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Darwin's Pharmacy: Rhetoric, Self Experiment and the Emergence of Psychedelic Psychology
Darwin's Pharmacy Richard Doyle A Duquesne University Minicourse,October 7-9, 2005 mobius@psu.edu There is a code here - like that of Morse or the genetic code...All of this is a language calling to be deciphered. Shanon, Charting The Phenomenology of the Ayahuasca Experience What are psychedelics? Psychiatrist Humphrey Osmond coined the term in 1956 in order to amplify mescaline and LSD's capacities to actualize or "manifest" mind, offering it as at once a corrective to the older non sequitur "psychotomimetic" and a counter point to Aldous Huxley's putatively "too beautiful" "phanerothyme." The rhetorical history of these compounds - the description and management of the states linked to them, the composition of their recipes and means of extraction and propagation - maps a series of corrections, disputations and differentiations linked to the essentially variable and often powerful effects of tryptamines and phenethylamines on humans and animals. This course will look closely at the history of scientific attempts to study these adjuncts and the states of mind they help induce, and will offer an evolutionary model for the role of these plants and compounds in evolution - Darwin's Pharmacy. Readings, lectures and discussions will focus on the biochemical model of consciousness fostered by psychedelics as well as the techniques and contexts of their use as thereapeutic tools and treatments in the history of psychology and shamanism. |