The Timothy Leary Project: Inside the Great Counterculture Experiment

by Jennifer Ulrich Narrated by Leslie Howard

Overview

The life of Timothy Leary is examined through papers and correspondence preserved in his archive.



The first collection of Timothy Leary's (1920-1996) selected papers and correspondence opens a window on the ideas that inspired the counterculture of the 1960s and the fascination with LSD that continues to the present. The man who coined the phrase "turn on, tune in, drop out," Leary cultivated interests that ranged across experimentation with hallucinogens, social change and legal reform, and mysticism and spirituality, with a passion to determine what lies beyond our consciousness. Through Leary's papers, the listener meets such key figures as Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Ken Kesey, Marshall McLuhan, Aldous Huxley, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and Carl Sagan. Author Jennifer Ulrich organizes this rich material into an annotated narrative of Leary's adventurous life, an epic quest that had a lasting impact on American culture.



"A fascinatingly intimate record of how this brilliant, courageous, and awed genius changed our world." -Michael Backes, author of the bestselling Cannabis Pharmacy

Editorial Reviews

artist and cofounder of USCO - Gerd Stern

The documents and insights in this book shed new light on Timothy Leary—a brilliant, friendly charismatic, whose habitual and fanatic neuroses motivated both rebellion and creative energies.

cofounder of Mondo 2000 and coauthor of Transcendence - R U Sirius

In some quarters, Timothy Leary is thought of as someone who was only concerned with enjoying his celebrity and keeping the party going. And while he certainly managed to enjoy himself, Leary was seriously engaged in various discourses and sincerely involved in the lives of friends, family, and lovers. Hopefully, these letters show people the real Timothy Leary—an inveterate letter writer who took the time to engage with all kinds of people. Few of us would be as generous.

author of the bestselling Cannabis Pharmacy - Michael Backes

Timothy Leary engineered a revolution in society, art, and science sparked by his passion for the psychedelic experience and the potential of the human mind. This book delivers a fascinatingly intimate record of how this brilliant, courageous, and awed genius changed our world.

Coauthor, with Leary and Alpert, of The Psychedelic Experience - Ralph Metzner

People tend to think of Tim Leary as the Irish rebel psychologist who recklessly led people into dropping acid and dropping out, or as an inspired visionary philosopher who had a penchant for categorizing and classifying. What few people knew (myself included) is that he also had a secret pack rat mentality and le a paper trail of his travels, ideas, and activities. From the six hundred boxes of his legacy le to the New York Public Library, the editor has compiled a selection of his notes and letters. They portray a brilliant and restless genius who never feared to make mistakes or change his views.

The A.V. Club

"...archivist Jennifer Ulrich’s The Timothy Leary Project serves as the first collection of the patron saint of LSD’s selected papers and correspondence.

Domino Magazine

"Psychologist Timothy Leary was fascinated with the effects of psychedelic drugs on the human mind under controlled conditions, and his studies and papers on the use of LSD and psilocybin (back when they were still legal in the United States) offer a rich look at what lies beyond our consciousness. The first-ever collection of his selected papers is on offer in this novel, and well worth the read."

The New Yorker

The exchanges between Leary and Ginsberg are collected in a new book, “The Timothy Leary Project: Inside the Great Counterculture Experiment,” compiled by the archivist Jennifer Ulrich... Ulrich’s selections, many of them previously unpublished, round out the trajectory of Leary’s life from professor to guru to fugitive to a nostalgic caricature of himself.

The New Yorker

The exchanges between Leary and Ginsberg are collected in a new book, “The Timothy Leary Project: Inside the Great Counterculture Experiment,” compiled by the archivist Jennifer Ulrich... Ulrich’s selections, many of them previously unpublished, round out the trajectory of Leary’s life from professor to guru to fugitive to a nostalgic caricature of himself.

Kirkus Reviews

2018-02-20
A look at the life of Timothy Leary (1920-1996) through the documents preserved in his archive.Depending on your point of view, Leary was either a guru or a charlatan. Actually, he was a little bit of both. With Richard Alpert (now known as Ram Dass), he initiated the Harvard Psilocybin Project in 1960 to research the effect of hallucinogens. A few years later, when he was dismissed from the university, he moved to Millbrook, New York, and helped jump-start the psychedelic movement. As this collection of documents from the archive reminds us, Leary's story is complex. Indeed, the writings here—including Leary's notes and commentary as well as correspondence from Allen Ginsberg, Aldous Huxley, Eldridge Cleaver, and other significant figures—highlight Leary's belief in consciousness expansion, which he saw as the evolutionary purpose of humanity. Arranged and annotated by Ulrich, who cataloged this material for the New York Public Library, the collection is a mixed bag, and there is little new for readers who already know Leary's life and work. At the same time, it can be revealing, if also more than a little hagiographic, to see it through primary sources. "Everyone carries a piece of the puzzle," Leary once said. "Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected." The advice is unexpectedly pragmatic and, in some ways, speaks to the intentions of the volume, which seeks to operate as a controlled cacophony. "The letters and papers offered in this book," Ulrich writes in the introduction, "…serve as a unique insight into a period in history that has been obscured by its own myth-making." The Leary we find here is a version of the one we know already, both con man and visionary. Given the subject, how could it be otherwise?This book won't change the way you think about Leary, but it does reveal, to the extent that anything can, the person behind the myth.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940192663165
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	08/13/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

From Psychological Tests to Psychedelic Tests, 1957–61

"Everyone carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others ..."

Timothy Leary (original source unknown)

First and foremost, Timothy Leary was a psychologist, dedicated to exploring the workings of the mind. As scholars of psychology, Leary and his colleague Richard Alpert approached the study of the human mind and behavior by applying standard scientific methods from the field of social sciences. As professors in the Department of Social Relations at Harvard University, they were tasked with the usual duties of advising graduate students, applying for grants, and conducting research studies under the support of Harvard's Center for Research in Personality. At the time, Harvard psychologist B. F. Skinner's theories in behaviorism dominated the department. His models entailed the ideas of stimulus-response, conditioning, and reinforcement in shaping human behavior.

Prior to his appointment in 1960, Leary authored a well-received monograph, Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality: A Functional Theory and Methodology for Personality Evaluation (1957). This work was built on psychometric studies that he had conducted as a clinical psychologist at the Kaiser Hospital and Foundation in Oakland, California.

Some may not realize that before Leary ever dabbled in psychedelics, he received accolades for designing psychological tests. His "interpersonal circumplex" or "interpersonal behavior circle" was the first circular model for mapping interpersonal behavior. Developed in collaboration with psychologist Hubert Coffey and fellow Berkeley alumni in the Kaiser Foundation Research Group (Mervin Freedman, Rolfe LaForge, and Abel Ossorio), this model used group psychotherapy sessions and psychological test data to create a vector model for personality in the context of interpersonal relationships.

Visually charting the results of personality tests was a revolutionary idea. Established personality tests at the time included the MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory), which followed a linear approach for summarizing data, whereas Leary's graph incorporated measurements in magnitude and direction, offering a richer, multifaceted picture of an individual's interpersonal traits, as interrelated. As he would discover post-psychedelics, a "web" would serve as an analogy to describe our interrelated relationships, including a person's reactions and, thus, personality characteristics.

Leary marketed his own product, calling it the Interpersonal System of Personality, which also incorporated the TAT (Thematic Apperception Test), a technique that uses picture interpretation to evaluate patterns of thought. Leary described his own product as a "complex combination of methods and measures for assessment of personality. ... The raw data for the diagnoses are obtained from the MMPI, the TAT, and a test which was especially developed for interpersonal diagnosis. ... The booklet provides space for summarizing interpersonal scores from the MMPI (at two levels) and at five or more scores from the Interpersonal Check List. The scores are standardized and plotted on the diagnostic grid. The diagnostic ratings are then used to calculate over 30 indices of conflict."

Data from experiments using the model could be recorded in three booklets that Leary had specially designed: the Record Booklet of Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality, the Record Booklet for Analysis of Group Dynamics, and the Record Booklet for Analysis of Family Dynamics, in addition to checklists, a template, and a manual.

His tests were used by other psychologists who ordered copies of his diagnostic worksheets throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s, as found in the records of his Psychological Consultation Service. It is striking that experts continued to use Leary's tests even after he had been declared the "guru" of LSD. For Leary, his adventures into LSD research and his work as a psychologist went hand in hand.

Considering that Leary's training and professional career focused on the measurement of personality and behavior traits, it is not surprising that he applied these same methods to analyze and describe psychedelic substances, as seen in session report forms and later plotting circles. His social science training informed his approach to understanding the psychedelic experience. As expected, his graphs and plotting circles become more and more unusual after the introduction of drugs.

Leary had his first experience with a hallucinogenic or psychedelic drug as a mature man — a Harvard professor in psychology, a widower, and a father of two. His wife's suicide was only five years prior. As previously mentioned, he was vacationing in Mexico that August 1960, as he had done several times before, this time in Cuernavaca — a popular haunt with his social science peers. His Berkeley colleague Frank Barron had recounted his own mushroom experience in Mexico to Leary the previous summer. Barron and linguist Lothar Knauth encouraged and prepped Leary to try it for himself. Leary was by all accounts a "square": a middle-aged, single father with a solid alcohol and tobacco habit who had not as yet dabbled in psychoactive substances. This was not a teenage, thrill-seeking, recreational happening. The hippie was not yet realized, the peace sign was still largely unknown outside of Britain and Leary was nearly forty years old. In his autobiography High Priest (1968), Leary stated that "ever since that last weekend and the mushrooms, I didn't know as much anymore. I had started the slow process of throwing things out of my mind, junking mental furniture that had been clogging up my brain."

Clearly, the experience for Leary was life-changing. Afterwards, he was determined to explore the potential that such drugs could offer and he began exploratory studies at Harvard that fall semester. By November 15, 1960, he wrote a report to Dave McClelland, Head of the Department of Social Relations, outlining the status of his research thus far. He stated that his aims were "to determine the conditions under which psilocybin can be used to broaden and deepen human experience; to determine which persons are benefited by the drug and in which direction; and to determine methods of making the beneficial effects durable and recoverable without subsequent exposure to the chemical."

Leary's initial approach to this research was fairly typical for the time. He started as a scientist to quantify and characterize the psilocybin experience. The subjects were to "alternate between roles of observers and participants" and initially consisted of two faculty members and five graduate students. The group included Timothy Leary, Frank Barron, and colleague George Litwin. Aldous Huxley also participated in the planning of meetings and drug sessions. After the first experience, it was determined to bring spouses or close friends to participate in order to reduce anxiety. Synthesized psilocybin was obtained from the Sandoz Laboratories in Switzerland, where the scientist who first discovered and ingested LSD, Albert Hofmann, worked. This was also where the CIA obtained the drugs for their experiments. "The first step was to expose every member of the group to the psilocybin experience in a naturalistic setting. This was done in small groups with at least three observers present. Tape recordings of the sessions are obtained. Observers' reports, phenomenological write-ups by the subjects and tape recordings of the session, comprise the data."

FROM TIMOTHY LEARY TO DR. DAVID MCCLELLAND, HARVARD

NOVEMBER 15, 1960

Dear Dave, I have received your note of November 14 in which you suggested that we put on record the design of our mushroom research. I thoroughly agree and herewith enclose a description of our current work and future plans:

Purpose of Research:

The aims of this research are:

1) To determine the conditions under which psilocybin can be used to broaden and deepen human experience

2) To determine which persons are benefited by the drug and in which direction

3) To determine methods of making the beneficial effects durable and recoverable without subsequent exposure to the chemical.

Among the most noticeable effects of the drug are increased sensitivity to visual experience and a voluntary and involuntary elimination of the subject-object relationship. Mystical and visionary experiences are produced.

Subjects:

There are no subjects in the classic sense. The members of the research group alternate between roles of observers and participants. All collaborate in planning and in analyzing data. The original research team included two faculty members, and five graduate students-research assistants:

Timothy Leary

Frank Barron

George Litwin

James Ciarle

Ellen Count

Eleanor Mayher

Sandra Raynsford

Mr. Aldous Huxley has also participated in all planning sessions and in the drug experience.

After the first experience, it was agreed that allowing spouses or close friends of the members to join the group might diminish anxiety and increase the positive aspects.

Leary was fascinated by his experiments from the outset and shared his initial thoughts with Laura Huxley, Aldous's wife, who was also a psychological counselor:

TIMOTHY LEARY TO LAURA HUXLEY | NOVEMBER 18, 1960

Dear Laura, Mushroom magic continues to permeate the atmosphere here. Fascinating to see it work. Some are entranced. Many are frightened. Fear is our worst enemy. As usual.

I've talked to many people here about your "therapy" workbook and we are awaiting the promised publication.

As soon as our write-ups on the mushrooms are ready, I'll send you copies.

Sandoz Laboratories want you to have an M.D. make an application for psilocybin. They are apparently eager to have it aired for research at this time. Again the ridiculous compartmentalizations — research vs. treatment? With you as observer this platonic distinction makes no sense to me.

Enclosed are some materials for your perusal. The afternoon when Aldous participated was too active for visions but produced one of the richest, moving, raw human experiences one would ever want to be in. Food for years of thought.

Enjoyed meeting and knowing you so briefly. Hope to be able to continue our talks soon.

And please write up your work!

Best wishes, Timothy Leary

Soon after Leary's first psychedelic experience, he decided to further investigate and developed studies in set and suggestion and crime reduction. His colleague Richard Alpert did not have a chance to try the mushrooms in Mexico with Leary, but finally consumed synthesized psilocybin months later. By this time, Leary had contacted poets and artists to participate in his studies. Allen Ginsberg and Leary joined Alpert for his first psilocybin experience in Newton, Massachusetts in February 1961. Reportedly, Alpert blissfully shoveled the snow and experienced personal revelations.

Leary and Alpert — after he was on board — continued to contact individuals previously experienced in psychoactive substances, such as Albert Hofmann, Aldous Huxley, Humphry Osmond, and R. Gordon Wasson, the amateur mycologist who first wrote about Mazatec psilocybin mushroom traditions in Life magazine (June 10, 1957).

Other graduate students and colleagues, artists, poets, and like-minded individuals volunteered as test subjects and were administered psychotropic drugs (including synthesized psilocybin), often obtained via Hofmann and the Sandoz Laboratories. Leary and Alpert's Harvard studies included the "Psilocybin Study" (1960–62), the "Good Friday Experiment" (sometimes known as the "Marsh Chapel Experiment," a one-off experiment aimed at exploring whether psychoactive substances could catalyze the transcendent religious experience, 1962), and the "Concord Prison Experiment" (a larger study in the use of psychedelics and group psychotherapy in reducing prisoner recidivism rates, 1961–63).

By 1961, Leary was already concerned about drug prohibition and mentioned that his studies at Harvard involved graduate students regularly taking psilocybin for a semester "working through, organizing, and systematizing the results." The journalist Arthur Koestler became an early advisor to Leary and Alpert and participated in their hallucinogenic drug experiments. Just before Leary tried psilocybin he gave Koestler a personality test developed by Frank Barron.

Leary was determined to apply his scientific methods of personality research and testing to the psychedelic experience, but he knew that in order to gain a clear set of results he would need a wide and varied pool of willing participants to join in his "Leary project."

CHAPTER 2

Academia, Meet Bohemia, 1960–62

"The goal of an intelligent life, according to Socrates, is to pursue the philosophic quest — to increase one's knowledge of self and world."

Timothy Leary, Your Brain Is God

Once Leary and Alpert began to incorporate psilocybin research into their curricula at Harvard, they sought to widen their pool of test subjects and reached out to those who were already experienced with psychedelics. Leary's letters from this period are a record of how these relationships were formed and how many developed into lifelong friendships. A growing circle of friends, colleagues, graduate students, and others, began spending more time at his home in Newton, Massachusetts.

Aldous Huxley, already a good friend and experienced in drug experimentation, was fascinated by Leary's research and he too provided further connections with like-minded people. Some friendships predated Harvard: Frank Barron and Leary were college friends and it was under Barron's urging that Leary met with David McClelland, Director of the Center for Personality Research at Harvard University, leading to Leary's appointment as a Professor at Harvard.

FROM TIMOTHY LEARY TO ALDOUS HUXLEY | NOVEMBER 18, 1960

Dear Aldous Huxley, Allen [sic] Watts was having lunch with your would-be host, Professor M____, but I missed seeing him. Hope to see him in New York this weekend. Enclosed are some materials for your files. Thanks for the peyote article. Frank Barron and I are beginning conversations with the research divisions of some large companies to investigate the possibility of increasing creativity of top-drawer scientists. I'll keep you posted. Hope to see you before you go back.

Sincerely yours, Timothy Leary

At the time of this letter, Huxley was a visiting Professor of Humanities at MIT while battling laryngeal cancer. In early September, Huxley attended the conference, "Great Issues of Conscience in Modern Medicine" at Dartmouth College, but felt disappointed that no one discussed mind-changing drugs. By December, he was completing his book On Art and Artists.

Among the many people Leary invited to participate in his studies was Allen Ginsberg. Viewing Ginsberg as his entrée into the New York Beats and the larger world of bohemia, Leary was able to secure introductions to those outside his usual cadre of academics. As Leary was making introductions with notable countercultural figures of the day, the Beat Generation was still in full swing. William S. Burroughs had recently published his avant-garde novel Naked Lunch (1959).

Ginsberg was interested in psychoactive drugs and remained eager for new experiences. He had used LSD in 1959 as a research subject at Stanford University. A frequent traveler, he had also ventured to Pucallpa, Peru in the summer of 1960 to sample a medicinal brew — ayahuasca — under the guidance of a local healer or curandero. Leary wrote to Ginsberg in November 1960 and the poet replied enthusiastically:

FROM ALLEN GINSBERG TO TIMOTHY LEARY | NOVEMBER 10, 1960

Dear Mr. Leary, Yes by all means! I don't know if Spiegel told you — he wrote to me you would write — I spent half a year in S. America this year and took Panisteriopsis [sic] Caapi (Ayahuaaca [sic], Yange [sic]) a number of times & kept lots of notes, mostly sort of abstract alas, but also some drawings & poems. Also I spent 2 days at Standford [sic] & had LSD a couple of times. Enclosed a piece of writing I did — about the 8th hour of the LSD. Part II Howl if you have read it, is Peyote writing.

Is Huxley there? Spiegel said he was at KIT working with mushrooms — I have never been in touch with him — show him the poem if you see & know him.

Also I have had a lot of Nitrous Oxide, Ether, Mescaline, Peyote, Marijuana, Ditran (a Datura?), (awful) — & the opiates. I'll bring up the notes I took while high.

(Continues…)

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