Year: 2016
Type: article
Abstract: 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. Humphry Osmond.In 1948 a young doctor surveying the state of psychiatry decided that the existing treatments had nothing to offer.A new approach was needed.If schizophrenia was primarily a disorder of perception, then drugs that altered perception (known as hallucinogens) were the solution 1 .The psychiatrist was Humphry Osmond who, over the next decade, was to do the largest LSD trials in the world and give them the name that become a cultural signifier: psychedelic.No ordinary psychiatrist, Osmond would not only consider radical means to achieve change, but had a remarkable capacity to produce results, traversing the most controversial terrain in psychiatry after World War 11.While his work was considered by many in the profession as dangerous, he remained within the mainstream of psychiatry and continued to produce important work on the doctor-patient relationship over a long and productive career.
Language: English
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4231967124