Therapists believed that the experience would be so intense that it would cause a permanent change in the patient's personality and thought processes, leading to a type of conversion to a new life. Practiced primarily in the United States, psychedelic therapy was designed to be used only a few times and to cause a profound psychological experience. The second approach is called psychedelic therapy and involved high doses (up to approximately 250 micrograms) of LSD. Therapists also believed that the use of LSD helped patients recall childhood memories and explore their subconscious. Psycholytic therapy was primarily used in Europe and was thought to help loosen the mind and remove blocks that kept patients from responding to standard psychotherapy. This type of therapy was used in addition to normal psychotherapy. Psycholytic therapy used small doses (approximately 50 micrograms) of LSD in a series of sessions. Two primary approaches emerged for using LSD therapy. It was expected to be of particular value in patients who were resistant to more conventional therapies. LSD was a drug that would effect fundamental changes in attitudes and personality, not just a reduction in the outward symptoms of mental illness. LSD was expected to shorten the lengthy and expensive process of psychotherapy it would enable patients to recall the childhood experiences and unconscious material that often did not emerge for months or years inĬonventional psychotherapy. Henderson summed up the psychiatric community's goals for LSD this way: Since the late 1940s psychiatrists have had great expectations for the usefulness of LSD in psychotherapy. This approach, however, can take weeks, months, or years to produce results. Patients are encouraged to recall childhood memories and explore their subconscious thoughts and feelings in order to uncover the sources of their problems. This treatment involves a patient talking with a therapist to help solve psychological or behavioral problems. In the first half of the twentieth century, doctors treated some cases of depression, addiction, and other mental illnesses with psychotherapy, which has fewer risks. Overall, the effectiveness of these therapies was questionable and the risks were great. In extreme cases, mentally ill patients received a lobotomy, a major surgery in which doctors operated on the frontal lobe of their brain. Electroconvulsive therapy, which results in memory loss and other side effects, was widely used to treat depression. Schizophrenia was often treated with insulin shock therapy, injections of insulin that cause convulsions. Long before the advent of LSD, patients with severe and persistent mental illness underwent drastic treatments that sometimes harmed them. While many of their efforts are based on new discoveries about the mind, these scientists are attempting to build support for their research based on much of the early LSD treatment approaches and research. Now a small group of scientists are once again looking to conduct research into the possible medical benefits of LSD and other hallucinogens. By the 1990s, research into LSD and other hallucinogens had dwindled to almost nothing. Over this same time period, six international conferences were held and more than one thousand scientific papers and several dozen books were written about the use of LSD in medical psychiatry.Īs concerns about the dangers of LSD grew, the United States and other governments became increasingly unwilling to fund research projects involving the drug. During the 1950s and early 1960s, scientific research with LSD was accepted as mainstream science, and approximately forty thousand patients received LSD as a part of their psychiatric or psychological therapy. In the late 1940s LSD was introduced as a psychiatric wonder drug that could cure or alleviate numerous problems, including alcoholism, criminal behavior, depression, schizophrenia, and even the pain, anxiety, and fear associated with terminal illness.
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