A Scientific Meeting presented by Anne Harrington, PhD
Event Price: Event is free. CE fee is $10 for CPC/HP members and non HP/CPC students, $25 for nonmembers who are not students. HP and CPC students and candidates receive CEs for free.
Light cocktail reception 6 - 6:30 p.m. at the Center before the presentation.
Continued Education (CEU/CME): 1.5 credits
Attendance: This is a hybrid event - in person and online attendance is available.
Course Description:
In the 1940s, the drug company Sandoz sponsored a study of LSD at the University of Zurich which came to the conclusion that this was a drug that made normal people temporarily schizophrenic. Sandoz subsequently decided to promote LSD as a research drug for experimental investigations of schizophrenia, and especially its possible biochemical basis. But, somewhat confusingly, the company also did something else: they suggested that the psychoanalysts also take a look at the drug, because there was evidence that it gave people access to the unconscious contents of their minds and could sometimes be therapeutic.
So which was it: a path to madness or a path to health? A drug for the biologists to study, or a tool for the psychoanalysts to employ? In this seminar, I will track the contradictions and ambiguities structuring mid-20th-century clinical conversations about the meaning and uses of psychedelics. An important goal will be to identify the legacies and unfinished business from that earlier era and show the ways some of them, perhaps unconsciously, are shaping current efforts and conversations.
Learning Objectives:
Participants will be able to articulate the ambiguities structuring the clinical conversation over psychedelics.
Participants will be able to evaluate how the legacy and unfinished business of psychedelic research informs the current reemergence of psychedelics in psychiatry.
Anne Harrington, Ph.D. is the Franklin L. Ford Professor of the History of Science, specializing in the history of psychiatry, neuroscience, and the other mind and behavioral sciences. From 2013-2023, she served as Faculty Dean of Pforzheimer House at Harvard University, and from 2023-23 she was the Acting Dean of Undergraduate Education of Harvard College. From 2007-2010, she was Chair of Harvard's Department of the History of Science. For six years, she co-directed Harvard's Mind, Brain, and Behavior Initiative. She also was a consultant for the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Mind-Body Interaction, and served for 12 years on the Board of the Mind and Life Institute, dedicated to cross-cultural exchange and collaboration between the sciences and various contemplative traditions. She is the author of many articles and book chapters and of four books, including Mind Fixers (2019) and The Cure Within (2009). She is currently working on a new book project – a history of consciousness research tentatively titled Soul Searching.