While I certainly don't think one should do such a thing nowadays, I could believe that in 1959 the researcher in question might have honestly believed that the

While I certainly don't think one should do such a thing nowadays, I could believe that in 1959 the researcher in question might have honestly believed that the situation could lead to greater self-awareness. You're seeing someone else with the same delusion, which each of them could clearly recognize as self-delusion, so I get why he might think that perspective could help them better recognize what was going on in their own minds. Needless to say, any person who is able to use empirical evidence to obtain rational insight into their own nature, would not have ended up with such a belief in the first place. But I could see how a researcher in 1959 might have thought it could.