There has recently been a renewed interest in both casual use of psychedelics as well as experimental use and attempts to discover therapeutic value. There is an effort to recapture the achievements and failures of past work to guide present use. This book is based around material derived from unpublished scientific research from Dr. Robert Mogar’s laboratory and built upon by forty years of field research by the author. The author Niccolo Caldararo participated in a number of studies of perception, including sensory deprivation and psychotropic drugs, some of recent manufacture or discovery and some of primitive or traditional societies. He places this analysis of the physiological aspects of hallucinations, delusions, visions and dreamsn context through an , as well as cross cultural data on dreams, dreaming and drug use and the social value of hallucinations, dreams and visions.
The book reviews ethnographic literature in this area and contributes to a comprehensive evaluation of past work done in this area.
Author(s): Niccolo Caldararo
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 444
City: Cham
Preface
A Beginning Note on Form
Language, Behavior, and the Brain
Consciousness, Mind, Awareness, and Experience
Memory, Dreams, and Reality
Methods and Definitions: Hallucinations, Visions, and Thought
A Historical Framework of What Has Been Done
Interpreting What We See and How
The Original Thesis and Proposal and Now
Perceiving and Meaning
References
Prelude to the Study
Some Background and Context
Experiences: Personal, Laboratory, and Clinical
Image Origins, Distortions, and Derivations
References
A Note on Terms Used in the Ethnographic Literature
Refere˘nce
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
1: Introduction
Some Contemporary Ideas About Getting High
A Start to Learn the Ropes of Studying the Mind
Diggers, Pranksters, Media, and Scientists
Some Reflections on the Human Brain
References
2: A Question of Dose and Context: LSD, Peyote and Chemical Interactions, Human Variation, and Interpretation
Native Theory, Explanations, and Defining Miraculous
Messages, Conversion, and Inner Voices
Thalamocortical Functional Disconnections
Grof’s Transpersonal Categories
Types of Hallucinations, Visions, Archetypes, or Physical Features
Background to Miracles, Demons, Boredom, and Patterns of Life
Dose Again and Variations in Experience
Some Interpretations, Expectations, and Origins
The Revolution That Was and Is
References
3: Pursuit of the Miraculous or Just Piling up Confusion
Experiencing and “Seeing”: Art and Spirituality
Creativity, Problem-Solving, and Perception
References
4: A Thesis on LSD Research in the Laboratory and the Street: Sensory Deprivation, Surveys and the Mogar Laboratory, Creating Cures
Some Examples from the Mogar Lab and the Caldararo Survey
Becoming Human
References
5: The Indigenous View and Categories of Normality
Human Be-In, All Is One, Illusion, and Radical Futures
Personality, Identity, Stability, Psychedelics, and Change
References
6: A View of Possible Identities, Realities, and Futures
The Future of Psychedelics and Consciousness
References
7: The Female Exception (in Research) and Gendered Experiences
Conducting Research in a Male World
Women and the Investigation of Psychedelics
References
8: Conclusion and Strange Threads
An Unnerving and Curious Future
References
Appendix A: Genetics and LSD by Niccolo Caldararo 1967
Appendix B: Survey Questionnaire from 1966–1967
References
Index
