Traditionally, decisions about the contents of courses officially rested with each department. Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered (via )įeeling indignation and self righteousness, I wrote that I didn’t consider his job description to include censoring ideas and that if he wanted to discuss the matter, I’d be happy to do so at an open meeting of the University Council. I photocopied it and included it, thus making my point that there was solid scientific and humanistic research on the topic. It contained an excellent 40-page annotated bibliography of research. Fortunately, the paperback editon of Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered by Lester Grinspoon, M.D., and James Bakalar, J.D., had just been printed. This mounted me on my high horse, and in a serge of adrenaline I wrote to the assistant provost a letter outlining some topics. My assistant faculty chair called me into his office one day to tell me that he had received a telephone call from the assistant provost asking about whether psychedelics was an appropriate topic for a public university. To advertise the course, I put up posters around campus and visited buildings and corridors I had never seen before. A common College of Ed attitude is, “If it works, or even might work, let’s take a look at it.”
Unlike some departments in the liberal arts and sciences (which guard their intellectual boarders jealously) and others that restrict research only to an approved paradigm or two, colleges of education are singularly open-minded. Fortunately, I was in the Educational Psychology Faculty of a College of Education. The first time I taught it - in fact, for its first two decades-I offered it as one of those one-shot special topics courses that are commonly titled “Special Topics in X”, “Selected Readings in X,” or “Advanced Study of X.” This didn’t require approval beyond an OK from my faculty chairperson. Realms of the Human Unconscious (Via )īy 1981, the transpersonal special topics course became focused on psychedelics and took on the name Psychedelic Research. I know that when Stanislav Grof’s Realms of the Human Unconscious: Observations from LSD Psychotherapy was published, the class took turns reading chapters from my copy and discussing them in class. This was probably in the wake of a conference I organized in 1973 that looked at consciousness and transpersonal psychology, including psychedelics. I know that in the early and mid-1970s, I offered a special topics course on transpersonal psychology. The exact origins of my course are lost in the mists of history and the fog of my memory. Best of all, the University of Pennsylvania Comparative Literature and Literary Theory Department, for the first time in the fall of 2014, offers Drug Wars: The Influence of Psychoactive Rhetoric. The College of DuPage, a community college west of Chicago, has Psychedelic Mindview, which is mostly oriented toward both mental health professionals and the general student body. Two undergraduate courses are going now, at last.
Nicholas Cozzi includes a psychedelics unit in his Integrated Neuroscience course. NYU Langone Medical School – Bellevue Hospital has a course for medical students that’s open to others too, and at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Health, Dr. Now, however, things are beginning to pick up. As Nancy Reagan said, “Drugs take away the dream from every child’s heart and replace it with a nightmare.” This wasn’t an auspicious time to teach a psychedelics course, and my optimism about other professors following suit was wildly optimistic. “This is your brain on drugs” aired in 1987.
College of dupage psychedelic mindview full#
The War on Drugs was in full swing with DARE, “Just Say “No’”, and a lock-em-up attitude. In 1980’s, there wasn’t much new research on psychedelics. For the next 30 years almost nothing happened except at some specialized graduate programs near San Francisco. Professors in other colleges and universities can start theirs too.” So I thought in 1981. “Well,” I thought, “ now that I’ve started teaching a university course about psychedelics, the ice is broken. “Psychedelics!? You mean they let you teach a course about psychedelics? I wish I could at _.” Below, he reflects on the history and purpose of his course in Psychedelic Studies, one of the first to be offered in the U.S. He is author of The Psychedelic Future of the Mind, co-editor of Psychedelic Medicine and editor of Spiritual Growth with Entheogens. Roberts, Ph.D, an Emeritus Professor in the Honors Program at Northern Illinois University. EDITOR’S NOTE: Today’s guest author is Thomas B.
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