Neuropsychedelia: The Revival of Hallucinogen Research since the Decade of the Brain First Edition

by Nicolas Langlitz (Author)

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ISBN-13: 978-0520274822

ISBN-10: 0520274822

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Neuropsychedelia examines the revival of psychedelic science since the "Decade of the Brain." After the breakdown of this previously prospering area of psychopharmacology, and in the wake of clashes between counterculture and establishment in the late 1960s, a new generation of hallucinogen researchers used the hype around the neurosciences in the 1990s to bring psychedelics back into the mainstream of science and society. This book is based on anthropological fieldwork and philosophical reflections on life and work in two laboratories that have played key roles in this development: a human lab in Switzerland and an animal lab in California. It sheds light on the central transnational axis of the resurgence connecting American psychedelic culture with the home country of LSD. In the borderland of science and religion, Neuropsychedelia explores the tensions between the use of hallucinogens to model psychoses and to evoke spiritual experiences in laboratory settings. Its protagonists, including the anthropologist himself, struggle to find a place for the mystical under conditions of late-modern materialism.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Beautifully rendered, exhasutively documented.... Highly Recommended." -- J. G. Schnellman ― Choice Published On: 2013-08-01

"A deeply reflective meditation on the perennial struggle of humanity to preserve a mystical view of life during a time of materialist scientific discourses." -- Adam Montgomery ― Gesnerus

"Neuropsychedelia is an elegant exemplar of both science studies and anthropology of the contemporary." -- Meg Stalcup ― Somatosphere Published On: 2015-04-08

From the Inside Flap

"Langlitz's fieldwork in cutting-edge neuroscience laboratories is a much-needed scholarly work on the neglected area of psychedelic drugs and what these drugs can tell us about ourselves. Here, Langlitz grapples with the difficult issues at stake when studying these areas of neuroscience and psychopharmacology."David Healy, author of Pharmageddon

"This is a first-class anthropological achievement. Langlitz' careful, long-term fieldwork generated many powerful and unexpected insights into the past and present of hallucinogen research. Neuropsychedelia will surely become the standard reference for this burgeoning field of social studies."Tobias Rees, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at McGill University

Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of California Press; First edition (November 7, 2012)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0520274822
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0520274822
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.9 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #765,362 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #981 in Anthropology (Books)
- #1,487 in General Anthropology
- #4,262 in Cultural Anthropology (Books)

Customer Reviews:
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Nicolas Langlitz

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Nicolas Langlitz is an anthropologist who writes about how research in the mind and life sciences changes our self-conceptions as human beings. His questions are largely philosophical but he pursues them in the field. However, his field sites often turn out to be other people's laboratories where he observes science in action, but he has also worked at actual field sites such as primatological research stations in African rainforests. He published books about the discovery of chimpanzee cultures, the revival of psychedelic research, and the highly controversial clinical practice of a French psychoanalyst famous for his anti-biologistic reinterpretation of Freud. Find out more at http://www.nicolaslanglitz.de.

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Alex

Fantastic read all-around

Reviewed in the United States on February 21, 2020

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Know that feeling when you suddenly see an intricate 3d landscape in place of what used to be a familiar one-dimensional issue? That's the high I'm chasing with my reading, but it can take years between the times I get my fix proper. This year has been a lucky one.

I can't immediately think of another book that matches this one in the density of insight. I had to pause almost after every page to entertain the new perspectives just attained. And often to shake off the bittersweet frustration from being unable to talk back to the characters ("informants" in proper lingo) or the author.

I only have one minor qualm to counterbalance my exaltation with this book. The sophistication of the language at times reaches absurdly high levels that seem to serve no other purpose than tagging the turf of the Uberintellectuals gang. As a non-academic this made me feel like a thief - simultaneously excited with the prospect of quick enrichment and scared of being caught where I shouldn't be.

Anyhow, this is a must read for anyone interested in going beyond their partisan perspective and starting to gain some actual understanding of humanity's relationship with mind-altering drugs.

3 people found this helpful

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Neurotik

Important and innovative book

Reviewed in the United States on February 16, 2014

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With Neuropsychedelia, Langlitz establishes himself among the young and forward-looking social scientists engaging with the neuro and psy disciplines. The volume complements Eric Dyck's study on the psychedelic research in Canada in the 1950s and 1960s, and it is also an extremely novel case study for reading alongside Nikolas Rose and Joelle Abi-Rached's "Neuro". None of these alternatives are to be missed - but I'd say that Langlitz's stands apart from these others. A fine contribution. Enjoyable. Thoughtful. Smart.

4 people found this helpful

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Albert Kenneth Chiancone Jr

More reading required, eh?

Reviewed in the United States on October 30, 2013

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Interesting information. Would like to know more. Have the Cannabis clinical books. Will have to read more on this topic

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B. Bunyard

Read this book...but get a big dictionary first!

Reviewed in the United States on November 23, 2015

Neuropsychedelia: The Revival of Hallucinogen Research since the Decade of the Brain

Nicolas Langlitz, author of Neuropsychedelia, is a German polyglot, who, though trained as a physician, detoured into medical history, and later into a PhD program in medical anthropology. He is presently Assistant Professor at the New School for Social Research in New York City. His book stems directly from his use of hallucinogens in his youth and his search for meaning in this experience. This is not a chronicle of his “trips” but a history of the revival of psychedelic science since the Decade of the Brain in the 90s. Langlitz devotes two chapters to this revival. The first is devoted to big questions. Where does the idea that hallucinogens mimic insanity come from? Is the brain a reducing valve? Are hallucinogens liberating, leading to a freer more autonomous society? And that is why some libertarians fund this research? Are they the first step towards Brave New World (Huxley’s dystopia) with government mandated happy pills? Or towards Island (Huxley’s utopia) where hallucinogens are psycholytic breaking down egos and merging people into a great sea of spirituality? A chapter devoted to “Swiss Psilocybin and US Dollars” limns a Switzerland somewhere between Big Sur and a bourgeois East German style repression. They had chemists and hippies, but it was libertarian bucks that catalyzed the psychedelic research which bucked the American War on Drugs.
Two chapters deal with Langlitz as participant/observer in two laboratories , one in Zurich, one in San Diego. In these, Langlitz unfurls the flag of anthropology and challenges the assumptions of the research. Are double-blind placebo based experiments on hallucinogens possible? Are the experiments contaminated by assumptions convenient to drug manufacturers? Psilocybin makes people hallucinate and crazy people hallucinate. Is a drug which cancels psilocybin hallucination sufficient to “cure” craziness? The variability of the human response to psilocybin due to the “set and setting” of the experiments is thrown up as a game spoiler. Can schizophrenia be boiled down to neurotransmitters? Since there are differences in the way that sane humans hallucinate WITHOUT hallucinogens, and there are differences in the way that humans hallucinate WITH hallucinogens, might there be differences in the way insane humans hallucinate? That is, reducing the issue to neurotransmitters seems very optimistic. Langlitz talks of “local biologies”, a locution certain to generate misunderstanding among biologists.
When it comes to experimentation on mice (Chapter 4), Langlitz suggests that it is wrongheaded, so to speak, to say that mice hallucinate in any way that is an appropriate model for humans. How can you model mental disease in (other) animals if all you have to observe is behavior? And if the model of the PPI (pre pulse inhibition) is germane to the effects of psilocybin on organisms, mice are decidedly different from humans. Oddly, Langlitz suggests that “set and setting” interfere with animal research just as it does with humans. Then there is the notion that the brain is a “reducing valve” which keeps us from being distracted by the world around us and that psilocybin opens the doors of perception (thanks Aldous!) flooding the helpless mind. But dammit, some dopers report that they can concentrate really, really, really hard on that mimosa blossom in the moonlight on the tree behind the barn-- despite the world’s true cacophony. Is psilocybin here the reducing valve?
The last two chapters are spent trying to figure out if the world has been changed more by hallucinogens than science. Science “disenchants” the world saying “that’s not magic, honey, that’s chemistry!” But is that enough? Maybe for every disenchantment science delivers us, Madison Ave offers us two “re-enchantments”? Can science tell us what to do? How to live? Hallucinogens are seen as the libertarian, anarchist tools which undermine the authority of religion and which make each of us the captains of our own spirituality. Will psycholytics make us better, dissolving those pesky egos? Will it make us more spiritual, more reverent of life itself? Or just more advanced cynics?
Read the book! Carry a big dictionary!
–Odin Toness
(Review originally published in FUNGI, 2013, vol 6 no.1.)

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Ryan Costa

overly sophisticated German intellectualism.

Reviewed in the United States on January 27, 2015

Our civilization has largely held faith in the medicinal power of alcohol. The limitations of this are apparent, and largely tolerated. This book was interesting not for the psychedelic drugs themselves, but the comparisons of the democratic processes of Switzerland and those of the United States. There are profound differences between the cultures of these too countries. When America became the first country where most people had an automobile, we quickly passed prohibition of alcohol laws. Years later, even that Freedom Loving Icon Reagan deemed it prudent to raise the legal age to 21. America should probably not start passing out psychedelic drugs as frequently as Xanax and Prozac: We have too many cars, too many guns, and too many idiots. The new designer psychedelic drugs are even worse: they make people like Techno music(I have seen it in movies!)

One person found this helpful

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fire

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 18, 2021

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Tester

Favorite Book about Psychedelics

Reviewed in Germany on May 31, 2021

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An amazing insightful book about the history of the neuroscience of psychedelics!
Many new names of interesting scientists, general insights about the history of neuroscience, animal experiments and their generalization to humans, and new foundations for Aldous Huxley's Perennial Philosophy.
You don't get what I mean? Does not matter, do not expect an easy-read, but rather a scientific book with lots of knowledge, that can be understood from people who have an honest curiosity in the scientific history of psychedelics.

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Neuropsychedelia: The Revival of Hallucinogen Research since the Decade of the Brain First Edition

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