Experts Cast Doubt on “Mind Drug” LSD

Mar. 11, 1965 - The search for a brightly colored haven through hallucination-producing drugs may lead even the so-called normal person only to his particular brand of hell, according to the first large-scale study of the effect of LSD on different personality types.

Interest in the hallucinogenic drugs has grown with reports that they cause creative excitement and lucidity far greater than do narcotics or alcohol, without the danger of addiction. However, some investigators have warned of the drugs’ harmful effects on emotionally disturbed persons. Until now, there have been no studies of the effect on “the average man.”

The results of the five-year controlled experiment were reported today at a news conference at New York University’s Center for Mental Health. 

LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) is a “mind-expanding” drug that may induce fantastic images and delusions similar to those caused by mescaline and psilocybin. These drugs have also been known to put emotionally disturbed persons on the brink of psychosis.

In studying 100 subjects, who were carefully screened to eliminate those with emotional difficulties, the NYU research team headed by Dr. Harriet Linton Barr found that the drug intensified but did not change personality characteristics.

The imaginative subjects with “good opinions of themselves” saw “glorious visions”; the “hard-headed nonintellectuals” reacted mildly; the relatively dull and passive became bewildered; the hostile hypochondriacs became angrier and ached more than usual.

The LSD project is only one of many being conducted at the center, where the emphasis is on subjecting the psychoanalytic theories of Freud to a study of thinking. 

“We subject normal subects to situations that make rational thought difficult,” Dr. Robert Holt explained.

For example, a study of the effects of isolation — four to 72 hours spent without sound, sight, or movement — disclosed that the “Jack Armstrong, athletic, square-jawed type” tended to go to pieces. The more imaginative, thoughtful “poet” type fared much better when cut off from external stimuli.

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