ALTERED STATES: THE AMERICAN PSYCHEDELIC AESTHETIC A Dissertation Presented by Lana Cook to The Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the field of English Northeastern University Boston, Massachusetts April, 2014 1 © Copyright by Lana Cook All Rights Reserved 2 ALTERED STATES: THE AMERICAN PSYCHEDELIC AESTHETIC by Lana Cook ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English in the College of Social Sciences and Humanities of Northeastern University, April, 2014 3 ABSTRACT This dissertation traces the development of the American psychedelic aesthetic alongside mid-twentieth century American aesthetic practices and postmodern philosophies. Psychedelic aesthetics are the varied creative practices used to represent altered states of consciousness and perception achieved via psychedelic drug use. Thematically, these works are concerned with transcendental states of subjectivity, psychic evolution of humankind, awakenings of global consciousness, and the perceptual and affective nature of reality in relation to social constructions of the self. Formally, these works strategically blend realist and fantastic languages, invent new language, experimental typography and visual form, disrupt Western narrative conventions of space, time, and causality, mix genres and combine disparate aesthetic and cultural traditions such as romanticism, surrealism, the medieval, magical realism, science fiction, documentary, and scientific reportage. This project attends to early exemplars of the psychedelic aesthetic, as in the case of Aldous Huxley’s early landmark text The Doors of Perception (1954), forgotten pioneers such as Jane Dunlap’s Exploring Inner Space (1961), Constance Newland’s My Self and I (1962), and Storm de Hirsch’s Peyote Queen (1965), cult classics such as Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968), and ends with the psychedelic aesthetics’ popularization in films like Roger Corman’s The Trip (1967). In their postmodern concern with ontological questions of consciousness, being and reality, these texts make visible the central tensions of an American culture in the throes of dramatic societal and technological change. 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to first express my deep gratitude to my generous committee members, professors Carla Kaplan, Inez Hedges, and Kimberly Juanita Brown, who have mentored me over these years, graciously lending their time and kind words to further my development as a writer and scholar. Under their tutelage, this backcountry Mainer has become a doctorate. They challenged my thinking, refined my voice, and helped reign in my sometimes unwieldy ambitions. Beyond the dissertation, I carry the image of these women as models of what it means to be an intelligent, confident, generous woman in today’s world. Though there were many solitarily hours at my desk, this dissertation is the result of much collaboration over the last seven years of my Ph.D. Tabitha Clark has been my constant companion throughout. My writing partners Elizabeth Hopwood and Jenna Sciuto reviewed many early drafts and helped keep me accountable to my deadlines and goals. This final year was very productive, thanks to the feedback from Tabitha, Jim McGrath, Brent Griffin, Laura Hartmann, Victoria Pappa, Lauren Kuryloski, and Mina Nikolopoulou. I could always count on Emily Artiano and Duyen Nguyen for encouragement, and Genie Giaimo and Art Zilleruelo were always game to chat about affect. This dissertation, and my graduate education, would not have been possible without the funding and institutional support of Northeastern University, The English Department and the 5 College of the Social Sciences and the Humanities. I especially want to thank The Humanities Center for the generous fellowship that gave me the tremendous gift of time in my final year and allowed me to collaborate with the talented likes of Lori Lefkovitz, Suzanna Walters, Nicole Aljoe, Sara Wylie, Ryan Cordell, Justin Manjourides, and Michael Motta. This project especially relied on the resources of Northeastern University’s Snell Library. As I near the close of my formal education, I must reflect on those who helped get me here. TRIO education programs such as Upward Bound at the University of Maine and the McNair Ronald E. McNair Post-baccalaureate Achievement Program at the University of New Hampshire provided me the educational opportunities, financial support, and mentorship that allowed a young girl from the rural working class to achieve graduate success. My friends and family have been constant cheerleaders from near and afar. They have been graciously patient with my hermit existence and scholarly absent-mindedness these last few months. They remind me of where I came from and where I can go. This project is indebted to the writers, artists and researchers of psychedelics who braved the silence of taboo. I dedicate this work to the anonymous psychonauts who have been compiling the psychedelic archive on message boards and blogs, waiting for scholarly attention to catch up. Finally, I save my heart for last, to my muse, Nate. 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................................... 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................................... 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS ....................................................................................................................... 7 INTRODUCTION: Altered States: The American Psychedelic Aesthetic ............................................ 9 CHAPTER ONE: A Trip with Aldous: The Postmodern Turn On ...................................................... 47 CHAPTER TWO: Empathetic Reform: Women’s Accounts of LSD Therapy ................................ 110 CHAPTER THREE: The Prankster Spectacle: Affective Registers of the Real ................................ 156 CHAPTER FOUR: The Light Fantastic: Cinematic Expressions of Psychedelic Perceptions .......... 196 CODA: The Psychedelic Renaissance ............................................................................................... 246 WORKS CITED ................................................................................................................................. 253 7 The last thing a student needs is to become truly entangled in a picture, to the point where it begins to insinuate itself into her thinking, prodding and teasing her expectations, changing her mind, undermining her certainties, and even affecting the way she thinks. If they are given the chance, pictures can ruin our stable sense of ourselves, cutting under the complacent surface of what we know and starting to chafe against what we feel. – James Elkins, Pictures and Tears: Crying in Front of Paintings (2002), pg. 28 8 INTRODUCTION Altered States: The American Psychedelic Aesthetic As a subject of study, the counter culture with which this book deals possesses all the liabilities which a decent sense of intellectual caution would persuade one to avoid like the plague. – Theodor Roszak1 The aim of this series of studies? To transcribe into history the fable of Les Bijoux indiscrets. – Michel Foucault2 In 1938, in the early years of the Second World War, in the city of Basel, Switzerland, chemist Albert Hofmann was in the lab working with a new synthetic compound derived from the fungus, ergot, which grows on rye and other grains. It was here that Hofmann became the first to synthesize lysergic acid diethylamide, more commonly known as LSD-25. However, Hofmann did not initially realize what he had discovered. In popular lore, the discovery was by sheer accident. While working on the crystallizations, and inadvertently getting some on his fingertips, Hofmann began to feel a bit disoriented. He wrote to his supervisor, Last Friday, April 16, 1943, I was forced to interrupt my work in the laboratory in the middle of the afternoon and proceed home, being affected by a remarkable 1 The Making of a Counter Culture xi. 2 The History of Sexuality 77. 9 restlessness, combined with a slight dizziness. At home I lay down and sank into a not unpleasant intoxicated-like condition, characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination. In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed, I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors. After some two hours this condition faded away.3 Curious about this experience and the extreme potency of just trace amounts, Hofmann decided to self-experiment by swallowing 250 micrograms mixed with water.4 Initially, haunted by paranoia and demonic visions, Hofmann thought he was having a mental breakdown. Gradually, he realized the profound implications of this richly sensorial and emotional experience, “there was to my knowledge no other known substance that evoked such profound psychic effects in such extremely low doses, that caused such dramatic changes in human consciousness and our experience of the inner and outer world.”5 In his laboratory report, Hofmann describes his scientific discovery in aesthetic terms: “fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors,” while at the same time admits that these subjective experiences defy the kinds of positivist description and 3See Albert Hofmann’s LSD, My Problem Child: Reflections