
American Trip
Set, Setting, and the Psychedelic Experience in the Twentieth Century
- Paperback
424 pages
- Release Date
20 October 2020
Summary
Are psychedelics invaluable therapeutic medicines, or dangerously unpredictable drugs that precipitate psychosis? Tools for spiritual communion or cognitive enhancers that spark innovation? Activators for one’s private muse or part of a political movement? In the 1950s and 1960s, researchers studied psychedelics in all these incarnations, often arriving at contradictory results.
In American Trip, Ido Hartogsohn examines how the psychedelic experience in midcentury America was…
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780262539142 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 0262539144 |
| Author: | Ido Hartogsohn |
| Publisher: | MIT Press Ltd |
| Imprint: | MIT Press |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Number of Pages: | 424 |
| Release Date: | 20 October 2020 |
| Weight: | 369g |
| Dimensions: | 229mm x 152mm |
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What They're Saying
Critics Review
“Hartogsohn’s book is a seminal contribution to his discipline and the larger issue of extrapharmacological factors shaping drug effects.”
–Frontiers in Pharmacology
“American Trip presents a timely and invaluable guide to the crucial lessons that twentiethcentury psychedelic history provides for the current psychedelic renaissance, and to using set and setting as a strategic tool for ensuring the healthy integration of psychedelics into society.”
– Rick Doblin, Executive Director of MAPS
“In clearly and rigorously exploring the single most consequential idea in psychedelic studies — the notion of set and setting — American Trip not only insightfully reframes the many histories of LSD, but offers a humanistic and reflexive alternative to the often simplistic discourse of today’s growing psychedelic industry.”
– Erik Davis, author of High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies
“American Trip guides its readers through the reflexive arts and sciences of set and setting used to study psychedelics, beckoning towards an intense pluriverse, full of beguiling guises, strange twists, and thricetold tales.
– Nancy D. Campbell, Professor of Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; author of OD: Naloxone and the Politics of Overdose
“In this landmark book, Hartogsohn enlarges the traditional parameters of set and setting by including the larger socialcultural matrix. This expanded definition provides a more sophisticated understanding of how nondrug factors determine the nature of any psychedelic drug experience.”
– Rick Strassman, MD, Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry, University of New Mexico School of Medicine and author of DMT: The Spirit Molecule
“American Trip amounts to a sociological enlightenment of our drug culture. Hartogsohn’s vibrant book shows how 1960s America made psychedelics do what they did and suggests that these wondrous molecules will do something altogether different in other times and places.
– Nicolas Langlitz, Associate Professor of Anthropology, New School for Social Research; author of Neuropsychedelia: The Revival of Hallucinogen Research since the Decade of the Brain
About The Author
Ido Hartogsohn
Ido Hartogsohn is Assistant Professor in the Graduate Program in Science, Technology, and Society at Bar Ilan University.
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