PSYCHEDELICS - Sciencemadness.org

279___________
____________________________________________________ Psychedelics
paper, one is moved to ask whether the effect of psychedelics
is to shift thinking from the abstract, cognitive sphere to the
perceptual.
SOME HYPNOTIC ANALOGUES
TO THE PSYCHEDELIC STATE
BERNARD S. AARONSON, PH.D.
The effects of psychedelic drugs are many and varied. Masters
and Houston (1966) have attempted to set down a partial
list of the phenomena produced by these drugs that are
of psychological significance, and have ended up with a catalogue
of behavior changes that embraces almost the entire
range of organismic functioning. The effects are often so profound,
so protean in their manifestations, that it is difficult
to decide which effects are primary and which changes are associated
with other changes.
Nevertheless, inspection of accounts of psychedelic sessions
(e.g., Metzner, 1968) suggests that they are not just random
concatenations of effects, but follow an orderly process of
unfolding. The influence of set and setting has been docu-
mented by many researchers (Hyde, 1960; Leary, Litwin,
and Metzner, 1963; Krippner, 1965; Mogar, 1965a, 1965c;
Alpert and Cohen, 1966). Klüver (1966) has reviewed the
literature on hallucinations in general to show the underlying
form-constants that set off the oscillating patterns of phe-
nomenal experience.
The general tendency is to seek to explain these effects by
appeals to neurophysiology, pathophysiology, or psychody-
namics. As organisms, we seem to be constituted in such a
way as to take our own perceptions of the world around us as
veridical, without questioning our own contributions to what
Presented in part at the meetings of the American Psychological
Association, San Francisco, California, 1968.
These studies were supported in part by grants from the Para-
psychology Foundation, Inc., the Ittelson Family Fund, and U. S.
Public Health Service Grant No. 1-SO1-05262-01.