MAPS Bulletin Special Edition The American Trip: Set, Setting, and Psychedelics in 20th Century Psychology IDO HARTOGSOHN

“Too much of the psychedelic therapy literature reads like the Middle Eastern story of the blind men, each allowed to touch part of an elephant, an animal that none of them knew Ido Hartogsohn existed. Each man concluded that his part of the elephant—the tail, a tusk, a leg—was the whole animal.”—Psychedelic research pioneer James Fadiman, PhD1

IF ONE WERE TO READ the accounts of 1950s and 1960s psy- acter of a is determined #rst and fore- chiatrists and psychologists about LSD, with the word “LSD” most by the user’s character, expectations and intentions (Set), as blacked out, one might have thought that the writers were well as by the social and physical surrounding in which the discussing entirely di!erent . experience takes place (Setting). Leary went as far as to claim One group of scientists regarded LSD and the other psy- that 99% percent of the speci#c response to LSD is determined chedelics as psychotomimetic (“psychosis-inducing”) drugs by set-and-setting. which mimic the e!ects of mental illness: “essentially anxiety- Set-and-setting go a long way in explaining the highly vari- inducing drugs.”2 The advocates of this approach were reporting ant results published by the LSD psychiatrists of the 50s and 60s. cognitive impairments, psychological distortions and a variety 1950s psychotomimetic drug experiments normally took place of “disturbances” in those who were given the drug. in highly impersonal surroundings like stark hospital rooms Yet another group of scientists described the e!ects of and mental wards. The subjects were often mental patients, LSD with entirely and other socially di!erent terms. For disadvantaged popu- this group, LSD and LSD’s action is thus primarily not psychotomimetic, lations such as pris- the other psyche- — oners, drug addicts, delics represented psychotherapeutic, creative, or even spiritual but just and ethnic minori- consciousness-ex- what it is: mind-manifesting. It acts as a mirror ties who had little panding drugs— choice about partici- cognitive tools to and magnifying glass to its user’s state of mind. pating in the stud- enhance thinking, ies. The social sur- creative tools to expand creativity, and spiritual tools to increase rounding was not very much in the way of relaxation, unless . For them, LSD was not a psychosis-inducing drug one enjoys the company of unfamiliar medical personnel look- but rather a revolutionary psychotherapeutic tool ushering in a ing for signs that their patients are becoming psychotic. During “new sanity.”3 the experience, long batteries of physical and psychological tests The truly fascinating fact about 1950s and 1960s psyche- were often conducted. The subjects usually knew little about delic research was that when proponents of the two approaches the drug experience, except for the suggestions by doctors were talking about LSD, they didn’t just sound as if they were and other personnel that the drug turns those who take it into talking about two entirely di!erent drugs—in a way, they actu- schizophrenic madmen. ally were. The reason for this is that—as some writers started By contrast, completely di!erent set-and-setting condi- suspecting in the late 1950s—the e!ects of LSD and the other tions are to be found when one examines the experiments psychedelics, far from being invariable, are fundamentally and conducted by many of the prominent psychedelic scientists of crucially determined by the set and the setting in which the the late 1950s and early 1960s whose focus was on LSD as a experience takes place. therapeutic, creative, and spiritual tool. The LSD subject who participated in these sessions was THE SET-AND-SETTING HYPOTHESIS often an artist or graduate student. He had come to the study It is di"cult to think of many other concepts which are as voluntarily, had often been given a preparatory introduction fundamental and widely accepted in the study of psychedelics to the session, and brought to expect a positive and meaning- as “set-and-setting.” The concept, which was #rst proposed by ful experience. The relationship with the researcher was of a and his group at Harvard, claimed that the char- more personal . Sessions were often performed in living

6 Spring 2013 rooms, or in cozily furnished rooms, where much attention has According to Pinch and Bijker, each technological artifact been dedicated to creating a pleasant surrounding by o!ering has an “interpretative "exibility”—its function and use can be , "owers, candles, and sometimes a small collection of art understood in a variety of ways which determine its fate. For books. The person example, they show going through the LSD played as a kind of psychopharmacological that the course of experience would the technological usually have the trickster that fooled the entire psychiatric and development of the time to explore the psychological establishment of its time by presenting 19th century high- experience for him- wheeled bicycle self, without being itself in di!erent forms to di!erent groups of was determined by asked to go through the varying inter- endless batteries of people in di!erent times and places. pretations of the tests. function of the bi- The thesis that the extremely different set-and-setting cycle. Athletic young men viewed the high-wheeled ordinary conditions used by di!erent groups of LSD scientists have led bicycle—an unsteady vehicle which demanded great physical to the highly divergent accounts on its e!ects has been sug- dexterity to ride—as an exhilarating sports vehicle and a way to gested by a number of researchers including Timothy Leary, show o! their masculinity. However, for women and older men, Ralph Metzner, and Sidney Cohen in the 1960s as well as by who wanted to use the bicycle for transportation, the high- later observers such as Lee and Shalin (1985), Dyck (2008), and wheeled bicycle was simply an unsafe bicycle which demanded Fadiman (2011). fundamental improvements. These different interpretations In my research, I tested the of the bicycle and its uses led to “Set-and-Setting Hypothesis” by two di!erent traditions of bicycle examining the set-and-setting con- design seeking to address differ- ditions in 1950s and 1960s psy- ent problems and challenges.4 Ac- chedelic studies, according to nine cording to Bijker, “the interpreta- variables of set-and-setting. tive "exibility of an artifact can be In examining psychotomi- demonstrated by showing how for metic vs. psychedelic research, sig- di!erent social groups, the artifact ni#cant and even polar di!erences presents itself as essentially di!erent have been found in eight of the artifacts.”5 nine variables of set-and-setting. The story of LSD demands The evidence strongly supports the adding another layer to the stan- claim that set-and-setting condi- dard SCOT model. Because the tions had played a crucial role in character of the e!ects created by shaping the results of 1950s and the LSD technology was depen- 1960s LSD research, and in mold- dent not only on the social condi- ing the contours of the psychedelic tions but also on the psychological controversy. conditions, and because the expe- The implications of this theo- rience itself mirrored the interac- ry exceed the boundaries of 1950s tion of the drug with the user’s psychiatric research significantly. state of mind, LSD demands adding They teach us a valuable lesson a psychological layer to its SCOT about how psychedelics function interpretation and creating a new as a technology, and about the way model which I call PSCOT: Psy- psychedelic drugs interact with so- cho-Social Construction of Tech- The high-wheeled bicycle. cieties and . nology. Di!erent relevant social groups might look at a bicycle THE PSYCHO-SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION and interpret it to be two di!erent things, but that won’t hinder OF TECHNOLOGY the concrete technological artifact, in this case the bicycle, from Technology scholars have invented a theory by the name of behaving identically when operated by users with di!erent Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) theory. The theory conceptions of what a bicycle might be. That, however, was not suggests that technology is shaped by social and cultural condi- the case with LSD. tions, as much, if not more, than by “objective” scienti#c and Because the content and character of the LSD experience technological concerns. is determined and shaped by the user’s state of mind, LSD is

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Popular reading on LSD: (from left to right) Saturday Evening Post, Nov. 2, 1963; This Week Magazine, Nov. 8, 1959. Images courtesy of psychedelic researcher Patrick Lundborg, www.lysergia.com.

indeed a mind-manifesting drug: a technology which manifests THE COLLECTIVE SET-AND-SETTING its user’s state of mind, as suggested by the literal meaning of the The LSD of the 1950s di"ered from the LSD of the 1960s be- word “psychedelic” (psyche: mind, delos: manifest). cause they re#ected two dissonant eras in the history of Amer- LSD’s action is thus primarily not psychotomimetic, psy- ica: the 1950s with its Protestant work ethic and conservative chotherapeutic, creative, or even spiritual—but just what it is: Cold War mentality, versus the 1960s with its turbulent political, mind-manifesting. It acts as a mirror and magnifying glass to cultural, and spiritual movements. its user’s state of mind. If the state of that mind is anxious, LSD Set-and-setting are socially constructed—they are shaped could easily function as an anxiety-inducing drug. If it is cre- by the wider society and in which the psychedelic expe- ative, then it could equally serve as a creativity enhancer. Should rience takes place. All the most important variables of Set-and- it be spiritual, then spirituality will be enhanced. setting are determined by social surroundings. The character of The variety of uses for LSD in the 1950s and 1960s was a person is formed to a great extent by his surrounding society staggering. It included no less than nine main conceptions of and culture, as are his expectations and intentions when coming LSD, among them: as a psychotomimetic, a psychotherapeutic to a drug experience. Physical and social settings are also the re- tool, a creativity enhancer, a spiritual sacrament, a mind control #ection of the society and culture in which the experience takes tool (by the CIA), a battle!eld weapon (by the U.S. Chemical place. Di"erent societies in di"erent times in history would have Corps), and a revolutionary molecule (by groups such as the di"erent set-and-setting conditions which shaped the character Yippies and The Weathermen). of the LSD experience in di"erent ways. For each of these groups, LSD represented something dif- One can thus di"erentiate between two types or levels of ferent. Each of them created a set and a setting which was dis- set-and-setting: individual and collective. Individual set-and-set- tinctly di"erent and which reproduced the e"ects of the drug in ting represents the concrete set-and-setting conditions in which a novel form, much in the way that each psychedelic experience the psychedelic experience takes place for an individual: the recreates LSD in the unique form created by the psychological concrete character, expectations, and intentions of that person, and social conditions in which it is taken, never to be recreated. as well as the concrete physical and social environment in which Because each state of mind is singular and non-replicable, the experience takes place. Collective set-and-setting, by contrast, each LSD experience was singular. The nature of LSD as a tech- represents the social and cultural context in which the psyche- nology is singular itself, because it is formed in numberless ways delic experience takes place, and which frames the individual in numberless di"erent LSD trips. LSD as a technology reminds set-and-setting in the most intimate of ways. It is composed by us of the Deleuzian concept of the “imperceptible”—it slips any the society’s character, its knowledge and attitude towards the attempt at characterization by playing as a kind of psychophar- psychedelic experience, as well as by the physical and social set- macological trickster that managed to fool the entire psychiatric tings provided in that society. and psychological establishment of its time by presenting itself The collective set-and-setting conditions presented by in di"erent forms to di"erent groups of people in di"erent a society are its values, its social structure, and its culture. As times and places. a result, the set-and-setting conditions provided by the two

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Americas diverged crucially, re!ecting the turbulent shift in the whole cultural and spiritual climate which would sustain such American society of the 1960s. a movement. John Perry Barlow once said something to the e#ect that THE AMERICAN TRIP the 1960s could be regarded as one long and collective trip The late 1950s and early 1960s were a crucial time for the evo- experienced by the American nation when it confronted psy- lution of the American culture and society of the 1960s. In!u- chedelics. The concept of collective set-and-setting explains ential writers such as Kenneth Galbraith (The A!uent Society), why it is indeed so. The LSD of 1960s America was a unique William Whyte (Organization Man), and C. Wright Mills (The technological artifact shaped by the unique social and cultural Power Elite) were casting a critical look at American capitalism, conditions of 1960s America. It is di#erent in its action and corporate culture, and power properties from the same mol- structures. Subjects such as ecol- ecule used in di#erent places or ogy and women’s rights received The LSD of 1960s America was a times. The American trip of the increasing attention following 1960s was a singular collective the writing and activism of "g- unique technological artifact shaped psychedelic event expressing the ures such as Betty Friedan (The by the unique social and cultural collective set-and-setting condi- Feminine Mystique) and Rachel tions of America at the time. Carson whose seminal book Si- conditions of 1960s America. In the 1960s American so- lent Spring brought the issue of ciety had a difficult trip with ecological damage to the fore. Social theorists such as Hebert psychedelics which resulted in their prohibition. It has taken Marcuse, Norman O. Brown, and Paul Goodman decried 20 more years for psychedelic research to be resumed. The fate Western culture as repressive and raised doubts over the whole and outcome of the nascent psychedelic renaissance of the new project of civilization. Fictional pieces such as Salinger’s Catcher millennium could be completely di#erent. It is dependent "rst in the Rye, Heller’s Catch 22, and Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove poked and foremost on the collective set-and-setting conditions of our at the “phony” and authoritative society. In the world of psy- present society and culture. chiatry, a series of books by writers such as R.D. Laing, Thomas Szasz, and Ken Kesey launched the anti- movement REFERENCES which questioned the traditional de"nitions of sanity and insan- 1. James Fadiman, The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide: Safe, ity and o#ered that “mental illness” is in fact a normal reaction, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys, First Edition (Park Street Press, of sometimes spiritual dimensions, to the conditions created by 2011), 74. an insane society. 2. Paul H. Hoch, “Remarks on LSD and : The Such factors shaped the collective set-and-setting condi- Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease,” Journal of Nervous and tions, the social and cultural background against which LSD Mental Disease 125 (September 1957): 442. made its appearance, and which shaped the reception of LSD 3. Oscar Janiger, “The Use of Hallucinogenic Agents in into American society and culture. Psychiatry,” California Clinician 55, no. 7 (1959): 258. Robert Forte once stated in an interview that it is remark- 4. Trevor J. Pinch and Wiebe E. Bijker, “The Social able that one decade before Leary and Alpert were driven out of Construction of Facts and Artefacts: Or How the Sociology Harvard for giving LSD to undergraduate students, the Boston of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Bene"t Psychopathic Hospital doctors working under the psychotomi- Each Other,” Social Studies of Science 14, no. 3 (August 1, 1984): metic paradigm used Harvard undergraduate students in their 399–441, doi:10.1177/030631284014003004. LSD research and nothing happened “in terms of social move- 5. Wiebe Bijker, “The Social Construction of Fluroses- ment, controversy, or visionary breakthroughs.” Forte’s surprise cent Lighting, or How an Artifact Was Invented in Its Di#usion is justi"ed. The explanation for this discrepancy in the impact Stage,” in Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotech- which LSD had in the 1950s and in the 1960s in two research nical Change, ed. Wiebe E. Bijker and John Law (The MIT Press, facilities just a few kilometers away, is rooted of course in the 1994), 75–104. essentially di#erent set-and-setting conditions, individual and collective, into which LSD was brought. Ido Hartogsohn is a PhD Candidate in the Science, Technology, When LSD was used by 1950s Harvard students there was and Society program at Bar-Ilan University, Israel. Hartogsohn is the so little happening in terms of “social movement, controversy, founder of the psychedelic video website dailypsychedelicvideo.com or visionary breakthrough” because the array of set-and-setting and an editor of the Israeli psychedelic magazine LaPsychonaut. His which allowed LSD to become what it became in the 1960s "rst book, Te c h n o my s t i c a (2009, Hebrew), dealt extensively with was not yet in place. In an era governed by the communist scare the concept of psychedelic technology. Hartogsohn’s blog may be viewed and a conservative mentality, LSD was in the hands of the CIA, at psychedeliccultures.com. He can be reached at idohartogsohn@ and the young generation who would take LSD and turn it gmail.com. into a countercultural symbol was not yet in sight, as well as the

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