Drugs and the University

The experiments on drugs that alter perception have long since stopped at 5 Divinity Avenue; Dr. Leary departs from the University to establish headquarters in Mexico, while Dr. Alpert remains in the employ of the graduate School of Education. Is the stoppage of drug experiments yet another encroachment on academic freedom, or is it protection against a bunch of nuts? Should, and can, the University wash its hands of experimentation with drugs, or is there perhaps something in the whole embarrassment that is valuable and worth encouraging?

The official drug activities of Leary, Alpert and others at the Center for Research in Personality, have been subject to three charges: that they are medically dangerous, that they are scientifically indefensible, and that they are intellectually reprehensible. Let us look at these charges one by one, and see what the replies can mean for the University.

Medical Dangers

The medical dangers claimed are of two sorts: physiological and psychological. To guard against physiological injury, the researchers tried to find out where physiological injury might occur (e.g., heart or liver), and in early studies, required a medical examination: "Subjects who volunteered for the study were given medical screening by the University Health Services or the prison psychiatrist [some subjects were prisoners], and psychological screening by a group of clinical psychologists." (R.Metzner, G. Litwin, G. Weil, "The relation of expectation and setting to experiences with psilocybin: a questionnaire study," dittoed, 1962). After a period in which no ill effects were reported, Leary dropped the requirement of an examination, and simply presented volunteers with the possible dangers and previous results. No physiological disasters, such as struck the Oklahoma elephant full of LSD-25, have been reported (although the newness of psilocybin, and the difficulty of obtaining fit from the Swiss supplier, may in part account for this). The evidence, even from the Harvard Medical School, is that physiologically, psilocybin is slightly more dangerous than an aspirin.

The psychological dangers to the individual participating in these drug experiments are not so easily set aside. Drug studies tend to attract volunteers on whom the drugs could have deleterious effects--deleterious from the viewpoint of the society."...it appears probable that more neurotic subjects are more likely to volunteer for studies of this kind. This conclusion is strengthened by a study...in which a remarkably high incidence of severe maladjustment was found among fifty-six volunteers for a drug experiment at Harvard Medical School. Although the volunteers were students and supposedly normal, they included three psychotics, twelve neurotics, three psychopaths, an alcoholic, and at least four homosexuals!" (D. Trouton & H.J. Eysenck, "The Effects of Drugs on Behavior," Handbook of Abnormal Psychology; New York, 1960.) We will return later to the question of the scientific value of results from such subjects; the immediate danger has been that drug experiences might aggravate or even consummate the instability of some student's psyche.

Outpatient use of psilocybin, in particular, has been pointed out as potentially hazardous because of the "suicidal ideation, excited states, and impaired judgement" it can produce. (S. Malitz, et al., "Some Observations on Psilocybin, a New Hallucinogen, in Volunteer Subjects," Comprehensive Psychiatry, 1960, 1, 8-17.) Assurances of a "psychological screening," with no information about the criteria of screening, are distressingly vague, and here Leary and his associates have failed to provide the University with proper evidence of the safety of their work. The fact that the University has not held up a ruined volunteer as an example of the dangers is no mitigation; first, because mental breakdowns can rarely be assigned a unique cause, and second, because the University is unlikely to embarrass one of its members.

Thus, although the physiological dangers of psilocybin are probably minimal, the researchers have shown too little care in assuring their fostering institution that the psychological dangers of psilocybin are also being minimized.

Scientific Dangers

Some members of the scientific establishment have seen these drug researches as a psychological danger in another sense: they undermine the scientific attitude and approach to the rigorous, controlled study of behavior. One studies behavior, they say, by isolating interesting facets of it in a laboratory and seeing how these facets can be manipulated.

But there are also scientifically sound alternatives (the criterion of scientific soundness being whatever produces more, fruitful science). Descendants of the naturalists and students of natural history, ethologists, such as Lorenz and Tinbergen, demand observation of behavior unchanneled by experimental hypotheses: "Ethologists believe that all facts on behavior must be acquired before any hypotheses are formulated. They have come to this conclusion because behavior is so multiform that a wealth of evidence can always be compiled in support of any theory, no matter how capriciously constructed." (E.H. Hess, "Ethology: An Approach toward the complete analysis of behavior," New Directions in Psychology; New York, 1962.) One need not then stamp off in a scientific rage on reading: "We saw, however, very early that we could not begin to impose strict experimental controls (and strong assumptions) on our research until we had a broader view of the human and scientific problems involved. For this reason our first study [cited above] was purely naturalistic." (G. Litwin, R. Metzner, G. Weil, "Some problems encountered in working on the psilocybin research project," dittoed, 1962.)

One of the major specific criticisms of the methodology of Leary and associates was directed at their failure to use placebo (dummy) control groups. The same article in the Handbook of Abnormal Psychology states, for example: "...placebo treatment is necessary, because without it we could not be sure that any effects observed in the experimental group were due to the drug and not to psychological factors such as suggestibility, expectation, and so forth." To this the questionnaire study by Metzner et al. responds: "The present study does not employ a placebo control group since the focus of interest was not the comparison of psilocybin experiences with the effects of suggestion. Rather, the purpose of the research was to examine the effects of a set, setting and back-ground variables on the nature of the psilocybin experiences by correlation of pre-drug with post-drug questionnaire responses."

Whether this response is really a reply to the objection depends on the motives behind the stated experimental goals. If the investigators are trying to understand the behavior of normal people under psilocybin, a placebo group is still necessary. If the investigators are trying to see, e.g., what facilitative or catalytic effect psilocybin can have in group psychotherapy, perhaps the control is unnecessary, because the goal is simply to find out what can be done. The therapeutic goal is definitely the one Leary and associates have adopted, and may justify their techniques.

The criticism that the subjects used have abnormal tendencies in the first place can receive a similar answer. If the investigators are trying to study the behavior of normal people under drugs, the criticism is cogent, and in this case, probably damning. If the investigators intend to apply the drugs to help the psychologically abnormal, then they have picked an appropriate population for experimenting. They should, however, take more care to establish what kind of subjects they have; on this, their reports are again vague.

Whatever the vagaries of research methods, the paper by Litwin et al, makes it clear that its authors avow a commitment to "research on the short term and long term effects of psilocybin plus situation, and on the possible social uses of psilocybin.... Asking those people who are participating with us in making decisions and setting up programs to take the drug themselves is not evasive, but rather an attempt to bring as much knowledge and experience as possible to bear on these problems.... [However,] confrontation or, as it were, understanding the problem from the inside may be fruitful, not as a replacement for scientific communication but as a supplement." A pluralism of approaches to understanding behavior is just as useful as a pluralism of means of transportation; if the danger of the trip can be minimized, nature is more likely to be an enlightening conductor than a priori human reason.

The Value of Mind

Contrasting strangely with this avowed commitment to research and to the communication of results to the scientific family are published statements of Leary. Leary conceives all learned patterns of human behavior as games, involving roles, rules, goals, rituals, language, and values. While he, or at least his associates, claim to be playing the "game" of science, one which certainly uses the mind, he says: "The mind is a tiny fragment of the brain-box complex. It is the game-playing fragment--a useful and entertaining tool but quite irrelevant to survival... We over-value the mind--that flimsy collection of learned words and verbal connections; the mind, that system of paranoid delusions with the learned self as center. And we eschew the non-mind, non-game intuitive insight-outlook which is the key to the religious experience, to the love experience." (T. Leary, "How to change behavior," in G.S. Nielsen (Ed.) Clinical psychology: proceedings of the 14th international congress of applied psychology, vol. 4; Copenhagen, 1962.) Whatever its truth, in some sense or other. Leary's estimate of the mind is inconsistent with the science game, with the professor game, and with the university game. A university is built of men's minds; he who attacks the corner-stone can well expect to get hit by falling walls.

Leary's attitude toward mind disqualifies him from membership in a university, and perhaps he has shown that he realizes this by removing to Mexico.

So much for the three charges directed to the official drug researches of the Center for Research in Personality. In addition there have been many rumors and clandestine reports of illicit uses of psilocybin. The sources of these rumors are curiously elusive; the people who bear them swear to their truth, but fail to present the least evidence to support them. Until such evidence is found, we will ignore the rumors.

Drugs Remain

Even with Leary gone to Mexico, student interest in drugs will remain, and with it the University must yet treat.

The University has started poorly. The letter from Dana L. Farnsworth, chief of the University Health Service, and Dean Watson, declared that students should not take "mind-distorting drugs" because they are bad. Granted, such a move puts the University in the safe position of having warned its students, and provides Boston with banner headlines for a day; still it probably did not prevent a single undergraduate so determined from taking drugs, while it may have aroused the curiosity of those who had been indifferent. If the University is to guide its students, it must do so by providing information about the dangers, on the same rational bases that it expects its faculty to operate. The dangers of mescaline and LSD are real; those of psilocybin even greater because unknown, and the University is absolutely correct in condemning irresponsible and unguided playing. But a more informative warning is needed.

Assuming the University deals properly with its undergraduates and graduates, what about the remaining experimenters? Using drugs for social rehabilitation is important, and likely to become more so; the University, on the forefront in so many other areas, would be negligent if it ignored this one. But perhaps it or the department in control can cultivate, through selection, investigators not less imaginative but more circumspect; investigators not less far-reaching in thought, but more willing properly to carry the responsibilities of informing and explaining.