The Psyche in 3-D

In Hollywood, it was only natural that psychiatric patients undergoing analytic treatment should have visions in wide screen, full color, and observe themselves from cloud nine. What was remarkable was that these phenomena--experienced by (among others) such glossy public personalities as Gary Grant and his third exwife, Betsy Drake--were reported in the cold, grey scientific columns of the A.M.A.'s Archives of General Psychiatry.

Reason for the many-colored recall of events dating back to the first year of life, and the accelerated recovery of about half the patients, was the use, in combination with orthodox psychotherapy, of one of the most potent drugs known to man: lysergic acid diethylamide. Trade-named Delysid by Sandoz Pharmaceuticals, it is usually known by its early lab designation, LSD-25 (TIME, June 28, 1954 et seq.).

LSD first won fame for its power, in microscopic doses, to induce hallucinations and a psychotic state--both temporary--roughly parallel to those of schizophrenia. But several psychiatrists on both sides of the Atlantic have sought to turn the drug to advantage in treating real mental illnesses. Now, from the Psychiatric Institute of Beverly Hills, Drs. Arthur L. Chandler and Mortimer A. Hartman report using LSD as a "facilitating agent" in treating 110 patients.

"Treat Thyself." Instead of the normal 50-minute hour on the couch, a patient being "facilitated" by LSD must go through an elaborate routine. First is a screening to exclude the severely depressed, including potential suicides, and those adjudged in danger of a severe emotional breakdown (psychosis). Then, after four foodless hours, the patients are ensconced on a couch in a comfortable, carpeted room with classical music piped in. After the tasteless shot of as little as a millionth of an ounce of LSD in water, they lie down and are fitted with blinders (a "sleep shield"). To make sure that they shut out external stimuli, some also wear wax and cotton earplugs.

The drug's effects begin to show within 15 minutes to two hours; a single LSD-psychotherapy session may last five to six hours. Half an hour before it ends, the doctors give an antagonist drug (usually secobarbital or chlorpromazine) to cut short LSD's lingering effects; they make sure that the patient does not drive home and they often prescribe sedatives for the next couple of days.

Even with all these safeguards, say Drs. Chandler and Hartman, LSD treatment can still be dangerous unless the psychiatrist has had plenty of it himself. It is not enough for him to have taken it once or twice "to see what it's like"; they insist that the psychiatrist should have had 20 to 40 sessions with it.

While the drug takes effect, they report, the patient may show a variety of physical reactions: twisting, trembling, posturing, wringing his hands, laughing, rying, or curling up in the fetal position. He may feel unnaturally hot or cold, unduly sensitive to sound, tingling or numb, sexually aroused--or in severe pain. The pain, they believe, is often associated with the repressed memory of some injurious childhood experience, so it is an important factor in the psychotherapy.

God & the Devil. As the drug's effect deepens,* the patient has illusions--not hallucinations, the doctors insist, because he does not believe in them. Instead of 'hearing voices," as in schizophrenia, he enjoys visions. These visions may be timeless and seemingly unrelated to past or present experience. But often they consist of incredibly vivid, colorful scenes from the recent past, or from a childhood remembered with superhuman accuracy: 'Some patients describe it by saying that it is as though a 3-D tape were being run off in the visual field." Long-forgotten childhood fantasies may be mixed with real memories, some going back (as patients testify that their parents have confirmed) to life's first year.

Family conflicts may be projected onto the LSD screen in puppet shows, acted out by Disney characters. Symbolic of emotional disturbance are dragons, witches, fairies and satyrs. There may be fantasies of seeing God and the Devil "locked in mortal cosmic combat."

Whatever the visions' content, most important is the fact that the patient seems able to stand aside and report vividly observed conflicts, dredged from his deepest unconscious and acted out before him. Somehow, his sharpened insight is able to function independently of his emotions. The more he "goes with the drug," the more he can stand aside and "see himself" as he has been, resisting reality and rationalizing his behavior. He learns that "in the world of psychic reality, a great many things . . . have no correspondence to facts in the objective world. [But] these psychic realities . . . may be the very ones which, when repressed, give him trouble in his dealings with the objective world."

Addicts' Insights. Who benefits from LSD plus psychotherapy? Drs. Chandler and Hartman had 44 neurotics, 25 cases of personality disorder (including schizoid, paranoid, and eight patients with extreme compulsiveness), and 17 who had been addicted to alcohol or narcotics or both. Most of the patients took LSD dozens of times in stepped-up doses. (There appears to be no danger of addiction.) No fewer than 50 of their patients, the doctors report, showed considerable to outstanding improvement, while 38 more showed at least some improvement. Only 22 were rated as having shown no benefit. Most gratifying was the success with victims of notoriously resistant types of illness--addicts and obsessive-compulsives.

LSD is still an investigational drug (not available for general prescription), its distribution closely controlled by law, and watchdogged by Sandoz. Like a score of other physicians doing research on LSD, Drs. Chandler and Hartman emphasize that by itself it cures nothing. Its apparent value lies in boosting--and accelerating--the benefits to be gained from orthodox psychiatry. One of their patients made a good recovery in less than a year, after six years of drugless couch work had failed.

In the East, Manhattan's Dr. Harold A. Abramson has pioneered with LSD in group experiments. In Saskatoon, Sask. and at New Westminster, B.C., Dr. Abram Hoffer has used it determinedly on alcoholics, has found that while it is no chemical cure, the heightened insight that it gives enables patients to see the emotional basis of their problem drinking. Whereas Alcoholics Anonymous usually claims success in only 50%-60% of run-of-the-still cases, Dr. Hoffer has dried out 50% of the 100-proof cases who had been failures in A.A.

In Hollywood, word of LSD's powers inevitably circulated with the martinis, led to a fad to try it. An osteopathic psychiatrist gave it experimentally to a number of the curious, including famed Novelist-Mystic Aldous (The Doors of Perception) Huxley. Among the Chandler-Hartman patients were several movie no tables, whom the doctors refused, because of professional ethics, to name. But some named themselves. One of these was dura ble Actor Grant, 56, who emerged from therapy to give a confused account of what had ailed him during a long and successful career, but he was convinced that he had at last found "a tough inner core of strength."

* Paradoxically , notes Boston's Dr. Max Rinkel, in mice (and presumably in man) LSD concentrates less in the brain than in any other major organ, and is far below its highest brain concentration when the psychological effects are greatest. So how it works is a mystery.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.