Info-Psychology: A Revision of Exo-Psychology [Paperback]

Timothy Leary (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1988

Dr. Leary explores the real issues of our time--Space Migration, Intelligence Increase and Life Extension--in this "Manual on the Use of the Human Nervous System according to the Instructions of the Manufacturers."

"The Info-Worlds our species will discover, create, explore and inhabit in the immediate future will not be reached from launch pads alone, but also through our personal computer screens."

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Timothy Leary, Ph.D., was a respected Harvard psychology professor who became a guru for hundreds of thousands of people, espousing the use of the powerful hallucinogen LSD and other mind-altering drugs as a means of brain change. After he was forced out of academia, Leary became associated with many of the great names of the time, including Aldous Huxley, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Charlie Mingus. In the mid-1960s, his fame grew to international proportions. He was targeted as "the most dangerous man in the world" by the U.S. government and given a 10-year sentence for possession of marijuana. After he was released from prison, he continued to advocate brain-change through various means, including computer software. He acted in a number of movies, and was well-regarded as a stand-up comedian/philosopher. He died of cancer in 1996. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 150 pages
• Publisher: Falcon Pr; Revised edition (May 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0941404609
• ISBN-13: 978-0941404600
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 6.9 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,678,347 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Psychotherapy for the Psychonauts convenience, November 29, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Info-Psychology: A Manual for the Use of the Human Nervous System According to the Instructions of the Manufacturers, and a Navigational Guide for Piloting the Evolution of the Human Individual (Paperback)

I know I'm pretty liberal with the 5 star thing on amazon.com, but if I had to revise all of my previous reviews, this one would still get 5 stars. For me, this book represents an amalgamation of all the information our civilization has accumulated over the last century or so.
Based on a solid foundation of science and psychology, chemistry and biology; this book offers your every day average psychonaut the opportunity to understand both personal evolution and the evolution of humanity, as well as where we may be going. Most comprehensive in nature, the human organism take the form of an advanced bio-computational organism of eight circuits that draw from Freud, Jung, Tranactional Analysis, Darwinian evolution, Neurophysiology, psychopharmacology, and an entarouge of Leary's personal research.
As with all of Leary's books the reader should take the presentation of facts lightly. Not to say that they are false or improperly assumed details, only that it is all informtiaon filtered through the understanding of Leary himself. My use of this book - used as companion to Angel Tech, Promethius Rising, and a host of other 8-circuit oriented books - has me re-structuring the entire system from my own point of view, and relating each ciruit to all areas of my life, as well as using it as an interpretation method for better understanding of yoga, magick, science, and psychology. As a whole any book that prompts the user to better understand themselves from a wholistic point of view has my thumbs up.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Worth the read in any case, June 22, 2005

By 

Dr. Lotto Budweiser "Lotto" (Staten Island, New York USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Info-Psychology: A Manual for the Use of the Human Nervous System According to the Instructions of the Manufacturers, and a Navigational Guide for Piloting the Evolution of the Human Individual (Paperback)

If you are already of the opinion that Timothy Leary was just some fanatical cult organizer under the influence of every illegal substance known to man, you have nothing to lose by reading one of his books. You can at least hope to obtain some first-hand evidence of his alleged insanity.

On the other hand, you would have a hard time convincing me that this book was written under any influence other than a joyful wonder and awe concerning knowledge and the world, and perhaps a mild resentment toward the system that imprisoned him for far greater a period of time than is typical for possession of marijuana.

By all means, InfoPsychology presents an unconventional model of reality, the human mind, and evolution. "Crazy" seems at times to be the best description for some of the ideas presented here. But as Leary himself points out, until the next evolutionary plateau is reached, concepts associated with that plateau will seem alien and threatening to the status quo (as well they should). But that is no excuse to dismiss these ideas as crazy. Subversive, contraversial, beyond the reach of our collective understanding and acceptance, perhaps. Certainly not crazy.

And if only for the time it takes to read the book we accept Leary's logical progression, we'll see that his book must necessarily be considered "crazy." He is dealing with evolutions that have not yet occurred. We cannot expect to fully understand and appreciate the complexities of an evolved form of humanity any more than neanderthals could've been expected to understand us. And in order to be able to reprogram ourselves, we must first recognize, or be made aware of how programmed we are to begin with.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't dodge the "exo-" of the original, January 28, 2006

By 

Heresiarch "[e-mail]" (starlarvae.org) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Info-Psychology: A Manual for the Use of the Human Nervous System According to the Instructions of the Manufacturers, and a Navigational Guide for Piloting the Evolution of the Human Individual (Paperback)

This book originally was published as "Exo-Psychology" and the title referred to Dr. Leary's interest in space colonization. Dr. Leary got caught up in the personal computer windstorm of the 1990s and (the Challenger explosion didn't help) turned his sights from outer space to cyberspace. But his original insight that psychedelic states presage those of extraterrestrial minds remains prescient. This book delineates a model of developmental psychology that spans prehistory to posthistory, and deserves a new reading by a new, postpsychedelic, generation. The book sprung from a philosophical context that Dr. Leary called Interstellar Neurogenetics. The term never caught on, but its spirit lives at www.starlarvae.org.