Psychological pioneers

Section: Psychology

Number of pages: 472 pages

Psychological pioneers

The word “evil” rarely appears in documents of the United Nations, which is careful to avoid controversial language. But it was written into documents of the organization in the twentieth century to describe the psychedelic substances that intrigued doctors, scientists, philosophers, and writers of the late nineteenth century. These so-called “psychonauts”—Sigmund Freud, William James, and others—experimented with them to explore their promise of transforming the human condition and offering them the pleasure of escaping the confines of time and space. Yet many of them descended into madness or cured death. The book examines the impact of psychedelics on civilized societies and modern culture, and explores the forgotten literature of the personal experience of these psychonauts.