I.F.I.F. Group Plans Center For Research

The International Foundation for Internal Freedom, an organization to study consciousness-expanding drugs, is arranging to purchase a hotel in Mexico as an international research center.

The foundation applied for incorporation two weeks ago, Timothy F. Leary, lecturer in Clinical Psychology, said, and is studying plans to set up IFIF centers here and in other cities across the country. These centers will study the effects and possible uses of consciousness expanding drugs, he said.

Leary, one of the founders of IFIF, also announced that his connections with the University will end in June, but that his associate, Richard Alpert, assistant professor of Clinical Psychology and of Education, will remain at Harvard next year. Leary said his own plans include writing and working on the two journals which IFIF will publish.

The research of Leary and Alpert into the effects of psilocybin, a hallucinogenic drug, first became a subject of public controversy last spring. At that time other members of the Center for Research in Personality questioned the propriety of the research methods of Leary and Alpert.

This fall, Dean Monro and Dana L. Farnsworth, Director of University Health Services, revived the controversy in an open letter warning undergraduates of the dangers of "mind-distorting drugs." The letter, widely reported, did not mention Leary or Alpert, or the Center for Research in Personality.

Psilocybin is a chemical synthesis of the active component in a Mexican mushroom which is used in Indian magic rites.