Ido Hartogsohn, "American Trip: Set, Setting, and the Psychedelic Experience in the Twentieth Century" (MIT Press, 2020)

New Books in Law · Nov 13, 2020 · 1h 6m

Are psychedelics invaluable therapeutic medicines, or dangerously unpredictable drugs that precipitate psychosis? Tools for spiritual communion or cognitive enhancers that spark innovation? Activators for one’s private muse or part of a political movement? In the 1950s and 1960s, researchers studied psychedelics in all these incarnations, often arriving at contradictory results. In American Trip: Set, Setting, and the Psychedelic Experience in the Twentieth Century (MIT Press, 2020), Ido Hartogsohn examines how the psychedelic experience in midcentury America was shaped by historical, social…