallucinations have been reported both after prolonged isolation (Bexton et al, 1954; Zuckerman et al, 1962) and after short periods of perceptual isolation (Cohen et al, 1959; Silverman et al, 1962; Reed & Kenna, 1964). One explanation of these reports of hallucinations postulated by Freedman (1961) was that, because isolation provides no useful information for spatial orientation, an active process interferes with and degrades existing schemata so that the system is dominated by a “noisy” discharge of retinal ganglion cells. This is assumed to be disorienting and distorts the perceptual process.”
~~~
“The substances in question” – Osmond wrote – “can be used to develop very high degrees of that mysterious yet vital quality – empathy. Shall we find a means by which the therapist will share, to a far greater degree than he commonly does now, his patient’s experience?”
“Such journey of self-discovery may one day be obligatory for those working in psychiatry” Osmond added.
De Waal recently commented in a review of the scientific literature on the evolution of empathy: “Perhaps the most compelling evidence for emotional contagion came from Wechkin et al. (1964) and Masserman et al. (1964), who found that monkeys refuse to pull a chain that delivers food to them if doing so delivers an electric shock to and triggers pain reactions in a companion.”
~~~
In an Epilogue to his 1957 paper, Osmond remarked once more and quite powerfully the broader political meaning – already seen on PsyPolitics about the “father” of LSD Albert Hofmann – of the substances he proposed to call psychelytics or psychedelics: “I believe that these agents have a part to play in our survival as a species.”
There are multiple historical connections between different members of the Huxley family and the philosophy surrounding hallucinogenic, psychotomimetic substances.
Osmond in the NYAS paper made references not only to Aldous Huxley but also to his grandfather Thomas Henry Huxley, who in his time was also known as Charles Darwin’s “bulldog”. Of note, Charles Darwin’s grandfather Dr. Erasmus Darwin – see King-Hele’s papers and biography “Doctor of Revolution” – contributed coining ‘Cannabis’ official botanical name, and furthermore framing such term in rhymes.
Both sets of rhymes – Dr. Erasmus Darwin for ‘cannabis’ and Dr. Humphry Osmond for ‘psychedelic’ – involved the concepts and terms of Heaven and Hell.
Even in a recent 2020 article by the group at Imperial College London that is working on and promoting the substances they call – in line with Osmond – ‘psychedelic’, a reference was made to Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ dystopia: ‘Psychedelic Psychiatry’s Brave New World’ – PubMed (nih.gov).
About the relation between psychiatry and Huxley’s dystopia, in 2020 on PsyPolitics it was for the very first time noted how the most famous novel by Aldous Leonard Huxley – ‘Brave New World’ – is opened with an epigraph by Nikolai Berdyaev (or Nicolas Berdiaeff), 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.
It might also be relevant to keep in mind that, in his dystopia, Huxley has the female character Lenina declare “Everyone says I’m awfully pneumatic.”
Aldous Huxley, explained in the essay ‘Downward Transcendence’ (1952), later included in a posthumous collection of writings on psychedelic substances (1977) entitled like one of the essays: Moksha (Sanskrit for “illumination” / “enlightenment” / “liberation”): “the shell of the ego has been cracked and there begins to be a consciousness of the subliminal and physiological othernesses underlying personality.” “There are probably moments in the course of intoxication by almost any drug, when awareness of a not-self superior to the disintegrating ego becomes briefly possible.”
And in an article about Aldous Huxley’s ‘Ultimate Revolution’, it was noted how the author in his work not only described a “Brave New World”, but also a “new man”.
~~~
Osmond wrote in 1957 in the very paper for the Annals of the NYAS in which he proposed the newly coined word ‘psychedelic’ that these substances “are of more than medical significance.” “Perhaps most important” – Osmond wrote – “there are social, philosophical, and religious implications in the discoveries made by means of these agents.”
So, the broader political meaning of these substances was stated by Osmond from the very birth of the word ‘psychedelic’.
“Our beliefs, what we assume, as the Ames demonstrations in perception show – ‘the principle that what we are aware of is not determined entirely by the nature of what is out there or by our sensory processes, but that the assumptions we bring from past experience, because they have generally proved reliable, are involved in every perception we have‘ – greatly influence the world in which we live. That world is in part, at least, what we make of it. Once our mold for world making is formed it most strongly resists change. The psychodelics (sic, ed.) allow us, for a little while, to divest ourselves of these acquired assumptions and to see the universe again with an innocent eye.”
“In T. H. Huxley‘s words” – Osmond continued – “we may, if we wish, “sit down in front of the facts like a child” or, as Thomas Traherne a 17th-century English mystic puts it, “to unlearn the dirty devices of the world and become as it were a little child again”. Also Francis Bacon, the father of modern scientific method, in Novum Organum, wrote: “The entrance into the Kingdom of man, founded on the sciences, being not much other than the entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven, whereinto none may enter except as a little child.”
“Mystic and scientist have the same recipe for those who seek truth. Perhaps, if we can do this, we shall learn how to rebuild our world in another and better image, for our extraordinary technical virtuosity is forcing change on us whether we like it or not. Our old faults, however, persisting in our new edifice, are far more dangerous to us than they were in the old structure. The old world perishes and, unless we are to perish in its ruins, we must leave our old assumptions to die with it.”
Voegelin wrote how in a Gnostic worldview the psyche belongs to the order of the world – perhaps what in psychoanalytic terms is called ego, the element of the psyche of the reality principle – while there is supposed to be a pneuma in need of being liberated. However, what might be liberated – in a Freudian view of the psyche – if the ego is dissolved, might indeed be the id or es, the element of the psyche of the pleasure principle, as postulated in the ‘CyPsy’ hypothesis.
Going back to Osmond’s two terms proposed in the 1957 NYAS paper for hallucinogens or psychotomimetics: ‘psychelytic’ would appear to be in line with a Gnostic worldview – as presented by Voegelin – requiring the dissolution or disintegration of the psyche. However, instead of psychedelic – or, perhaps more correctly, psychodelic – for the pneuma to be revealed or manifested a more appropriate term could be ‘pneumadelic’.
~~~
“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 gathering and freeing of the powers of the pneuma.”
– Eric Voegelin, ‘Science, Politics and Gnosticism’ 1959
Below, the few paragraphs in which he described – in his book ‘Predicting the Past. Memos on the Enticing Universe of Possibility’ (1981), produced by Jerome Agel – how he came up with the word ‘psychedelic’.
~~~
The book first essay was “Improving on Plato,” followed by many others including “Paradise is Not Artificial,” on Ezra Pound and his “nervous collapse… under brutal conditions in a ‘disciplinary training center’ in Pisa” as well as the “compromise on insanity defense” that led to his many years at St. Elizabeths, a psychiatric hospital in Washington, D.C., or the essay entitled “Paranoid Responses to Fatal Disasters” in which he mentioned Aldous Huxley’s book ‘Beyond the Mexique Bay’.
As reported on the book jacket, “Psychiatrist and scientific explorer Humphry Osmond has for over two decades been informing a small circle of colleagues with lucid and illuminating daily commentaries on all areas of contemporary moral, intellectual, and political life. On a range of topics from evolution to death, from socioarchitecture to psychopharmacology, from bushmen to the presidency, Predicting the Past presents his seminal ideas and eminent good sense to an international readership. […]
Among the diverse subjects explored here are madness, the good life, the good death, education, the media, drugs, Typology and Typomethactics, democracy, secrecy, suicide, responsibility, magavitamins, manipulation, medical training, nutrition, alcoholism, imprisonment, twins, authority, world leadership, violence, the death penalty, self-perception, coffee and sugar, courage, war, sex-changing, color blindness, unstructured societies. […]
Dr. Humphry Osmond is a member of the Royal College of Physicians (London) and a professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of Alabama. He is the author of twelve other books.
Jerome Agel’s twenty-eight books as author and/or producer include collaborations with Marshall McLuhan, Carl Sagan, Buckminster Fuller, Stanley Kubrick, Isaac Asimov, and Herman Kahn.”
The topic of hallucinogenic drugs nomenclature, including a reference to Osmond’s essay by William Safire in the New York Times – a journalist quoted by Osmond himself – was already treated on PsyPolitics here.
~~~
To fall in Hell
or soar angelic,
you’ll need a pinch
of psychedelic
The Birth of “Psychedelic”
[ by Humphry Osmond ]
There are not many words whose etymology we are absolutely one hundred percent categorically dead-right certain about. Psychedelic is one of the rare exceptions. There are no disputes or uncertainties about it. We know exactly and to the moment.
In the spring of 1956, I prepared a paper on psychotomimetic agents, like mescaline and LSD, for the New York Academy of Medicine. Psychotomimetic rather begged the question. It suggested that the main function of the drug is to mimic psychoses, whereas anthropologically over the globe it is not the function of these substances at all. A word to express their unique qualities was called for.
The word hallucinogen would not have been appropriate. A psychotomimetic doesn’t always produce a hallucination. Psychotogen has the similar weakness. Deliriant is a wonderful word, but many psychotomimetics are not deliriant. There was the very nice word that Louis Lewin produced in the 1890s – fantastica – but it, too, didn’t fill the bill; it wasn’t neutral enough. Other words were heavily laden in the direction of pathology, medicine, and psychiatry. When I sent my dear friend Aldous Huxley the draft of my paper, I asked if he could think of a suitable new word. By return post came a beautiful word, which is used by some people to this day, phanerothyme. Its roots are phaneroin, a Greek word meaning “to reveal,” and thumos, “the soul.” (The Greeks thought that the diaphragm might be the seat of the soul.) Phanerothyme was wonderful, but I thought that it would not be easy to grasp. I decided that I would try to find a word that would be simpler.
I had at hand a little Latin dictionary for medical use that had some Greek words in it, and I dug in. It seemed to me that psyche should be part of the word. The thumos may not be revealed, but the psyche is certainly altered. I wanted a neutral word that would suggest transcendence in some splendid way. I found delis,* “to reveal.” I put the pair together and came up with psychedelic.
Mr. Huxley had written, “To make this mundane world sublime, take half a gram of phanerothyme.” (Half a gram might have been a rather large dose, but nevertheless. …) I wrote back: “To fall in Hell or soar angelic, you’ll need a pinch of psychedelic.”
That’s all there was to it.
The New York Academy of Medicine published an account of the coinage and a few people began to use it. When that naughty Timothy Leary came along, psychedelic began to be misused.
The ceremonial and religious uses of psychedelics are much older than their recreational uses and abuses. For most of their history, they have been mysterious, dangerous substances and must be treated respectfully.
*As William Safire noted in New York Times, the Greek word is deloun – but unlike Aldous Huxley, though like another Englishman, I have small Latin, and less Greek.
~~~
Osmond, H. and Agel, J. (1981). Predicting the past : memos on the enticing universe of possibility. New York; London: Macmillan.
The word ‘psychiatry’ was coined in 1808 by a German Doctor, Christian Reil (‘Psychiaterie’ modified later by Reil to ‘Psychiatrie’) and the word ‘antipsychiatry’ (‘Antipsychiatrie’) 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.
Intervista TV in diretta a Federico Soldani su politica, linguaggio medico-psicologico e tecnocrazia – di Francesco Ippolito – Il Segno dei Tempi, 50 Canale – Venerdi’ 2 ottobre 2020
~~~
Di nuovo un saluto ai telespettatori ancora in studio in questa puntata costruita grazie ai collegamenti che abbiamo confezionato dalla Toscana ma non soltanto. Infatti per questo terzo blocco ci colleghiamo con Bradford nello Yorkshire e ci colleghiamo con l’epidemiologo e psichiatra Federico Soldani, buonasera benvenuto.
Buonasera a voi, buonasera al vostro pubblico e grazie per il vostro cortese invito che e’ davvero gradito.
Allora abbiamo deciso di costruire un uno spunto di riflessione grazie all’attività di ricerca di Federico Soldani e parleremo, parleremo di che cosa, torneremo un po’ indietro con la memoria ai momenti del CoViD, alle decisioni che sono state prese e che continuano ad essere prese in queste ore. Stiamo ragionando, il nostro paese sta ragionando di una proroga ormai fatta dello stato di emergenza e cerchiamo di proporre ai telespettatori appunto un approfondimento su come possono cambiare i modelli di governance di uno stato, di un paese, a seconda del tipo di emergenza che si trovano, con cui si trovano a confrontarsi.
Questa della pandemia globale certamente è stata, ha dato una grossa spinta alla visibilità ad esempio dei medici, degli epidemiologi, dei virologi e abbiamo deciso di chiamare Federico Soldani perché nel 2019 ha tenuto una conferenza al Royal College in cui prefigurava esattamente questa eventualità. Soldani qual è la teoria su cui da ricercatore sta lavorando.
Dunque innanzitutto lasciatemi dire, sono dei temi che riguardando anche la sanità, la salute delle persone sono sempre temi molto delicati, e temi che riguardano la politica quindi insomma tutti noi.
Diciamo che la prospettiva che io ho cercato di, attraverso la quale ho cercato di studiare, questo rapporto tra la politica da una parte e la tecnica in particolare la medicina, la psicologia, la psichiatria è una prospettiva multidisciplinare quindi sono dei temi un pochino difficili però io credo che possa valere la pena discuterne perché siamo di fronte a dei cambiamenti, come tutti credo stiano insomma realizzando, di proporzioni che forse non e’ eccessivo definire epocali.
Ecco quindi forse una riflessione di questo tipo, attraverso una prospettiva storica, sui rapporti tra tecnica – in particolare tecnica medica, quindi anche di sanità pubblica, epidemiologia, e questo include anche la salute mentale delle persone quindi la psicologia e la psichiatria – quindi questo tipo di riflessione anche in ambito politico, io ecco penso che sia opportuno. I temi che ho affrontato in questa lezione che ho tenuto la scorsa, ecco lo scorso anno, 2019 a Londra…
Quando ancora non si parlava di epidemia globale, di pandemia.
No.
Quindi in tempi non sospetti si direbbe.
Certamente.
Ha iniziato a proporre appunto questa teoria, cioè questo spostamento che potrebbe esserci no, nella governance e dunque nella fase di assunzione di una responsabilità nei confronti di una decisione che riguarda una collettività.
Lei dice, ci potrebbe essere il rischio della prevalenza della tecnocrazia sulla politica. Cosa che, insomma, ce ne rendiamo conto tutti in un regime democratico e’, sarebbe un po’ antipatica.
Beh dal mio punto di vista si. E quello che ho cercato di prefigurare, in assenza di virus, è il fatto che, ecco, guardando sotto il profilo storico a diversi fattori dei quali possiamo brevemente discutere, e fra questi ecco il cambiamento del linguaggio politico in senso sempre più medico, sempre più anche psicologico, psichiatrico. E anche del linguaggio un poi’ più, ecco, un po’ più allargato alla società, osservando questo cambiamento, quindi l’uso sempre più frequente di, come dire, metafore di carattere medico, di carattere epidemiologico, l’uso di linguaggio psicologizzato, psichiatrizzato.
Per esempio io ho analizzato come un tempo si usasse in ambito politico un linguaggio, ecco dei termini come per esempio anti, anti qualcosa. Faccio degli esempi: anti-comunista, anti-fascista, oppure anche anti-religioso eccetera eccetera. Questi erano termini che si tendevano a usare più nel passato, la novità qual è?
E’ che nei dieci, quindici anni passati ad esempio abbiamo assistito all’esplodere della terminologia fobica. Quindi se prima c’era soltanto il termine xenofobo, ora usato sempre di più, ora vediamo come ci sia il proliferare di questi termini, c’e’ l’islamofobo, ora ci sono i cosiddetti sinofobi, per non parlare di termini che sono stati introdotti l’anno scorso in un libro peraltro di un mio ex professore di Boston, uno psicologo e linguista, che si chiama Steven Pinker, libro che Bill Gates ha detto che e’ il più bel libro che lui abbia mai letto, un libro praticamente, io dico, ideologico, che si chiama Illuminismo Adesso -è stato pubblicato anche in Italia – in cui si introducono termini quali per esempio progresso-fobia, oppure tiranno-filia, oppure oggi si parla sempre di più di persone anche tecnofobe.
Allora come mai e quali effetti porta questo cambio?
Cioè l’utilizzo nel linguaggio comune di parole che rimandano ai sentimenti, alla pancia in qualche modo. Fobia significa paura, filia significa in qualche modo amore e simpatia. Cioè non sono più connotazioni politicizzate tout court ma fanno riferimento alla pancia.
E vorrei che arrivassimo in questa nostra chiacchierata anche al concetto di anti-politica. In qualche modo negli ultimi dieci anni diciamo soprattutto si è fatto sempre più riferimento al termine anti-politica, come una sorta di rivoluzione che voleva in qualche modo superare i limiti della politica vecchia, si diceva – e questo riguarda tutti i partiti perché è davvero l’orizzonte verso cui tutti guardano – cioè essere diversi rispetto al passato. Secondo lei che cos’è l’anti-politica?
Dunque, ecco diciamo, la tecnocrazia quindi il governo per così dire dei tecnici viene da lontano. Quindi nasce da, diciamo molte delle idee nascono all’inizio dell’ottocento con Saint-Simon. Poi la parola, nel 1919 un ingegnere americano pubblica anche un libro, proprio Tecnocrazia, in cui viene data rilevanza per esempio all’importanza dell’automazione nella società e a un approccio di tipo proprio ingegneristico, di ingegneria sociale. Quindi non è inopportuno parlare di ingegneria sociale, questi erano ingegneri. Nel periodo tra le due guerre il movimento tecnocratico diventa molto importante anche negli Stati Uniti e quindi è un movimento in un certo senso anti-politico perché – ai tempi c’erano anche medici, c’erano proprio psichiatri, è una storia molto molto ben documentata diciamo – che si proponevano di, come dire, curare la società.
Ma non in senso metaforico oppure, ecco come dire, stando al loro ruolo – a un ruolo clinico, oppure a un ruolo più da proprio, ecco come dire, epidemiologi, ora c’è il virus ci occupiamo dell’epidemia, ma non allarghiamo il discorso a come dovrebbe essere governata la società. Mentre questi tecnocrati sostenevano che la politica ormai era, come dire, inadeguata e si dovessero invece, perché c’erano i mezzi tecnici per farlo, affrontare i problemi sociali, i problemi in senso lato politici, utilizzando proprio le tecniche mediche.
E posso tipo farvi un esempio, questo è un libro del 1948 che si chiama Medicina Psicosociale, Uno Studio della Società Malata di questo medico Halliday, quindi medico e dottore in salute pubblica – all’interno ringrazia persone che lo hanno aiutato in questa elaborazione, uomini Rockefeller o del Tavistock Institute for Human Relations di Londra – e praticamente sostiene che la società sia effettivamente malata e vada trattata così. E lui era proprio un esperto di – ma questo e’ soltanto un esempio, perché in realta’ è una letteratura vastissima – lui era un esperto di psicologia e di medicina preventiva.
E lui per esempio come allargava il discorso? Ecco, perché ‘la società è malata’ è una metafora. Tanto è vero che anche in psichiatria c’era un famoso psichiatra, Thomas Szasz, che quando doveva dire che la malattia mentale a suo avviso non era una malattia organica come le altre ma una malattia metaforica, usava una metafora dicendo, quando c’è una cattiva politica fiscale noi intendiamo che la società è malata. Ma in senso metaforico.
Certo!
Ecco, invece questi signori cosa dicono, questo signore in particolare Halliday dice, siccome la psicodinamica individuale può essere disfunzionale – e questo discorso si lega poi anche in senso più ampio al discorso dell’automazione – questa disfunzionalità psicodinamica può essere allargata ai gruppi e alla società e può addirittura somatizzarsi, quindi parlava della medicina psicosomatica. Ecco come abbiamo creato un discorso…
Quindi si può governare la società attraverso la scienza, in questo caso era la psichiatria. Oggi l’antipolitica…
E anche, se posso aggiungere, una metafora che è ‘la società è malata’ in questo modo, con questo tipo di discorso, invece viene presentata come letterale. Quindi si passa da un discorso metaforico a un discorso, ecco, letterale.
Uno dei modi in cui oggi l’anti-politica a mio avviso si afferma, e’ in questo proliferare incredibile, si pensi soltanto, io appunto ne ho parlato l’anno scorso, ma quest’anno, il decreto Cura Italia. Quindi, piano piano il linguaggio politico usa sempre più metafore mediche, psicologiche, epidemiologiche e queste metafore, proprio come faceva Halliday e altri, piano piano vengono sempre più presentate non come metafore, non come modi di dire, non come figure retoriche o come delle analogie, ma come letteralmente delle questioni di cui si debbono occupare i tecnici. Questo è un movimento storico molto molto ben conosciuto e documentato.
Senta, lei ha effettuato parte della sua formazione accademica tra Pisa e l’università di Harvard, insegnando a Boston, e ha lavorato anche a lungo alla FDA, cioè la Food and Drug Administration, a Washington.
Non posso non chiederle, che cosa pensa di alcune delle dinamiche recenti all’interno del faro della democrazia mondiale, dinamiche all’interno degli Stati Uniti d’America a proposito dell’anti-politica, perché chiaramente insomma i telespettatori sapranno perfettamente che proprio lì l’opinione pubblica mondiale annida, fa annidare in qualche modo, una delle fonti dell’anti-politica.
Certamente, mah, uno dei modi – e anche di questo parlai l’anno scorso, pre-virus – uno dei modi secondo me è: noi abbiamo visto come il Presidente degli Stati Uniti d’America Trump, non dimentichiamo che gli Stati Uniti d’America sono stati storicamente la prima repubblica con una costituzione, con una costituzione come aveva teorizzato Montesquieu, con la separazione dei poteri, e quindi hanno avuto la prima costituzione di questo tipo circa 250 anni fa o poco meno…
Soldani, mi consenta di fare gli auguri per quanto ci compete ovviamente a tutta la famiglia Trump perché avrà seguito è proprio di oggi la notizia della positività al coronavirus. Dunque ovviamente gli auguri perché effettivamente gli Stati Uniti d’America, tra l’altro in un momento particolare verso le elezioni, verso il rinnovo del Presidente degli Stati Uniti insomma, effettivamente sono un paese di riferimento. Prego.
Ecco, volevo evidenziare che a mio avviso noi siamo di fronte – anche soltanto guardando al linguaggio, e non solo – a una trasformazione equivalente, se non più radicale, perché le tecnologie di oggi sono molto più invasive e pervasive, di quella che c’è stata 250, 200 anni fa, con la nascita degli stati nazione basati sulle costituzioni alla Montesquieu.
E gia’ lo storico, il grande storico Hobsbawm, quello del Secolo Breve per intenderci, nel suo libro che si chiama L’Età della Rivoluzione, che parla proprio di quel periodo, evidenziava come gli intellettuali, o i politici, a quei tempi, quando il potere stava passando da un potere di tipo sovrano, di tipo anche sempre legato all’ambito religioso, a un potere sempre più secolarizzato, questi intellettuali – fondamentalmente gli intellettuali protagonisti dell’illuminismo – prima hanno iniziato a parlare un linguaggio secolarizzato, a dispetto delle loro credenze religiose private, dopodiché è avvenuta la secolarizzazione anche del potere.
Adesso noi secondo me stiamo assistendo al linguaggio che in modo assolutamente, ecco come dire, evidente sta diventando un linguaggio tecnico, medico, psicologico, epidemiologico. E allora prima cambia il linguaggio – se seguiamo il ragionamento di Hobsbawm – e questo ci indica in che direzione cambieranno le istituzioni. Ecco, uno spunto.
Mi pare che nel caso, sotto la presidenza, sotto l’amministrazione così si dice, così dicono gli americani, sotto l’amministrazione Obama il linguaggio, chiedo scusa di Trump, il linguaggio sia cambiato moltissimo.
Certamente, ma non solo quello di Tump o dell’amministrazione, ma anche e forse soprattutto – poi c’è stato il gioco degli insulti incrociati, e va bene lasciamo stare quest’ultimo dibattito, di cui ho solo sentito parlare e che non ho guardato, il dibattito presidenziale con Biden…
Certo come no, per cui verranno cambiate anche la regole da qui al prossimo futuro, prego continui.
Certo, perché noi abbiamo assistito a – ecco, come dire, qualunque cosa si pensi di questo – abbiamo assistito di fatto a quella che potremmo definire la psichiatrizzazione pubblica negli anni passati della figura democraticamente eletta più importante nel mondo occidentale. Voglio dire ecco, comunque la si pensi, se pensiamo a quello che sono stati gli Stati Uniti d’America come abbiamo accennato prima da 250 anni a questa parte, la figura democraticamente eletta più importante è il Presidente degli Stati Uniti d’America. Questa figura è stata ampiamente psichiatrizzata. C’è stato anche un libro molto, di cui si e’parlato molto, uno degli autori peraltro è un mio ex collega di Boston, che ha proprio, il cui titolo è – non so se sia stato tradotto in italiano – The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, in cui questi psichiatri e psicologi…
Il Pericoloso Caso di Donald Trump.
Perfettamente, per cui loro dicono questa persona è pericolosa in senso medico – hanno fatto una serie di diagnosi, come si dice, a distanza – questo ha, come dire, a livello anche globale è servito anche a propagare questo tipo di linguaggio. Ecco per l’appunto forse il “virus” di cui non si parla, ma non vorrei anch’io essere vittima dell’uso di metafore epidemiologiche, è proprio questo, di quella che a me piace chiamare psico-lingua, un po’ come la neolingua di Orwell in 1984, ovvero non si parla più dei contenuti politici o di chi è che ha voluto Trump dove sta, quali interessi sta servendo Trump, quali politiche sta facendo, ma siamo sempre più focalizzati soltanto sul personaggio, come nella televisione della realtà – eh dico tra l’altro Trump è stato protagonista di uno degli show più famosi, The Apprentice, che penso abbiano fatto anche in Italia in una versione italiana – quindi ecco diventa dal punto di vista degli spettatori un modo per…
Screditare l’avversario politico attraverso una terminologia e un ring direi che non è politico o meglio che non riguarda le regole della democrazia in qualche modo. Abbiamo pochissimo tempo Soldani…
Anche, ma anche proprio per diffondere questo tipo di terminologia, in politica.
Abbiamo pochissimo tempo, intanto una piccola chiosa sul titolo del libro che ha citato che, c’è una fortissima assonanza allo Strano Caso, mi viene in mente diciamo tiro fuori dal bagaglio…
Del Dr. Jekyll e Mr. Hyde.
Esattamente, esattamente. Le volevo chiedere sul finire di questa conversazione, poi mi piacerà diciamo invitarla ancora per creare anche un dibattito con altri interlocutori, però se questo è il rischio che corre la politica in democrazia, la politica come deve reagire, cosa dovrebbe fare e cosa forse non sta facendo? Abbiamo pochissimi minuti però.
Certamente, mah una soluzione ovviamente non ce l’ho. Un consiglio che credo che si possa dare, penso che sia una cosa che sia fattibile, è quello di essere consapevoli che, ecco di stare attenti alle parole no, ecco qualcuno avrebbe detto le parole sono importanti, chi parla male pensa male. Ricordiamoci cosa ha detto Hobsbawm, il linguaggio precede altri tipi di cambiamento.
Quindi quando parliamo di politica cerchiamo di riferirci alla società, anche all’economia, alla politica stessa intesa sia in senso stretto, quella dei politici, ma anche in senso ampio, ovvero tutti noi siamo in qualche modo coinvolti perlomeno in una democrazia. E quindi, ecco, stiamo attenti al linguaggio, cerchiamo di essere consapevoli dell’uso di queste metafore e del fatto che piano piano queste cambiano la cultura, il modo di pensare delle persone, il modo di inquadrare i fenomeni. Perché io poi quando vedo un interlocutore lo incomincio a guardare con lo sguardo esperto – forse come avrebbe detto Michel Foucault – con l’occhio clinico, con lo sguardo clinico, dall’alto al basso, quindi facendo quasi un gioco del dottore e del paziente, etichettandosi a vicenda, non considerando più la persona che la pensa anche molto diversamente da me come un legittimo interlocutore, ma come qualcuno che ha un problema che deve essere risolto da un tecnico.
Allora mi sembra di poterci salutare con questa, come dire, parafrasi per i telespettatori: se il linguaggio della politica scade e viene semplificato nella demonizzazione dell’avversario attraverso magari il rimando a termini clinici…
O pseudo-clinici!
In qualche modo il rischio è che poi a prevalere siano diciamo gli esperti, siano i tecnici, perché la politica scolora perde diciamo la sua capacità di intercettare i problemi veri perché si concentra ovviamente sulla demonizzazione dell’avversario per magari vincere facilmente. Io davvero voglio salutare e ringraziare Federico Soldani che è collegato con noi da Bradford nello Yorkshire, voglio ricordare brevemente studi medici e di dottorato all’università di Pisa e Harvard e ha insegnato a Boston, lavorando anche per la Food and Drug Administration a Washington. Io spero di poterci risentire per tornare a parlare di questi temi, intanto la saluto e la ringrazio.
Grazie a voi, buona serata.
Allora noi ci fermiamo qui anche per questa puntata de il Segno dei Tempi, siamo arrivati alla fine, ci vediamo la prossima settimana quando torneremo a chiederci quali sono i fatti, i volti, le vicende, i dibattiti che più caratterizzano gli anni che stiamo vivendo, qual è il segno dei tempi. Buonanotte a tutti.
(Pubblicato originariamente nel maggio 2010 per il blog RCS – Rizzoli Corriere della Sera – OK La Salute Prima di Tutto. Link originale non più disponibile, qui la copia dell’ articolo originale su archive.org)
Nel post precedente eravamo rimasti nello studio di Freud, al piano terreno della casa-museo di 20 Maresfield Gardens a Londra. Appesi ai muri e ad alcune delle librerie si trovano i ritratti di persone care al fondatore della psicoanalisi tra cui la Principessa Marie Bonaparte e Lou Andreas-Salomé, entrambe sue allieve. Mentre nello studio di Vienna, sopra il lettino per i pazienti (interessante notare come in inglese si parli di divano, couch, piuttosto che di lettino) campeggiava un quadro a tema egizio, nello studio di Londra il posto d’onore è riservato a uno dei momenti fondativi della psichiatria, ormai parte dell’iconografia classica: il famoso neurologo parigino Jean-Martin Charcot, presso cui Freud studiò all’ospedale Salpêtrière tra il 1885 e il 1886, mostra agli astanti un caso di paralisi isterica. La paziente viene sorretta dall’allievo prediletto di Charcot, Joseph Babinski, mentre il maestro pratica la tecnica dell’ipnosi.
Continuando a osservare i quadri nello studio di Freud, vicino alla porta-finestra quasi non si nota un piccolo ritratto dell’amico e collega Ernst von Fleischl-Marxow, un uomo per il quale Freud nutrì un’immensa ammirazione e che fu lo sfortunato protagonista di ciò che Ernst Jones chiamo’ “l’episodio della cocaina”, al quale abbiamo accennato in un post di qualche mese fa.
Sigmund Freud ebbe un ruolo centrale nel promuovere la ricerca sugli usi medici della cocaina così come alcuni impieghi non strettamente medici della sostanza: il suo saggio “Über Coca” (Sulla Coca) del 1884 è una summa di quanto sul finire dell’800 si potesse conoscere riguardo alla pianta della coca e agli effetti dell’alcaloide estratto dalle foglie, il principio attivo della cocaina.
Freud infatti aveva compreso, mentre studiava l’allora poco conosciuto alcaloide, che ordinava a caro prezzo dalla casa produttrice tedesca Merck, il potenziale uso della cocaina per alleviare il dolore a livello delle mucose: fece cenno di queste proprietà analgesiche ai colleghi Carl Koller e Leopold Königstein. Quando Freud si assentò da Vienna per fare visita alla futura moglie Martha, Koller compì gli esperimenti decisivi per dimostrare l’impiego della cocaina come anestetico locale nella chirurgia dell’occhio. Insomma per un soffio Freud mancò una scoperta scientifica clamorosa.
Al ritorno di Freud a Vienna, Koller aveva già presentato la scoperta al convegno della Società Oftalmologica di Heidelberg il 15 settembre 1884: era nata l’anestesia locale.
Uno storico della psicofarmacologia come lo psichiatra di Yale Robert Byck (curatore della monografia “Cocaine Papers”), annovera Freud tra i padri fondatori della psicofarmacologia clinica per le descrizioni che ci ha lasciato circa gli effetti somatici e psichici della cocaina che ebbe modo di riscontrare ripetutamente su se stesso. A fine ’800 infatti si considerava che la sperimentazione su se stessi da parte dei ricercatori fosse un metodo di indagine scientifica valido e riportabile (si pensi, in un contesto differente, alla “Poison Squad”, la squadra antiveleni dalla quale nascerà la Food and Drug Administration statunitense, la FDA: i ricercatori parte del gruppo provavano su se stessi gli additivi chimici contenuti negli alimenti per testarne la possibile tossicità). Nel saggio “Über Coca” Freud fece una revisione ritenuta ad oggi davvero completa della letteratura scientifica dell’epoca, nella quale vengono riportati gli effetti esperiti in prima persona con la cocaina da diversi ricercatori, a cui egli aggiunse le proprie osservazioni sperimentali dettagliate.
Il futuro padre della psicoanalisi non si limitò però a studiare la cocaina affermandosi come esperto e, ad esempio, fornendo una consulenza retribuita alla casa produttrice americana Parke, Davis, and Company nella quale stabilì l’equivalenza della cocaina prodotta dalla Parke-Davis rispetto a quella della Merck. Ma ne promosse anche l’uso presso familiari, amici e pazienti e ne spedì addirittura perposta alla fidanzata Martha Barnays, la quale certamente non soffriva di alcuna malattia che necessitasse di cure farmacologiche a base di cocaina.
Memorabili a questo proposito sia la lettera che Sigmund scrisse a Martha descrivendo “Über Coca” come “un canto di elogio a questa magica sostanza”, sia la lettera in cui le raccontava di come la cocaina lo avesse reso brillante e gli avesse “sciolto la lingua” durante un invito a un dopo-cena, al quale era presente anche il neurologo Georges Gilles de la Tourette, nell’abitazione parigina di Charcot. Freud consigliava l’uso della cocaina, quasi fosse una panacea, per problemi anche molto diversi tra loro: stato di affaticamento, depressione, alcolismo, asma, indigestione, cachessia, calo della libido.
Ne promosse l’uso medico persino come rimedio per la dipendenza da morfina, in buona parte sulla spinta di una serie di casi clinici trattati con apparente notevole successo e pubblicati sulla rivista medica “The Detroit Therapeutic Gazette”. Certamente ne sottovalutò la forte capacità di indurre dipendenza e ne pubblicizzò l’uso a tal punto che il suo collega Albrecht Erlenmeyer, esperto di dipendenza da morfina, si espresse enfaticamente in polemica con Freud parlando della cocaina come della “terza piaga dell’umanità”, in aggiunta ad alcool e morfina.
Oggi sappiamo, cosa di cui Freud era ignaro, che la “Detroit Therapeutic Gazette” era una rivista sponsorizzata dalla Parke-Davis.
Mi sono posto due domande in proposito: quanto è stato importante il ruolo che casi sensazionali di guarigione, riportati su un giornale medico supportato in maniera non trasparente dalla casa produttrice Parke-Davis, esercitarono sulla convinzione che Freud si formò circa i molteplici usi “terapeutici” della cocaina? E quale può essere stato l’impatto degli effetti di questa sostanza stimolante sull’ideazione di alcuni dei temi, tra cui alcuni fortemente legati alla sfera sessuale, che sono centrali nello sviluppo della psicoanalisi?
Stranamente l’audio-guida del museo non fa alcun cenno a Fleischl-Marxow, all’“episodio della cocaina” o al ruolo chiave che Freud ebbe nella storia dello studio e della pubblicizzazione della cocaina come “terapia” medica. Anche accedendo alla veranda della casa-museo, per passare in rassegna i libri della fornitissima selezione in vendita, si può notare come nessuno dei volumi esposti riguardi il periodo in cui Freud fu un acceso sostenitore dei possibili usi medici della sostanza. Il legame storico tra Freud e l’alcaloide sembra essere stato rimosso.
(2 – secondo di due articoli, il primo qui e da archive.org qui)
Foto: ‘Cocaine Papers’, Anna Freud, Robert Byck, Sigmund Freud. New York: Meridian, 1975. First Paperback Edition.
Per spiegare come a suo parere la psichiatria avesse a che fare non con malattie organiche ma con malattie metaforiche, ovvero comportamenti ritenuti socialmente non accettabili, etichettati e trattati come malattie vere e proprie – ma in assenza dello standard aureo della diagnosi dell’anatomopatologo – lo psichiatra Thomas Szasz ricorse a una metafora.
Szasz riteneva sicura questa metafora – in quanto metafora – tanto da potervi ancorare l’argomento per analogia secondo cui la malattia mentale fosse una “malattia” allo stesso modo in cui intendiamo che la societa’ e’ malata a seguito, ad esempio, di una cattiva politica fiscale.
“Individui con malattie mentali (cattivi comportamenti)” – scrisse Szasz nel suo manifesto – “come societa’ con malattie economiche (cattive politiche fiscali) sono metaforicamente malati. La classificazione del comportamento scorretto come malattia fornisce una giustificazione ideologica per un controllo sociale sponsorizzato dallo stato come trattamento medico”.
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Sia nel 2019 sia nel 2020 ebbi modo in contesti diversi di ricordare questo ragionamento che, a torto o a ragione, Szazs proponeva. Il punto interessante infatti non e’ tanto andare indietro nella polemica tra Szasz e gli psichiatri biologici sul fatto che la malattia mentale sia una malattia metaforica vs. organica quanto il fatto che lui usasse una metafora sicura, quella della societa’ che viene detta “malata” in presenza di una cattiva politica fiscale: nessuno infatti avrebbe detto che la societa’ potesse essere malata in senso psichiatrico o persino in senso organico, al modo in cui potrebbe diagnosticare un anatomopatologo a livello individuale, a seguito di una cattiva politica fiscale.
Oggi non e’ tanto la malattia mentale come metafora che viene messa in discussione, quanto invece, al contrario, la metafora sicura della “societa’ malata” di Szasz, la quale viene sempre piu’ patologizzata – vuoi con taglio psicologico, vuoi con taglio medico – in senso letterale.
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Nel 2019 in particolare ebbi modo di notare come ci siano gruppi, vicini all’Open Democracy Network e oggi sponsorizzati da organizzazioni quali il Wellcome Trust, ovvero il Progetto di Psicologia Collettiva basato a Londra, i quali stanno cercando di inquadrare, in documenti quali “Un piu’ grande noi” ad esempio, i problemi politici come problemi di psicologia collettiva, in effetti facendo slittare il significato di affermazioni quali “la societa’ e’ malata” in una direzione sempre meno metaforica – un modo di dire, un paragone – e piu’ letterale, patologizzando i fenomeni politici.
A proposito del Progetto di Psicologia Collettiva nel 2019 affermavo (video, con sottotitoli in inglese o italiano, disponibile qui; grassetto aggiunto per enfasi):
“Quindi, al giorno d’oggi ci sono persone, questo è un progetto con sede a Londra “Il progetto di psicologia collettiva – A LARGER US” 2019 in sostanza, stanno provando, questa è la mia lettura, tra altre cose, ad inquadrare questa metafora (“la societa’ e’ malata” ndr) come se fosse letteralmente tecnicamente reale.
Perché, in sostanza le persone sperimentano paure, ansie e rabbia e queste possono essere caratterizzate come patologiche e queste possono diffondersi, come formazione sono uno psichiatra e sono un epidemiologo, come farebbe un’epidemia forse attraverso il contatto diretto o attraverso una fonte di contagio che potrebbe essere una fonte di notizie false, per esempio o forse attraverso i social media.
Va bene, quindi in sostanza dicono: “Politica, incontra la psicologia”. “Una volta che la percezione della minaccia inizia a mettere radici nella politica, è contagiosa. Di solito pensiamo ai problemi nel mondo, esaurimento climatico, estinzione di massa, iper-disuguaglianza, lotte per guarire lunghi lasciti di razzismo e discriminazione, in una categoria diversa dai problemi di salute mentale. Le crisi interna ed esterna che affrontiamo sono strettamente collegate. Invece di affrontare i problemi del mondo reale stiamo usando preziosa larghezza di banda politica per gestire la polarizzazione stessa: stalli parlamentari, chiusure da parte del Congresso. La democrazia funziona solo se un numero sufficiente di noi e’ in grado di gestire i nostri stati mentali ed emotivi. Se non siamo in grado, allora siamo completamente aperti alla manipolazione da parte di attori invisibili che possono spingerci a vedere il mondo in termini di ‘loro-e-noi’ “
Quindi, non mi interessa la vecchia polemica – continuavo nel 2019 – sono interessato al fatto che adesso il senso letterale si sta lentamente muovendo. E se considerate il fatto che il Dott. Frances (Allen Frances, che fu a capo del DSM-IV, la ‘bibbia’ statunitense della psichiatria con la lista completa dei disturbi mentali e comportamentali, ndr) anche se ha messo in dubbio il fatto che Donald Trump potrebbe non essere malato di mente o che non dovremmo caratterizzarlo in quel modo ha usato molte metafore legate alla salute mentale. Quindi, la mia tesi è che si sia trasferito dal linguaggio politico al linguaggio psicologico metaforico e altre persone come il Dott. Lee (l’altro psichiatra nel dibattito con Frances, ndr) potrebbero davvero volerci spostare o come questo tipo di persone qui (Progetto di psicologia collettiva, ndr) vicino all’Open Democracy Network vogliono spostare anche i fenomeni collettivi che una volta erano considerati metafore sicure – Il Dott. Frances in realtà menziona le cattive politiche fiscali di Trump, riduzioni fiscali per i ricchi – adesso questi vengono sempre più presentati come se fossero letteralmente malattie della società, come epidemie di malattia mentale, o qualcosa del genere”.
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La societa’ sarebbe quindi – se seguiamo il cambiamento che sembra seguire questi cambiamenti di significato – letteralmente malata, magari organicamente, quindi in definitiva bisognosa di cure anche mediche.
Si noti peraltro che questi processi – cosi’ come la loro analisi nel 2019 – avvenivano prima della pandemia 2020 da SARS-Cov-2, il coronavirus che causa la malattia detta CoViD-19 e dunque anche prima dell’esplodere del concetto di infodemia che persino l’Organizzazione Mondiale della Sanita’ ha accreditato.
“A conclusione di questa breve analisi, appare utile evidenziare come sia necessario prestare attenzione agli inevitabili profili di “psicologia fiscale“, qualunque sia l’intervento di riforma dell’IRPEF. L’applicazione di un’imposta non dipende soltanto dalla sua perfezione tecnica, ma anche dalla sua accettazione da parte dei contribuenti, accettazione che è tanto più probabile quanto più il meccanismo d’imposta risulta per essi non solo operativamente semplice – cosa che l’informatica può certo agevolare – ma anche intuitivamente trasparente e comprensibile, seppure in misura approssimata.
Valga qui per la tecnica tributaria l’ammonimento che Luigi Einaudi ha formulato per la giustizia tributaria: di non inseguire ad ogni costo la perfezione teorica assoluta, giacché il risultato potrebbe essere un’assoluta imperfezione pratica.”
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Il Corriere della Sera lo scorso gennaio cosi’ riportava sul punto (grassetto aggiunto per enfasi): «Qualunque sia l’intervento di riforma dell’IRPEF, è necessario prestare attenzione agli inevitabili profili di «psicologia fiscale». L’applicazione di un’imposta non dipende soltanto dalla sua perfezione tecnica, ma anche dalla sua accettazione da parte dei contribuenti». Lo ha detto il direttore dell’agenzia delle entrate Ernesto Ruffini nel corso della sua audizione, ricordando che l’Irpef coinvolge circa 40 milioni di contribuenti. L’accettazione di un’imposta, ha detto «è tanto più probabile quanto più il meccanismo d’imposta risulta operativamente semplice». «Nel disegnare la nuova IRPEF – ha concluso Ruffini – si dovrebbe tener conto che l’attuazione della pretesa impositiva non si esaurisce con la promulgazione della legge».
Questa tendenza si puo’ inquadrare in quella piu’ generale di cui si e’ gia’ parlato su PsyPolitics di psicologizzare e soggettivizzare la legge. Nella fattispecie, nel presente articolo, si parla di legge tributaria.
L’introduzione piuttosto sorprendente dell’elemento psicologico, per altro presentato come in qualche modo inevitabile, in una audizione parlamentare sulla riforma del diritto tributario appare avere qui il modesto compito di parlare di accettazione pratica da parte del contribuente il quale paga le tasse se in qualche maniera le sente giuste o le comprende o e’ magari convinto sia un bene pagarle. Un discorso apparentemente semplice da capire e di buon senso.
E’ pero’ legittimo porsi delle domande, certamente insolite, soprattutto dato il contesto attuale di psicologizzazione e medicalizzazione generalizzata del discorso pubblico gia’ affrontato in piu’ occasioni in queste pagine e non solo. Anche dato il tentativo specifico discusso nel 2019 di trasformare come visto, da parte di gruppi come il Progetto di Psicologia Collettiva basato a Londra, metafore quali “la societa’ e’ malata” o problemi politici legati al razzismo, ai cambiamenti climatici, alla “iper-disuguaglianza” (come se la diseguaglianza non fosse piu’ un problema se non quando e’ iper), ecc. in problemi di salute mentale.
Anche perche’ – e questo e’ l’anello al momento ancora mancante per cosi’ dire – una volta che si introduca il concetto di “psicologia fiscale” per indicare un buon funzionamento della fiscalita’ dello stato e’ implicito il concetto di un cattivo funzionamento che quindi potrebbe indicare una psico-patologia fiscale? Rendendo cosi’ anche la metafora sicura di Szasz della “societa’ malata” a causa di una cattiva politica fiscale sempre meno metaforica e piu’ letterale.
Una psico-patologia fiscale potrebbe almeno in teoria prevedere delle cure mediche “fiscali”, magari pagate dallo stesso stato, indicate da protocolli stabiliti e in qualche circostanza piu’ o meno esplicitamente obbligatorie? E dopo la cura, magari a base di moderne terapie mediche con sostanze allucinogene – e’ di ieri la pubblicazione dello studio randomizzato sulla psilocibina, principio attivo dei cosiddetti ‘funghi magici’ ‘Trial of Psilocybin versus Escitalopram for Depression’ sul New England Journal of Medicine – le tasse appariranno piu’ buone e giuste?
“La classificazione del comportamento scorretto come malattia” – sosteneva lo psichiatra Szasz – “fornisce una giustificazione ideologica per un controllo sociale sponsorizzato dallo stato come trattamento medico”.
