3 ms·

Hi author! Given the timeframe of the subject, I was surprised to see no mention in the New Yorker article of Al Hubbard, who was well known to be involved in t

Hi author! Given the timeframe of the subject, I was surprised to see no mention in the New Yorker article of Al Hubbard, who was well known to be involved in that early era, both in developing now common therapeutic practices such as the use of the Hubbard Room, and working to expose as many influential cultural, religious, industrial, government, and military figures to the experience as possible. Was there any collaboration or correspondence between Mead/Bateson and Hubbard? Documentation on Hubbard can be hard to find, and he seems to have preferred it that way.

benbreen 3y ago
He's in there! In fact I decided to cut several pages on him, since a lot has already been written. Michael Pollan's How to Change Your Mind, among other books, has a lot of detail that I couldn't add much to. Hubbard was important, to an extent, but one of the things I'm trying to do is draw out the larger social and intellectual circle that surrounded the more famous names. So to just to take on example, Betty Eisner was (I would argue) significantly more important than Hubbard both in developing the concept of set and setting and in developing psychedelic therapy in general. She actually released a memoir online before her death, which is fascinating reading and has a lot of quotes from original letters (some of which I consulted at Stanford, which has her archive): https://erowid.org/culture/characters/eisner_betty/remembrances_lsd_therapy.pdf https://erowid.org/culture/characters/eisner_betty/remembran...