The Healing Journey - New Approa - Claudio Naranjo PDF

Ballantine/
"A revolutionary approach 24328/si

Monfiction
to psychiatric treatment"
Gay Luce, author of Body T/me
WW-^^W^^
New, iches to Consc*

THE HEALING JOURNEY
New Approaches To Consciousness
"Because of its unusual clarity, it will be an

Indispensable tool for Intelligent laymen seeking
reliable information."
— Stanislaus Grof
Maryland State Psychiatric Research Center
After the session, the subject wrote the following:

"I have understood that there Is very little that
matters. doesn't matter that the car doesn't
It
work, that a girl won't love us, that they won't give
us the best appointments at the university, that
they say I am a homosexual, that don't have I
a lot of money or a kingdom, that my parents will

die, that Aunt Rose is as crazy as ever. It only mat-
ters, perhaps, to be able to Breathe deeply and
"
feel here, now, enjoying the air
Claudio Naranjo is a Chilean psychiatrist and

the author of several books and monographs on
psychology and meditation. He has studied at
Harvard, University of Illinois and Berkeley; In re-
cent years he has been a major figure at the

Esalen Institute and in spiritual teaching programs
in California.
ALSO BY CLAUDIO NARANJO
*The One Quest
The Psychology of Meditation
(with Robert E. Ornstein)
âvailable in a Bal/antlne Books edition at your locai bookstore

THE
HEALING
JOURNEY
New Approaches to Consciousness
Claudio Naranjo
BALLANTINE BOOKS • NEW YORK

Chapter I, "The Healing Potential of Agony and
Ecstasy," appeared, in slightly different form, on
first
pages 94-111 of the Journal for the Study of Con-

sciousnessy Vol. 2, No. 2, 1969, edited by Dr. C. Muses.
Copyright ©1973 by Claudio Naranjo

Preface Copyright ©
1973 by Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American

Copyright Conventions.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 73-7026
SBN 345-24328-5-150
This edition published by arrangement with Pantheon Books
First Printing: January, 1975
Printed in the United States of America
BALLANTINE BOOKS
A Division of Random House, Inc.
201 East 50th Street, New York, N.Y. 10022
Simultaneously published by
Ballantine BocAs, Ltd., Toronto, Canada
Dedication
To Franz Hoflfman, Emeritus Professor of Physiology

and Director of the Center for Studies in Medical
Anthropology at the University of Chile, Santiago,
who sponsored my career as research psychiatrist in
psychopharmacology and shamanism.
And
To all the experimental subjects and patients of

—
whom I have written who did the same.
CONTENTS
Preface by Stanislav Grof ix
Foreword:
Probe INTO Inner Space xiii
I The Healing Potential of

Agony AND Ecstasy 1
n MDA, THE Drug of Analysis 23
in MMDA AND THE Eternal Now 73
IV Harmaline and the Collective

Unconscious 119
V Ibogaine: Fantasy
AND Reality 171
Index 227
About the Author 234

PREFACE
With the increasmg knowledge about the nature and

dynamics of emotional disorders, it becomes more and
more obvious that for most of them no ovemi^t cure
will be discovered in the form of a new and miraculous
tranquilizer or antidepressant agent. Hie symptoms of
these disorders are usually deeply anchored in the per-
sonality structure of the patient, and their causal treat-
ment requires systematic psychotherapy that can trace
the involved problems to their original sources.
According to the statistics, emotional disorders in/
most of Ihe countries of the world show a continuous
increase. This presents a very serious dUennna from
the point of view of effective therapy and prevention.
A systematic psychotherapy such as psychoanalysis or
analytically oriented therapy is an extremely time-con-
suming procedure. It is financially accessible to only
a small fraction of the patients; and even if this could
be overcome, the number of psychiatrists and psychol-
ogists would have to be increased many times in order
to meet the demand for this specialized treatment.
It is understandable that under these circumstances
much effort has been invested in developing methods
that could intensify and shorten the psychotherapeutic
process. None of the approaches that have been sug-
gested in the past has met the ideal criteria required
for brief but effective psychotherapy.
In recent decades, two relatively independent streams
of experimentation and research seem to have yielded
promising results. The first of them is the use of chemi-
cal agents as adjuncts to psychotherapy, which after
ix
X Preface
the inconclusive and, as a whole, disappointing era of
baibiturates and amphetamines has experienced a real
renaissance after the discovery of LSD and some
other psychedelics. The second important innovation
is the development of new and rather powerful modi-
fications to psychotherapeutic techniques such as en-
coimter groups, Fritz Perls' Gestalt psychotherapy,
Lowen's bioenergetics, marathon sessions, Ida Rolfs
structural integration, Desoille's rive iveilli, Leimer's
guided affective imagery, and so on.
Claudio Naranjo is an outstanding representative of
both major streams, and in his synthesis of drug-
assisted psychotherapy and the new experiential tech-
niques, he seems to offer an interestmg solution to
the problem of brief therapy.
For many years, he has been closely related to the
Esalen Institute at Big Sur, California, which has been
the cradle of many of the new experiential techniques.
He ran a number of weekend seminars and experien-
tial workshops for Esalen and had a mutually enrich-
ing interaction with its staff members, who were
pioneers in various new techniques of psychotherapy.
As a direct disciple of Fritz Perls, Qaudio has mas-
tered Gestalt therapy, used it successfully in his work,
and made original contributions in this field. His activ-
ity has not, however, been limited to California only,
and he is well known as a lecturer and seminary leader
in many growth centers all over the country.
Claudio Naranjo*s experience with drugs is even
more impressive than that with new psychotherapeutic
tedmiques. Over the years, he has experimented with
—
more than thirty compounds ^mostly psychedelics and
amiAetamine derivatives—as adjuncts to psychother-
apy. He made a special journey by canoe up the
Amazon River to study yage^ with the South American
Indians. He brought back samples of this drug and
published the first scientific description of the effects
of its active alkaloids. Although he has worked with
lA South American vine, containing harmaline and other
alkaloids, used by shamans as part of their initiation and prac-
tices.
Preface xi
all the classic psychedelics, his unique contribution is

in the area of new or less known psychoactive
drags.
During recent years, commuting between the United
States and his. native Chile, which unposes fewer re-
strictions on drag research, he was able to experi-
ment with many new compounds that are not known
to professionals in the United States. With several of
these drags, he has done real pioneering work and
published the first existing scientific descriptions. At a
time when experimentation with mind-altering drags is
carried out mostiy by teenagers and lay persons, and
the professionals base tiieir opinions on sensationaUst
newspaper headlines, Naranjo has been able to con-
tinue sober and highly qualified psychiatric research.
Besides being one of few professionals systemat-
ically working in this field, he was able to make several
important and original scientific contributions. Because
of his rich experience with various drags, he had
enough experimental background to develop the begin-
ning of a taxonomy of altered states of consciousness.
Even if much more experimental work is required in
this area, he seems to have laid the foundations for
future selective and specific drag-assisted psychother-
apy. In the future, it may be possible to choose from
a series of available psychoactive drags the substance
that will be best suited to the patient's particular prob-
lems and combine it with the most appropriate psy-
chotherapeutic technique. The possibility of such a
selective approach ui the future is evident from the
delineation of the specific effects of various drags des-
cribed in this booki It is also very clearly illustrated
by the condensed case histories.
Probably the most significant contribution of Oaudio
Naranjo's experimental work is the investigation and
introduction of new from the
drags, distinctly different
classic psychedeUcs. These drags seem to be much
easier to work with; they do not produce hallucinations
and do not have deep disorganizing effects on the mind
like LSD, mescaline, or psilocybin. The condition pro-
duced by these drags can be exploited for depth ana-
lysis, but at the same time they are much more easily
xii Preface
manageable both by the patient and the therapist. It
seems appropriate that Qaudio Naranjo does not in-
clude them automatically in the old category of hallu-
cinogens or psychedelics, but coins from them new
and specific terms such as ''feeling enhancers'' and
"fantasy enhancers."
A book
description of all the positive assets of this
would not be complete without mentioning Naranjo's
profound sophistication in regard to old reUgious sys-
tems. It has helped him to bridge the gap between
ancient wisdom and modem science on the one hand
and the seemingly irreconcilable confUct between dy-
namic psychotherapy and spiritual guidance on the
other. The modem reformulation of the concept of
the healing potential of agony and ecstasy and the
discussion of the relation between emotional growth
in psychotherapy and spiritual growth under the guid-
ance of a religious teacher belong to die most inter-
esting sections of his book.
The richness of the clinical examples illustrating the
effect of the described drugs, as well as the various
techniques for handling difficult therapeutic situations,
add a new dimension to the book. They seem to have
a value independent of the drugs that have been ex-
plored and make this publication a practical handbook
of advanced psychotherapy.
As a whole, Qaudio Naranjo's book makes ex-
tremely informative, stimulating, and exciting reading.
It is a must for all serious students of behavior sciences
interested in innovations of psychotherapy, in psycho-
pharmacology, and experimental psychiatry, as well as
in psychology of religion. Because of its unusual clarity,
it will also be an indispensable tool for intelligent lay-
men seeking reliable information in these fields.
Stanislav Grof
Chief of
Psychiatric Research
Maryland State Psychiatric Research Center

October 1970
—
FOREWORD: PROBE
INTO INNER SPACE
This book was completed in the earlier part of 1970,

while I made preparations for a journey that, I thought,
could be (and in a sense has been) of no return. I
was leaving behind thirty-seven years of a life shaped
by the study of music, philosophy, and medicine, and
by the pursuit of the philosophers' stone. I had been
an "eternal student," one always dissatisfied and want-
ing to reach beyond boundaries, to the point that my
scholarship involved the postponement of other as-
pects of my life. I had not done much (or, in a sense,
anything), since I was so busy wanting to know more.
On this particular occasion, however (that is to say,
before embarking for Arica, Chile, on July 1, 1970),
I needed to settle my accounts with life just ^
if I
were about to die; I needed to make my wiU, so to
speak. An aspect of this was giving expression to what
I learned, but scarcely communicated, during my life
as a medical doctor devoted to clinical research in
psychopharmacology. I felt that as an experimenter
fliat is, one who chooses as his subject the study of the
—
unknown Î had the duty to communicate my observa-
tions. Only in this way, I felt, could I close the door
to this chapter of my life, if the experience that I had
amassed could become useful to others. Perhaps I
was being compulsively philanthropic or possessed by
self-importance in thinking in such a manner. As I
consider the book again, however, after it has aged
for several years in a drawer, I think that it may well
turn out to be a useful work, smce little has been writ-
ten for general audiences in the field of pharmacologi-
xiii
xiv Foreword
cally assisted psychotherapy, and information about
the feeling and fantasy enhancers of which I speak has
been limited to a few papers in scientific journals.
Although I completed this book in 1970 in Califor-
nia, the work described in it was carried out mostly
between 1965 and 1966 m Santiago de CMe, where
I also wrote the MDA chapter and conceived of the
book on the four drugs. I was at that time a research
psychiatrist at the pioneering Centro de Estudios de
Antropoloâ M6dica at the m^cal school of the
University of Chile. The creation of this department
had been under the initiative of the emeritus professor
of physiology, Dr. Franz HoflEman, who had thirty
years earlier founded Chile's first institute of physio-
logy. He was a man who, in his sixties, discovered that
physiological research was not everything, and as his
eyes were opening to the transcendent, he suddenly
woke up to the painful reality of the dehumanization
of medicine. The Center for Studies in Medical An-
thropology arose in an attempt to diagnose its theore-
tical and practical aspects, and to repair it How the
pursuit of this goal led me to the research described
in these pages could be a long story and yet one most
simply condensed in the statement that Dr. Hoffman
believed in an organismic rather than organizational
approach in the direction of the Center, and this, in
him, implied the faith that the greatest ^>od would
result from the support of individual initiatives and
styles. My own initiative and style was that of explor-
ing the possible vitalizing effects of drugs which
seemed, momentarily at least, to open avenues of es-
sential expression and to hold in abeyance an individ-
ual's ingrained perceptual schwnata and conditioned
habits of response.
I am deeply thankful for the occasion that Dr. Hoff-
man and the University of Chile gave me to do what
I wanted most to do during nine years of my life-
years that were not only productive in themselves but
also the foundation of all later understandings. Only
the atmosphere of great relaxation afforded by this
working context allowed me to confront fully what I
did not know; its lack of distractions permitted me to
Foreword xv
obtain firsthand experience in things; and its lack of

external pushes or pulls exploded me, paradoxically,
into the present probe into inner space, an activity
which I frequently experienced at the time as a trust-
ing yet risky leap into the unknown. The only aspect
of the book that I might now, several years later, be
tempted to change is a tendency to consider my "cures'*
too definitive. I would now prefer to consider them
important steps toward the goal of dissolution of com-
pulsive character or conditioned personality structure*
The four pharmacological agents that I discuss in

book fall mto two classes: feeling enchancers and
this
fantasy enchancers, both of which have in common
flie characteristic of being non-psychotomimetic psy-
chedelics. The two words "non-psychotomimetic" and
••psychedelic" evoke, beyond their specific denotations,
contrasting connotations. "Psychotomimetic" and "psy-
chedelic" have been the terms generally employed by
diJBferent individuals and in tiie context of characteris-
tic attitudes. "Psychotomimetics" (i.e., substances that
induce states that mimic psychosis) was a concept
arising from the hope, in the minds of medical and
scientific people, that psychosis might experimentally
induced and controlled in such a way that it could be
thoroughly understood and an answer found for its
healing.
Since this possibility involved a danger, however,
the word soon took on the connotation of a warning,
a red signal, and, by extrapolation, a negative value.
"Psychotomimetic," therefore, came to be the "uptight"
word for "psychedelic." "Psychedelic" (deriving its
meaning from the Greek delos, "manifest," and thus
synonymous with "mind-manifesting"), the term in-
troduced in the Fifties by Dr. Humphrey Osmond, one
of the pioneering researchers into the new field, re-
tained the connotation of positive value. In contrast
to "psychotomimetic," which remains the language of
the professional, "psychedelic" became the language
—
of the layman ^who was, at the time, more inclined
to see the positive aspect of the experiences elicited
by the new drugs. Throuôut this time, a controversy
xvi Foreword
simmered, bofled, and then almost evaporated without
solution: Are the drugs in question essentially "psy-
chotomimetic'* or essentially "psychedelic"?
Fortunately, the Sixties saw tiie introduction of sub-
stances in which the psychedelic and psychotomimetic
properties are not coexistent. Because of the fact that
the four drugs with which I have dealt in this book
are non-psychotomimetic psychedelics (which is to
say, mind-expanding substances that do not elicit psy-
chotic manifestations, except in a metaphorical or
Pickwickian understanding of psychosis), tiiey offer a
very special interest to the clinician. They stand in a
domain of their own, which lies between that of sub-
stances that are not psychedelic enough (in the true
sense of the term) to be useful — such as scopolamine,
—
amphetamine, or pentobarbital and that of substances
that are too psychotomimetic, difficult to handle, and
potentially hazardous.
Due to the nature of the experiences brought about
by feeling enhancers and fantasy enhancers, the session
protocols from which I quote throughout the book are
not qualitatively different from (hose of my psycho-
therapeutic practice in general during the same period.
Their distinguishing characteristic, when contrasted
with the background of my general practice, is their
experiential density, the degree to which they are preg-
nant with significance. It might be said that the phar-
macological agents employed had acted as psychologi-
cal catalysts or lubricants, removing the obstacles, faci-
litating an attitude of openness to experience.
I would like to point out, however, that the results
I have described are not independent of a personal in-
gredient and are not necessarily obtainable by anybody
employing the four drugs in psychotherapy. Intuition,
experience, and research data in the literature lead
me to accept the widely shared view tiiat psychothera-
peutic results are inseparable from a personal ingre-
dient. Furthermore, I am aware that it has been my
state, rather than my accumulated skills and informa-
tion, that has been the most determining influence in
the sessions I have conducted. One of the most im-
portant aspects of psychedelic drugs, whether or not
Foreword ^'^^^
is that they open

they are potentiaHy psychotomimetic,
a person up to subtle mfluence— which may be a
blessing or a curse.
If the drugs described in this book
come to be ac-
medical profession, I beUeve they should
cepted by the
some control that will ensure that they
be subject to
experiential, and
are used by those with psychological,
technical qualifications, as has been proposed by
Pro-
fessor Joel Elkes at Johns Hopkins and also by the
staflE of the Maryland State Psychiatric
Research Cen-
ter m their program for the trammg of astronauts of
inner space.
Although they are not reported here, I did use con-
trols in my research that contribute to the substantia-
tion of my description of the distmctive qualitative
eflfects of the four drugs* I have reported the harmaline
research in a chapter on harmaline alkaloids pub-
lidied m Ethnopharmacological Search for Psychoactive
Drugs, edited by Bo Holmstedt and published m
1967
by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare
in Washington; more detailed information on MDA
has also been published before, in Psychopharrruwology
5:103-107, man article that appeared m 1971. I
have not published the data corresponding to the other
two substances, which lies at present in a storage room
in CMe m
a mountain of paper that fills several boxes.
I therefore apologize for saying no more at this point
than that I have given ibogaine and MMDA to a suffi-
cient number of people to whom I have also given LSD
or mescaline or MDAor harmaline to satisfy me about
the consistency of the reports. I can also add that 99
per cent of those who have experienced the effects of
dther ibogaine or harmaline have regarded &e effect
as so unmistakably distinct from that of feeling enhanc-
ers and ordinary psychedelics that they have regarded
such an experiential criterion as sufficient evidence of
an objective difference in the drugs' effects. I person-
ally share with Gordon Allport the view that psychol-
ogy will shift more and more from a one-sided sta-
tistical-mindedness to the detailed naturalistic study
of individuals.
I believe that self-awareness is contaôus, and
xviii Foreword
moments of self-discovery, once adequately communi-
cated, can be a gift of consciousness to others. Noth-
ing other than this has led to the current populariza-
tion of psychological literature. The true language of
psychology is not Latin, but plain romance, fi I have
not been mistaken in asserting that the experiences
recorded here are pregnant with significance, let them
then become part of our common awareness, and may
they contribute to the awakening of the individual
reader.
A final and brief word: my indebtedness to Frank
Barron, Leo Zeff, Stanislav Grof, Michael Hamer,
Carlos Castaneda, Don Juan, and the shamans of the
world.
I hope and wish that this book may contribute to
the attainment of peace, joy, and harmony on earth.
Claudio Naranjo
Kensington, California
March 1973
THE
HEALING JOURNEY
CHAPTER I
THE HEALING
POTENTIAL OF
AGONY AND ECSTASY
DRUGS IN PSYCHOTHERAPY
The association between the occurrence of altered

states of consciousness and personality changes has
been known in all times. Shamans of many regions
induce trance states to effect healing; mystics often
experience *Sdsionary'' states at the time of their "con-
version"; patients in the later stages of psychoanalysis
sometimes hallucinate or exhibit other transient psy-
chotic manifestations.
The deliberate use of altered states of consciousness
in the therapeutic endeavor falls mostiy within the
domain of hypnotherapy and that of the utilization of
psychotropic drugs. Also recentiy there has arisen an
interest in the notion of "positive disintegration"
(DaJ)rowski) and the value of psychotic experience
when properly assimilated, drug experience being by
far the metiiod of widest applicability.
The first drugs to be extensively applied to the facil-
itation of therapeutic intention were barbiturates and
amphetamines. An
intravenous barbiturate was first
employed by Laignel-Lavastine (1924) as a means of
"revesdmg the unconscious/' and later became the basis
of the procedures known as narcoanalysis (proposed
by J. S. Horsley, 1936), narcosynthesis (Grinker), and
others.
The first use of a central stimulant as an adjimct to
1
2 The Healing Journey
psychotherapy seems to have been J. Delay's "amphet-
amine shock," followed by Jantz's "Weckanalyse."
Before this time, Myerson (1939) had described the
combined use of intravenous benzedrine and sodium
amytal, but interest in this procedure increased notably
in the Fifties, when intravenous amphetamines came
to be more frequently used.
After the stimulants and depressants, the hallucino-
gens became an object of interest as faciliators of psy-
chotherapy. The clinical experimentation of Federking
(1947) with small or medium dosages of mescahne
were followed by that of Abramson, who advocated
the use of small dosages of LSD-25 in the course of
psychoanalytic treatment by drug-induced state of
mind, and that of Sandison, who brought to bear a
Jungian outlook on the process.
Tê following years saw not only the appearance of
qualitatively similar drugs (psilocybin and other trypt-
amines), but of dissimilar ways of approaching tiie
state of mind elicited by them. Outside the medical
field, many became impressed with the intrinsic spir-
itual value of the "psychedelic experience" and felt
more interest in this than in any therapeutic applica-
tion. In particular, Aldous Huxley had a great influ-
ence in calling attention to the religious and aesthetic
aspects of these drugs. Others saw such states as not
unrelated to the question of behavior change, but in
fact as the key to it, and thus designed their procedure
and setting so as to maximize the likelihood of peak
experiences. This, for instance, was the way in which
Hoflfer and Osmond approached their treatment of al-
coholics in Saskatchewan and how the Harvard group
conducted their rehabilitation project in a Massachu-
setts prison.
The drugs that I am dealing with in this book are
only some of those discovered or rediscovered in later
years, and suggest that we are seeing only the begin-
ning of the possibilities of elicitation of specific states
of consciousness other than the habitual one. On the
—
other hand, the drugs we already know stimulants,
depressants, hallucinogens, and those to be described
in the following chapters^ —
vindicate that it is not one
The Healing Potential of Agony and Ecstasy 3
particular state of mind that can be advantageous to

psychological exploration or therapeutic interaction:
any one of a series of artificially induced alterations in
the habitual pattern of an individual's personality may
constitute a unique advantage in the breaking of vi-
cious circles in the psyche, bringing into focus unknown
domains of feeling or thought, or facilitating correc-
tive experiences, in which underdeveloped functions
are temporarily stimulated or overdeveloped ones in-
hibited.
The four drugs with which this book deals fall, both
chemically and in terms of their subjective eflfects, into
two groups. That of the phenylisopropylamines, com-
prising MDA and MMDA, is characterized mainly by
its effects of feeling enhancement, sharpening of atten-
tion, increased fluency in associations and communica-
tion. The other, that of the poly cyclic indoles (ibo-
gaine, harmaline) could well be called, for its effects,
"oneirophrenic," the term that Turner suggested for
the harmala alkaloids. Their effect on most subjects is
that of eliciting vivid dreamlike sequences which may
be contemplated while awake with closed eyes, with-
out loss of contact with the environment or alterations
of thiijking. Yet the quality that makes the drugs m
both groups valuable to psychotherapy is that of fac-
ilitating access to otherwise unconscious processes,
feelings, or thoughts, a quality that deserves to be called
"psychedelic" in the sense of the word intended by Os-
mond: "mind-manifesting." Since they differ from the
hallucinogens in that they do not bring about the
perceptual phenomena, depersonalization, or changes
in thinking characteristic of the latter and yet share
with them an intensification of awareness, they might
well be called non-psychotomimetic psychedelics.
Not only are there clear differences between the vari-
ous types of psychotropic drugs, but individual char-
acteristics iQ the effect of each and a variety of pos-
sible syndromes that each can elicit. Sometimes it may
be hard to discern anything in common between dif-
ferent possible reactions to the same drug^ but in other
instances we may discover that what appears to be
very only a diflferent presentation of the
diflcerent is
same process. Just as the ego loss brought about by
LSD may be experienced as an ecstasy of unity with
all things or a desperate clinging to a tenuous identity,
fear of chaos and of madness, so, too, the realistic
enhanced awareness of the present brought about by
MMDA may be experienced as a serene fullness or,
for one who is not ready to confront the moment, tor-
menting anxiety, shame, guilt
The number of typical syndromes elicited by each
drug is more than two, for it also depends on per-
sonality types, and each will demand some specificity
in the optimal psychotherapeutic approach. Yet much
of the therapist's attitude toward the situation wiU de-
pend on his understanding of the dimension impUed
in the above cited contrasts. It is a pcdarity of pleasure-
pain, as well as personality integration vs. disintegra-
tion at the moment, and with this I want to deal in
the following pages.
PEAK EXPERIENCE VS. ENHANCEMENT

OF PATHOLOGY
Apparentiy, psychoactive drugs, from barbiturates

all
to ibogaine, may cause either pleasurable states of
mind or unpleasant ones, states tiiat seem more desir-
able than the usual ones and others that are marked
not only by suffering but by lack of good thinking,
appropriate actions, or accurate perception of reality,
Huxley has described something of the characteristic
"heaven and heU" of mescaline, and those words have
become standard to many who are familiar with the
effects of the LSD-like hallucinogens. Yet there are as
many heavens and as many hells as there are drugs.
What a given individual's reaction is along the con-
tinuum may partiy depend on his constitution. Thus,
Sheldon has remarked that the active, forceful soma-
totonic tends to react to alcohol by becoming more
active or aggressive, the more sociable viscerotonic.
more emotional and talkative, and the introverted cere-
brotonic, more withdrawn and brooding.
Yet, whatever the personality traits that may often
be predisposing to a given reaction to a given psycho-
active drug, it is clear enough for those discussed in
the book ât a given individual may show reactions
of different types on different occasions of administra-
tion and also at different moments in the course of a
given session. Moreover, it seems fairly certain that
5ie elicitation of a "heavenly" or a "hellish'' experi-
ence depends greatly upon the person's attitude at the
moment, the surroundings, the relationship to the ther-
apist, and the latter's intervention during tiie session.
And since this allows for some measure of deliberate-
ness in the choice of an experience of one type or
another, it is desirable to understand what value each
of these may have to the aim of psychotherapy.
What is the nature of these experiences, in the first
place— —
^the "positive" and "negative" and what is it
that makes them pleasant or unpleasant? The gamut
of peak experiences, in ordinary life as in psycho-
pharmacological conditions in general, comprehends a
variety of states which, I would suggest, have in com-
mon tiheir being moments in which intrinsic values are
discovered or contacted.
There are several ways in which we use the word
**value." More than indicating different kinds of value,
these point at altogether different psychological pro-
cesses that may give rise to value judgment. One of
them I would propose that we call "normative" value,
for here *Value" consists of the acceptance or rejec-
tion of something (person, action, object, work of art,
and so on) according to a pre-established rule. Such a
rule may be implicit or xmconscious, i.e., the process
of matching the ongoing perception of something
against it It may consist of a given standard of "good
taste," a notion of what a good person should be like,
what the good life consists of, and so on. In this
value-ascribing process, "value" is an idea-feeling-ac-
tion depending on the nature of past experience or
conditioning.
But when we like the taste of an apple, when we
enjoy breathing fresh air, or have a true experience of
beauty, love, or mystical rapture, *Value" is not some-
thing computed from the match or mismatch of the
ongoing experience with a standard, but the discovery
of something which seems to live in the moment and
was possibly imknown before. And, moreover, norms
—
have generally found origin in such discovery of value
before any norm existed ^**And God saw that it was
good.''
The variety of experiences of intrinsic value may be
understood as a continuxmi or progression going from
the simplest level of sensuous delist to the most en-
compassing level of mystical rapture. The former is
the domain of true pleasure, which is to be differen-
tiated from most of the experiences that we usually
regard as pleasurable. These constitute not so much
the discovery of intrinsic value but the relief of tension
end-points of displeasure (thirst, hunger, etc.). En-
joyment of sense impressions is not boimd to need or
instinct, but, like all intrinsic value, is experienced as
something pertaining to the "object'' itself (the color,
the taste, tiie sound, and so on) and therefore seems
gratuitous. It could well be regarded as the most ele-
mentary form of love, in that it entails an appreciation,
a saying yes to reality in its detail, in its fabric, or
in its stuff, ratiier than in its specific shapes or beings
constituted by it. This is the quality that, m the do-
main of sound, Stokowski has called the body of
music, in contraposition to music's "soul," and has a
beauty of its own, much as does a person's body.
But the soul of art is in the domain of beauty prop-
er, which differs from pleasure not only in quality
but m its object. Whereas the latter consists m the
enjoyment of isolated sense impressions, in beauty it
is a whole that is appreciated: an object, symbol, or
person certainly endowed with sensory qualities but
not definable m
terms of these. And so, just as good
music may be played on an instrument with poor tone
quality, a worthless painting may be made witii the
most beautiful colors.
a sensory quality is for pleasure and what a
What
whole configuration is for beauty, a being is for love.
And as a thing is more than its sensory qualities, a
being is more than some-body. As a person has a
its
body or is expressed through the body, the spirit that
conceives a work of art speaks through it but is dif-
ferent from its particular shape. And the more we go
into a work, the closer we get to an encounter with
the spirit of the author conveyed by his style. Truly,
one of the deeper experiences in the perception of art
is one of love for the being expressed in it —
^whether
that of Bach, Dostoevski, Van Gogh, or whoever has
created out of a "spirit" and not just decorated space
and time at random. (But to meet such a spirit truly,
we must be one, rather than a succession of random
happenings in that place that we call "I.") And when
we love an object, it is also a being for us, beyond its
physical appearance, which may be beautiful or not.
It was perhaps a love of all things that made Gauguin
say, "A thing is not always pretty, but always beauti-
ful." I am not saying that there is in the objects some
sort of object-soul, but only pointing out the quality of
our own possible experience. In one instance, the ob-
ject is just an aggregate of physical quaUties, and in
the other, we personify it to some extent and relate
to it as a being, an individual, sometimes implicitly, as
when we wash a dish with loving care, or more or less
explicitiy when we don't want to be parted from a dear
old sweater.
Just as a being is the object of love, being in itself
is the object of the feelings conveyed by the words
holiness and sanctity, the wonder of existing, no mat-
ter in what form —
^the miracle and gift of that afl&r-
mation that created this world: "Beingness," as Huxley
translates Eckhardt's Istigkeit.
And just as we are not gifted to find beauty in all
forms or love aU beings, we are also limited in that
we can sense beingness only through certain beings,
certain things, sounds, persons; these stir our intrinsic
religiosity, which may or may not be related to the
idea of God or conventional religious conceptions.
If peak experiences are those in which intrinsic
—
values are met ^those ranging from the most elemen-
tal afl&rmation of the perceptual data, through beauty
and love, to the aflfirmation of experience in itself, the
common ground of things —
then what is the other end
of the heaven-hell continuum?
Superficially or descriptively, this corresponds to the
enhancement of syndromes that are well known in psy-
chiatric tradition: psychosomatic or conversion mani-
festations, reactions of anxiety or depression, amplifica-
tions of character pathology, transient delusional states
or catatonia, and so on.
More deeply, I would like to propose that these
states are only the end products of a negation of in-
trinsic values. Valuing, appreciation in aU forms and
on all levels, is a pro-life force that not only aflSrms
the world but constitutes our only way of truly living.
And as there is this yea-saying to life» there is an
active nay-saying, a denying force tfiat draws a curtain
over the intrinsic joy of existence, renders us incapable
of lovmg and "unfaithful'' to the feelings that would
lead us to worship existence in itself.
Adrug only makes an aspect of a person's psyche
more manifest. According to whether die individual is
able to accept it or not, he will be in contact with a
value or in conflict between his enhanced tendency and
his denying sub-self. Such conflict can naturally lead
to repression, substitutive symbolic expression througji
body or mind, reactive formations, anxiety about let-
ting go.
Such experience is not without value, though, be-
cause it entails such an unusual and often dramatic
clash of the forces within the personality that the con-

flict may thus be exposed, understood, and eventually
resolved. Exposing the confliict —
a conflict that is basi-
cally that of being or not being, that between being for
—
or against oneself amounts to exposing the "monster"
in the mind in whom the denying force originated. Re-
solving the conflict, which is achieving unity, may be
likened to the slaying of the dragon in classical myths
and the acquisition of his power, or, alternatively, to a
taming of the beast, by virtue of which its dying ener-
gies are now put to the service of life.
Theprocess of "descending" into the pathologic^,
chaotic, and destructive as a means of personal Integra-
tion not a discovery of contemporary psychotherapy.
is
We may find it, for instance, explicitly recognized by
Dante in the conception of his Divine Comedy. The
poem begins when the author, in the middle of his life,
finds himself lost "in a dark forest" he has entered
"while asleep." He envisages the "high mountain" in
the distance and wants to climb it and thus reach his
highest goal. But this is not possible. Three fierce
beasts (different transformations of the same one) suc-
cessively obstruct his way. His guide then appears to
tell him how such a "direct path" is impossible and
that he must first go through the underworld.
Then Dante tells how he followed his guide and had
to contemplate one after another the different aberra-
tions of man until, much later, having gone through
hell and purgatory, he is told how these constitute
"diseases of love"—"the love that moves the sun and
the other stars."
And the process which Dante describes in the Com-
edy is most relevant to what we may say on the utiliza-
tion of "hellish" experiences elicited by drugs. It is
the traditional understanding of the contemplative way
in spkitual development. All passions are seen and re-
cognized as different from the "I," the center of one's
own existence. Not without stress or pain does Dante
bring himself to face the different scenes of hell, and
on occasion he is unable to remain conscious at the
shock C'e cade como corpo morto cade"'), but he
maintains a detached attitude and leaves everything
behind.
Awareness, or consciousness, is, in fact, the single
element that most psychotherapists in our day would
indicate as the essential motor of transformation.
Awareness of our processes is that which may bring
them under our control, make them "ours." And, par-
adoxically, in the act of being aware we are not only
"it," but a more encompassing entity tihat may con-
tinue to exist with or without "it." "Spirit is freedom,"
says Hegel. This is the difference between Dante's hell
and paradise, as well as that between the beginning
and end of successful psychotherapy. For hell and par-
—
adise do not differ in the forces portrayed ^just as
there is a hell of lust, there is also in the Comedy a
circle in paradise where dwell the loving spirits, and
to the hell of anger corresponds that of militant spir-
its: to the one of gluttony, that of those who are glut-
tons of celestial manna, and so on. Ilie difference lies
only in that what in hell is manifested as a "passion"
(something "suffered" passively) is in paradise a ^'vir-
—
tue" ^from the Indo-European v/r: force, energy, and
also from die Latin v/r: man.
The transforming effect of consciousness on the life
processes is a transmutation by which they become
more and not less what they are. It is as if the state
of consciousness depicted as "hell" were one in which
our energies, not knowing what they really want, miss-
ing their true aims, had lost their natural channels.
When every part of man "remembers" what it truly
wants, sickness turns into health, and what was once
a parody of life becomes something which had been a
mere shadow.
The voyage through chemically opened hells is not
different in essence from the age-old way of self-knowl-
edge nor from the process taking place through ex-
posure to the modem insight therapies. There are
technical differences in the Siree cases, but the main
difference is in the intensity of the process, so that
under the effect of drugs months may be dramatically
packed or condensed into hours. The process is stiU
the same as in all **ways of growth": an act of ac-
knowledgment of what has been avoided or pushed
away from the boundaries of awareness. Since what we
avoid looking at is what we fear, this must be an act
of courage. And since much of what we do not allow
into our field of consciousness is painful, uncomfort-
able, or humiliatmg, the acquisition of such self-insight
may partake of these same qualities. The pain or an-
guish of some drug experiences may be thus understood
as the condense concentrated pain or fear of months
or even years of self-discovery, and may be the un-
avoidable price that a person has to pay for seeing
his reality.
Experience tells us that such a reaction is tempo-
rary, the end of the via purgativa being self-accep-
1
tance, but it is doubtful that such an end may be

attained without starting at the beginning, exposmg
the wounds that are to be healed —
conflicts to be re-
conciled, self-hatred to be re-examined, shame and
guilt to be worked through, and so on.
Tlie fact that healing does take place proves that
the "problems" and sources of suffering have been in
a sense illusory.
If the chemically elicited intensification of aware-
ness brings about an enhancement of pathology, this
is only because "normality" is partly maintained at the
cost of psycholo^cal anaesthesia, and "adjustment"
ordinarily is in the nature of a denial rather than a
transcendence of inner turmoil. Yet a further step in
awareness may show that all this pathology now laid
bare could thrive only in the dark, and ffie conflicts
causing it were the result of confusion-unconsciousness
itself.
The paradox upon which psychotherapy rests is that
the suffering that we avoid is merely perpetuated
through avoidance. Only by moving toward fear and
confronting the monster that is the source of agony
can the discovery be made that there is no monster
tiiere to fear. This sometimes finds dramatic expres-
sion in sessions in which an individual feels that he is
actually going to die, but, in the moment of ^ving in
to death, wakes up to the ecstasy of enhanced ahve-
ness; or in others where he feels that he is going crazy,
but, when he is finally able to surrender control, he
discovers that this was only a catastrophic expectation
of his, that the Pandora's box was really empty and his
urge to control obviated*
We may conceptualize the process as one of insight
into the distinction between reality and illusion, as
one of "positive disintegration" (Dabrowski) or, be-
havioristically, as one of reconditioning and "desensi-
tization" through exposure to the avoided in an at-
mosphere of support, or any number of ways. For
practical purposes, though, it seems clear that the best
that the therapist can do is stand by the traveler in
hell as Virgil did by Dante, reminding him of his goal,
giving him courage to step ahead and see, pushing him
2

even, when he wants to retreat in fear. I believe that
the realization that hell is no hell must come from
inner realization and not from well-intentioned reas-
surance and brainwashing, so I find myself agam and
again saying to my patients, "Stay with it." Staying
with it is the way of going through it, whatever it is.
Still, beyond hell there is purgatory, and Dante's
symbols may be as relevant to the therapeutic process

in this as in other points. Hell is a state of helplessness
and hopeless suffering; purgatory is one of chosen suf-
fering for the sake of a goal. In the first, man is a
victim; in the second, a penitent In hell, man merely
contemplates his reality, being, so to say, flooded by
the evidence of his awfulness. Purgatory begins when
open-eyed vigilance is not threatening any more, but it
is still a challenge to act. This is the beginning of the
via activa, in contrast to the via contemplativa, and
the pams of purgatory are in the nature of the fric-
tion between a being's expression and the ingrained
hindrances of his personality. It is a confrontation of
that which can only be confronted or brougjht into
awareness through the challenge of moving against it
In Dante's imagery it is the climbing of a mountain. In
psychological terms, it is the courage to be, to express
one's essential nature in spite of opposition. In the
psychotherapeutic context, and particiilarly in that in-
volving psychoactive drugs, action usually proceeds in
the very limited social context of the relationship with
the psychotherapist, but can be extended into the ab-
stract media of art or the potentially unlimited domain
of imaginative representation. The importance of ac-
tion carried out in the medium of visual imagery or
dramatic representation accounts for the stress given
to the techniques of Gestalt therapy and of the goided
daydream in the cases to be presented througjiout this
book.
It obvious that the process of inner change
may seem
should begin with the inevitably painful contemplation
of those aspects in the present distorted psychological
reality that are to be transformed. Yet there is much
to be said of a complementary approach in psycho-
therapy—that of promoting the growth and expression
3
of the healthy aspects of personality rather than the

destruction of the old patterns, the development of a
firmer grasp on reality rather than the analysis of the
phantom world of questionable pictures and interpre-
tations of existence. In the domain of drug therapy,
this becomes the issue of utilizing the peak experiences.
Among psychotherapists using LSD and similar
drugs, it seems clear that there has been a tendency
for some to seek one-sidedly the elicitation of peak
experiences and to consider iht ''bad trip" as an acci-
dent that they do not take as a challenge to work
through. On tiie other hand, there are ôse who are
skilled in handling pathological manifestations and
conflicts but feel at a loss in the face of blissful epi-
sodes that have no place in their conceptual frame-
work.
If both the agony and the ecstasy of drug experi-
ences have a potential for psychological healing, it is
important for us to know tiie place and promise of
each in the treatment of an individual and the best
way to deal with each when it occurs in the course of
a session.
Technical as the issue seems, I think that the ques-
tion as to how these two types of experience are re-
lated is only a particular instance of a more encom-
passing one on the relationship of psychotherapy as
we know it to die spiritual disciplines and the spiritual
quest as described by mystical writers or teachers.
When it comes to the understanding of drug experi-
ences, the attitudes or beliefs about the relationship
between psychotherapy and the spkitual quest vary as
much as when human experience at large is the issue.
The most widespread tendency, though, is to see them
as unrelated, either one or the other being all-impor-
tant Thus, there are those who stress the "transcen-
dental" side and regard psychotherapy as a rather
trivial matter and those who either look on everything
"mystical" with suspicion or see it as of cultural inter-
est though irrelevant to the higjher goal of healing the
mind. Psychotherapists who see the relevance of spir-
itual disciplines to their field of endeavor (like Fromm,
Benoit, or NicoU) or religious thinkers interested in
psychotherapy (like Watts) arc a minority, and their
number diminishes when we look for those who have
definite notions as to how the ideas and procedures of
these different domains are related, and not just divided
interest.
In my own view, "psychotherapy" (rightly under-
stood) and "mysticism" or "esotericism" (rightly un-
derstood) are but different stages in a single journey
of the soul, different levels in a continuous process of
consciousness expansion, integration, self-realization.
The central issues of both are the same, though the
phenomena encountered, psychological states dealt
with, and techniques appropriate to them may differ.
Some of these issues, as I have detailed elsewhere, are,
aside from the growth of consciousness, that of con-
tact with reality, the resolution of conflicts into ever
more encompassing wholes, the development of free-
dom and the capacity to surrender to life, the accep-
tance of experience, and, most particularly, a shift in
identity leading from the enactment of a self-concept
to the identification with the real self or essence.
The relationship between the quests for sanity and
enlightenment might be seen as that between the mi-
nor and the major mysteries of antiquity. While the
former aims at the restoration of "true man," "orig-
inal man," the goal of the latter was the transcendence
of the human condition, the acquisition of some degree
erf freedom from the needs or laws that determine or-
dinary human life by assimilation to a radically dif-

ferent state of being. The gap between strictly human
consciousness, even at its fullest manifestation, and
this "other shore" is at the root of symbols such as
that of a bridge or ocean to cross or a ladder to climb
(not merely an earthly mountain), and, particularly,
those of death and rebirth, which may be found in all
mystical and religious traditions.
"Original man," "natural man," is the goal of psy-
chotherapy. This is man freed from "origmal sin,"
man that does not turn against himself but fulfills his
potential in afltonation of himself and existence. Such
is the man that Dante, in his monumental synthesis of
the culture of antiquity and Christianity, places at the
summit of purgatory: earthly paradise. Paradise, yes,

butstill not heaven, for this lies beyond the sub-lunar
world of Aristotle; its "circles" are those of the planets,

the sun, and the fixed stars.
Just as in Dante's journey, only after reaching the
fullness of the ordinary human condition (attained
after hell and purgatory) can he soar above the earth,
so most spiritual traditions recognize the need for a
via purgativa before the via unitiva, the need for man
to realize his true nature as a human bemg before he
can aspire to realize his divine nature, for him to es-
tablish order and harmony in his life before his soul
—
can become receptive to the "supernatural" ^which is
only that part of the natural which lies beyond his or-
dinary understanding and awareness.
Yet fliese stages are not clear-cut in practical reality,
for ecstatic and visionary experiences can take place
before the human personality is ready to live up to,
or even understand, thdr content Toward these exalted
states we find that spiritual schools of all lands display
a rather ambivalent attitude. On the one hand, the yogi
guru warns the disciple not to become fascinated by
the acquisition of special "powers" that may sidetrack
him from the true aim; flie Christian mystic warns
monks about the fascination of "visions" and emotion-
al rapture; the Zen master regards hallucinatory experi-
ences during meditation as makyo ("from the devil");
and, in general, we find references to danger bemg
associated with contact with the occult by the **unpre-
pared." Preparation in this context does not mean
knowledge as much as a personal development without
which the way of mysticism becomes that of magic: a
quest of the supernatural in the service of the ego
rather than one for a supernatural order to which the
ego may become subservient; the living understanding
of a greater whole in which the individual may find his
true purpose.
On the other hand, these experiences of heaven
without purgatory, samadhi before enlightenment, grace
before mystical union, exceptional states of conscious-
ness before the attainment of full spiritual maturity,
—
are not only sought after by specific practices but re-
garded as seeds of transformation.
I think the same twofold point of view may be
brought to bear on the peak experiences that a numbei
of psychoactive drugs may elicit in some persons,
More often than meditation disciplines or rituals, they
can bring about heaven without purgatory, the states
of insight into universal truths which are at the core
of religious mysteries, unaccompanied by insight into,
or change in, the individual's faulty personality. The
individual may use such experience for ego inflation
or for personality change, for self-justification and
stagnation, or as a light to show him the way.
Much as can be said of the therapeutic value of peak
experiences, I think there is an advantage to the point
of view (presented in greater detail in Chapter III)
that personality change is distinct from peak experi-
ences, whatever the relationship between them may be.
Any one of them may be a step toward the other, but
it may be important to keep in mind that a "mystical
experience," for instance, only facilitates psychological

healing (by giving the individual a higher perspective
on his conflicts, for instance), and psychological health
only provides a more receptive state for the deeper
experience of reality constituting the core of peak
experiences.
The fact that "mystical experience" sometimes
brought about by the agency of drugs of one kind or
another seems to have a lesser bearing on the indi-
vidual's life, in general, than spontaneous experiences
of tiie same type (or tiiose that have resulted from a
systematic spiritual discipline) has often invited the
question whether the two are really of the same nature.
It is only natural to expect a spontaneous religious
experience to be more permanent than one facilitated
by an external agent, for the mere occurrence of the
former indicates a personality that is compatible with
it or its implications. The greater the external influence
— chemical or other ihdA is necessary to bring it

about, the more one can assume the existence of psy-
chological obstacles to it, and a gap between the values,
motivation system, and point of view of the ordinary
7
State and those characteristic of the non-ordinary. Yet

if we
picture the artificially induced peak experience as
a momentary release from the prison of the ordinary
personality and its built-in conflicts, we may speak
of value as that of giving the prisoner a taste of free-
its
dom and a perspective on life richer than that of
his lonely cell. Such an experience will contribute to
his permanent liberation by reinforcing his incentive,
shattering his idealizations of prison life, giving him
valuable orientation and information from outside
sources as to what to do to gain his freedom. Much
of this depends on the prisoner's activity while the
door of his remains temporarily unlocked. He
cell
may, in one push the door open, being
case, not even
too sleepy or scared of life beyond the walls within,
which he has become accustomed to living. Or he may
walk out to get some food from a neighboring room,
or just go for a walk and enjoy the landscape. Alter-
natively, he may be concerned above all else with
using his time to secure his permanent freedom. He
may find help, or instruments, to bring in and remove
the bars when he finds himself locked in again, or he
may busy himself with making a duplicate key for the
lock.
In other terms, we may understand the artificial
ecstasy as a state that is made possible by the transient
removal of obstructions to the flow of a person's deeper
psychic life and his experience of reality. Such removal
of obstructions may be compared to the anaesthesia of
higher cortical control elicited by alcohol, NO2, lack of
oxygen, and so on, resultmg in disinhibition of impulse
or affect. Yet, if this neurophysiological model is cor-
rect, the site of action of the drugs dealt with in this
book must be different from that of depressants, for
it is a different quality of disinhibition that takes place.
Yet this experience of freedom from habitual ob-
structions in awareness and action is only a preview
of dysfunctional patterns within the personality. Though
both may be experientially the same, in one case we
are facing a conditional freedom, and in the other, a
freedom in wholeness, which is a freedom in spite of
difl&culties. Going back to the prison analogy, it is as
8

if, in the former case, the guard has just been put to
sleep but not overcome or killed, as the ego is shat-

tered with the mystic's enlightenment, as the "old
man" or "outer man" dies when the "new man" or
"inner man" is bom at some point in the successful
spiritual quest.
Much of what has been said above applies to some
extent to experiences elicited by certain spiritual dis-
ciplines, environments, or personal "contagion." Sim-
ple retreat from the world, for instance (whether that
of a simple life, or that of the monk and the Indian
sannyasin, who have given up all attachments), falls
into the same pattern of avoiding certain hindrances,
distractions,and conflicts that detract from the pos-
sibilityof peak experiences. It is certainly a greater
challenge to maintain a state of centeredness and gen-
uineness in the midst of pushes and pulls of family life
in an urban setting than in a cave in the Himalayas.
And yet retreat may be of invaluable help for one who
needs to find himself before he knows what he wants
from others and what he wants to do with his life.
Likewise, in many forms of meditation, body and mind
are relieved of the habitual inner agitation that pre-
cludes the desirable inner states that are being sought.
Here, too, peak experiences are made possible by the
suppression of stimuli in which they would ordinarily
be drowned. Yet such transient experiences obtained
in solitude and silence while facing a white wall with
a mind empty of thoughts are not mere evasions of
the complexities of life, but a source of strength to
return to it and deal in a better way with the prob-
lems that it poses.
In drug-elicited peak experiences it is sometimes
clear that a similar withdrawal from conflict areas has
proceeded quite spontaneously, and we may approach
such moments in the same light as those arising from
meditation. Their negative aspect is that they constitute
a healthy contact with reality in only a narrow range
of experience, bypassing the domain where lie the per-
sonality defects. Their positive aspect is that such
avoidance of difficulties may be functional, consisting
a necessary step toward the achievement of partial in-
tegration. Once some centeredness has been achieved,

the following step will be that of extending it into the
periphery of personality, just as the ultimate end of
meditation is its extension to ordinary life in the form
of an enduring self-awareness and depth. Avoidances
may be suspected as an underlying condition of what
I like to call partial peak experiences—those that,
thou^ intense, cover only a fragment of the range of
qudities. Some persons, for instance, exhibit vivid aes-
thetic and religious feelings but have a gap in the area
of human feehngs that would be expected to lie be-
tween such qualities in the value continuum. Were per-
sonal relationships considered at that point, ecstasy
would probably be dissolved, engulfed in anxieties and
resentments, but the individual unconsciously wards oflE
such inner disturbance in order to afford clarity in
other areas of experience. For others, the gap or
avoided area may be different. There are persons who
may see everything as beautiful except themselves, so
that the tihought of their personal life or the sight of
their reflection in a mirror can turn their heaven into
hell. For others, it may be the perception or thought
of people in general that is avoided, such as in Hux-
ley's famous first mescaline session reported in The
Doors of Perception. In still others, everything can
flow beautifully so long as then: eyes are kept closed
and contact with the environment avoided, and in still
others external reality is enjoyed, but isolation and
closing of eyes is avoided because of the anxiety that
arises from the unfolding of fantasy.
Such avoidances are essentially an expression of
phobic areas in die everyday personality, and, as in
psychotherapies in general, there is a choice between
two strateês to deal with them: bypassing the blocks
in order to develop the sane aspects of the individual,
or facing the blocks by plunging into the turmoil of
distressful and avoided feelings. The first choice, in
drug experiences, might be conceived as a short-cir-
cuiting into heaven, after which the situation on "earth"
is not essentially changed or understood better. The
second is the choice of dealing with earthly difl&culties
with only slight chances of being able to rise above
them, but with more chances of effectmg change.
Again, the choice between the two kinds of experience
might be likened to the choice between the intrinsically
valuable one of looking out through an open window
and that of attempting to open a window next to it
that is at present closed. The outcome of the latter
choice will possibly be no more than a few inches of
light instead of the wide view of the landscape that
COTld be perceived from the window that is already
open, but there will remain the lasting benefit of one
more place in the house from which to enjoy the worid.
This is not to signify that the first kind of experi-
ence does not have value in bringing about change in
personality. The fortifying virtue of intrinsic value can
give a person the strengtih and even the desire to re-
move tiie blocks to increased experiencing of value.
The sight of the goal is what stimulates the wanderer,
as the drawing closer to it brings it better into view.
Moreover, just as a young oak needs protection from
rabbits, yet the mature tree can serve to leash an ele-
phant, so the avoidance of conflict may have its place
while emphasis is laid on the development and expres-
sion of tite healthy sides of personality. Eventually,
this healthy growth, stimulated through peak experi-
ences in the course of therapy, artistic endeavor, or life
situations, may invade and replace the disturbed do-
mains of the individual's functioning.
So here we have two approaches to the process of
psychological healing that are opposite and yet com-
patible and even complementary.
The peak experience is what Christian theology re-
gards as grace: a ^ that can come to both saint and
sinner, and that the individual can either use or fail
to use. The experience of psychological disharmony,
on the other hand, is the challenge of the via purga-
tiva, the mountain to be climbed. The hiêr the pil-
grim is on the moimtain the more likely he is to receive
the ever-downpouring gift from heaven. The greater
the gift of grace received, the stronger will be his sense
of direction, his hope and faith, his will to climb.
Both approaches are well documented in the spir-
itual practices of mankind. Some stress the direct
seeing of reality and dispelling of the phantoms of il-
lusion. Others stress attending to the experience of the

moment, illusory as it may be, for only attention to it
will show that illusion is the reflection of reality on the
rippled surface of the mind and will lead from the
reflection to the original ligjit. From my own experi-
ence, I have developed great faith in the person's own
motivation to follow any of these paths at a given
moment and respect for his natural rhytiim in Ster-
nating from one to another. At times, he will need cen-
teredness above all else; at others, feeling in touch with
his true feelings and impulses, he will want to explore
the world from these, carrying them into realization.
His groundedness in the peak experience will turn hell
into purgatory for him, but if in his outgoingness he
feels lost, he will again need to withdraw to the center.
The rhythm may become evident in a single session or
during several, fiiitial ecstasy may make purgatory pos-
sible for some. To others, the gift of grace may be
unavailable at first, and they will reach serenity only
after repeated confrontations of the terrifying, along
with the discovery that there is nothing to fear.
I tend to distrust the one-sidedness of drug experi-
ences both in the direction of joy and suffering, thmk-
ing that the one may involve avoiding the issues and
the other a bias in favor of personal striving and hard
work. What I do when prompted by such suspicion is
probably best told by the clinical material in the forth-
coming chapters.
CHAPTER n
MDA, THE
DRUG OF ANALYSIS
MDA (methylenedioxyamphetamine) is an amina-

tion product of safrol, just as MMDA is obtained from
the amination of myristicine. Safrol and myristicine
are essential oils contained in nutmeg; they are some-
what psychoactive and quite toxic. As is the case with
MMDA, MDA has not been found in nature, but the
hypothesis has been put forward that both might be
produced in the body by amination of their parent
compounds, which would in turn explain the subjective
effects of nutmeg, already acknowledged in the Ayur
Veda,i where it is designated as mada shaunda ^nar- —
cotic fruit.
The psychotropic effects of MDA were accidentally
discovered by G. Alles,^ who ingested 1.5 mg. of the
chemical for the purpose of assessing its effects on cir-
culation. Alles' experience was mainly one of height-
ened introspection and attention, but at the time of the
onset of subjective effects he saw illusory smoke rings
about him, which led him to believe that MDA would
be a hallucinogen in sufficient amounts. From my own
research with the drug, this does not quite appear to
be the case. In a first study designed to describe its
effects in normal individuals, not one of eight subjects
reported hallucinations, visual distortions, color en-
1 Ancient Hindu scripture deaUng with medicine and the art
of prolonging life.
2 The discoverer of amphetamine;
23
hancement, or mental imagery, while all of them ev-
idenced other pronounced reactions: enhancement of
feelings, increased communication, and heightened re-
flectiveness, which led to a concern with their own
problems or those of society or mankind. Further ex-
periments with MDA in neurotic patients in the con-
text of psychotherapy have confirmed such effects, but
here physical symptoms were of frequent occurrence,
and visual phenomena were described by most indi-
viduals at some point of tiieir experience. Yet the most
characteristic feature of the experience of these subjects
was one which we will here call age regression. ITiis is
a term employed to designate the vivid re-experiendng
of past events sometimes made possible by hypnosis,
wherem a person actually loses his present orientation
and may temporarily beUeve himself to be a child in-
volved in a situation of the past. Age regression
brought about by MDA differs in this last respect,
however: such loss of awareness of the environment
and the conditions at the time of the experience seems
to be more typical of hypnotic regression, whereas in
the MDA-elicited state the patient simultaneously re-
gresses and retains awareness of the present self. Yet
in both instances the person more than conceptually
remembers the past, as he may vividly recapture visud
or other sensory impressions inaccessible to him in the
normal state, and he usually reacts with feelings that
are in proportion to the event. This is the same pro-
cess term^ "returning" in dianetics, and which can
range the way from hypemmesia to repetition of a
all
past experience in which not only the old feelings are
agam felt but physical pam or pleasure and other sen-
sations, as the case may be.
Age regression has been observed by some psycho-
therapists using LSD or mescaline, and others, using
the term more loosely, claim that this is a constant
aspect of such experiences, in that there is a shift to
the pre-verbal mode of mental functioning character-
istic of early childhood, and a temporary suspension
of schemata and behavior patterns.
Regression with MDA is something more specific
than a change in the style of mental operation and

MDA, the Drug of Analysis 25
reactions, in that it entails theremembering of par-
ticular events. This may occasionally be brought about
under the eflEect of other hallucinogens or wiSiout any
drug, particularly when sought after throu^ therapeu-
tic maneuvers. Ibogaine, in particular, lends itself well
to an exploration of events in a patient's life history
for the richness of feeling with which these can be
evolved. Yet with MDA regression occurs so frequently
and spontaneously that this can be considered a typic^
effect of this substance, and a primal source of its
therapeutic value.
I believe that case reports rather than generaliza-
tions convey the subtle understanding of a drug's effect
that is needed for its utilization in psychiatry. It is from
such that I have learned whatever I may have to say,
and I think that I can say it best by recording some
of the events I have witnessed as a psychotherapist,
obscure as these may at times be. In what follows I
shall summarize the essentials of some instances of
MDA therapy chosen as the most effective in bringmg
about changes in the patient's personality. As it will
be seen, all of these entailed a dawning of new insight
by the patient into his own life history or some aspect
of it. In this, the healing process differed from what is
observed in most instances of harmaline, MMDA, or
even ibogaine therapy.
The first case presented here is actually the first in
which I used MDA for a therapeutic purpose. The pa-
tient is an engineer in a high management post and a
professor of business administration who had studied
psychology for professional reasons and, in so doing,
—
come to realize that life in general and his in par-
ticular—could develop, and become richer and deeper.
When questioned on his reasons for wanting psycho-
therapy, he emphasized a feeling of not having devel-
oped or achieved what was in his potential to develop,
his life being limited in scope: "Both my professional
and love life have been controlled by accident. I have
had little influence on the course of my life." This he
attributed to his insecurity, which manifested itself in
doubt of his judgment and actions, which in turn left
him at the mercy of external pressures. "This may be
who live with me, but I am not sat-
pleasant for those
need more direction on my life, and for this
isfied. I
I need to be more unyielding." His insecurity, too,
made him vulnerable, so that he was sometimes hurt
by little things —
^mostly criticism from his wife. He felt
little affection or regard for her, and had considered a
divorce, but felt too attached to his children to leave
the house. To the question of what he would want
to obtain through psychiatric help he replied: "I want
to know where to go in view of what I have. I want to
be better, useful, and achieve new happiness. In the
most intimate part of myself I have always been un-
satisfied. I want to be sure of my worth. That is my
greatest problem, which prevents me from deciding and
takes away the direction from my life. And I want to
understand how this state came about."
I proposed to the patient a treatment which would
entail a preparatory period of approximately two
months with weekly appointments (during which he
would write an autobiography), which would be fol-
lowed by a day-long MDA
session and group therapy
thereafter. TTie autobiographic account that he wrote
was quite careful, and it is interesting to contrast some
of its views with those at the time of the MDA
session
or later. I shall quote isolated fragments. Of his parents
he says:
"My mother was a sensitive, hardworking woman
with a lively mterest in thmgs. She had a deep love for
her family, which translated itself into a constant de-
sire for progress and weU-being for all of us. She was
always investing effort to this end. I loved her deeply.
"My father was a tough, good, honest man. Sure of
himself, generous at times and selfish at others. A
hard worker, raised in the constraint and discipline of
a Spanish village. His life was guided by some simple
rules of conduct and certain ethical principles that are
broad and true."
The first childhood memory which he describes is
a dining room:
"I lived in a house with adequate comfort. What I
remember best is the dining room. This was large,
rather elegant or at least that of a prosperous bour-
geois. Very pleasant. It had a hanging buzzer, a highly
polished mahogany table, a cupboard with glass doors
full of lovely cups.
"During meals I remember that my greatest problem
was French bread, which, having holes, could have
worms inside and was therefore not good to eat. With
regard to the people, I remember my mother, vaguely,
some maids, some uncles, my paternal grandfather.
For all of them I was a good boy, and it seems that
they pampered me a lot, since I was practically an
only child for a long time."
He ends the story of his childhood with the follow-
ing paragraph:
"It seems that I had a wet nurse in this house, for
they say my mother did not have milk. I remember
this nurse most clearly at a later stage in life."
Of the period between this and the beginning of
school he remembers financial difl&culties at home, his
great sadness about dropping a necklace of his mother's
in the fireplace, watching a maid having sexual inter-
course, speculating on female genitals and pregnancy,
and the birth of his brother when he was six. Of the
whole period he says: "I was just one more poor boy,"
which is in contrast to his pleasant memories of his
first year in an American school, and the following in
an English school, in both of which he felt appreciated
by the teachers and enjoyed playing with his classmates.
Out of the twenty pages of his biography he devotes
only five to his life before school, but these proved to
contain what is most relevant to the events during the
MDA session. The rest of his writing deals mainly
with school and work, and only briefly mentions the
death of his mother, when he was in the first year of
the university and his rather loveless love affair, end-
ing in marriage. Several events point to a lifelong feel-
ing of shyness and prohibition in face of women and
sex, which he is well aware of, and he ends the story
of his life by poiating at his insecurity and underesti-
mation of himself and his family, which, he believes,
originated between the time of his fixst memories and
school, but he doesn't know how.
One and a half hours after the ingestion of 120 mg.
of MDA, the patient felt normal except for an exceed-
ingly brief change in visual perception at the end of
the first hour, when the shape of a hill in front of the
house resembled to him that of a lion. Aside from this
phenomenon, lasting not more than ten seconds and
which would seem a rather normal fantasy (though
he perceived it as unusual), he evidenced no further
symptoms of bdng under the influence of a drug. The
situation persisted after the intake of an additional
100 mg. of the chemical and another hour and a half
of waiting, so I interpreted this to be a case of sub-
jective resistance to the impending experience rather
than physiological insusceptibility.
It was my own fantasy that tide patient kept a very
formal fron^ while another part of him was having the
"drug experience" without "his" even knowing it. The
verbal kind of communication that we were having did
not seem to put him in touch with his ongoing experi-
ence at the moment, so I turned to the non-verbal level.
I asked him to let his body do whatever it wanted
most at the moment, without questioning it, and he
went back to the couch which he had left minutes be-
fore.
He reported a slig}it feeling of wdght on his body,
a desire to lie down with all bis weight and let his ex-
halation be more complete. I asked him to give in to
this desire and purposely exhale with force at each
breath. As he did this more and more forcefully, he
felt first the need to contract his abdominal muscles,
later his whole body, flexing his 1^ and thi^, spine,
arms, and head. I kept coadiing hun into carrying this
impulse to the extreme, until, about three minutes later,
rolled into a fetal position, he exploded into laughter.
The "drug session" proper suddenly began. Though
his English was far from fiurat, and I had not heard him
speak it before, it was in English that he now spoke,
as he laughed and expressed delist at feelmg himself
all over. Even on the following day, he spoke English
while describing the experience:
"I was strictly myself. It's very funny that I wanted
to speak English, and I was laughing at the man, the
man that I was. In that man that I felt was laughmg
was another fellow. It was deep, deep, deep inside of
me, when I was ... my real self."
I am transcribing from a tape recording, and the
faulty English leaves room for some ambiguity, yet it
is clear that his deep pleasure was in feeling himself,

which is what he was literally doing: "I felt my shoul-
ders, the muscles on arms, my my abdomen, my back;
I went on feeling myself ^my legs, — my feet It was met''
''And I was a right man, a beautiful man in a cer-
tain way, extremely masculine. Man, it is a good
body . . . reflects what he is inside.''
Througibout his entire life he had felt inadequate, he
had doubted himself in all ways, and now he knew that
he had felt himself to be u^y. He had even believed
that something was wrong witili his feet. Now he knew
how illusory M^ was, how it was all based on his lack
of perception of himself. About a month later, he would
say of this experience:
'This feeling myself and finding myself in each part
of my body, which was a materialization of myself,
was something I loved, and at the same time I suffered.
I loved it because it was myself, I suffered because I
had for such a long time looked down on and post-
poned myself, even regarded myself as evil în terms —
of an awkward and limited conception of myself. I felt
sorry for myself."
He kept feeling his body, as he talked, for about a
half-hour, and soon (much against his ordinary style)
he had removed his shoes, opened his shirt, loosened
his belt. He commented on how he took delight in
feeling normal, symmetrical, well built, and how his
organism was a successful embodiment of himself in
and uniqueness. Then he talked of
all his individuality
touch as being most reliable of the senses, the one
tiie
that permitted the most direct contact with reality in
all its richness. He digressed on the limitations of other
senses and of the intellect itself, of analysis and logical
constructions when it came to the grasping of ultimate
reality. What would this pure and simple act of fully
knowing be? This was possible only in God. What
wonder and mfinite beauty there was in God! Original
and final being in whom everything was initiated and
to whomeverything naturally flowed. He talked ex-
citedly in English for two hours without interruption
as he contemplated the evolution of man in his search
for God —
^the Greeks, the Romans, and Phoenicians,
the Middle Ages in Europe, the Renaissance, capital-
ism, the estrangement of modem man and the need
for solutions.
At this point, his enthusiasm was clouded by a differ-
ent feeling. He looked as if he were searching for
something and said, "This encountering of myself is
painful!" I repeatedly instructed him to express and
elaborate on his experience of the moment, but this he
rejected more and more: "It is not this, it is not this
moment, but something in my past. Something hap-
pened to me, and I don't know what."
At this stage, I had to leave the room for some
minutes and I advised him to write during this time, as
this would keep his thinking more organized. So he
did, in large handwriting, about ten lines to a page,
with not a few words in large capital letters, such as I,
AM, and I. After nine pages, he became preoccupied
with a recurrent mistake he had made, which consisted
of writmg "m" instead of "n." It was this that was
bothering him when I came back, and he continued to
write in my presence as we talked. "The great problem
of the *n,' " he writes on the fifteenth page, ^'which is
it, *m' or V? I feel anxiety. I find that N is in ONE.
One, one. ME. (I had written NE). Anxiety. Anxiety
about my sins. Sinner. Anxiety Anxiety I turn to GOD.
WHICH ARE MY
SINS. The N. I get anxious.
"The bread with worms that I saw as a boy in the
dining room. I still see it. It had holes, and in them
were worms [gusanos].
Gusano
UN
UNA
NANA''
His associations have taken him from letter "n" to

the disgust at worms that he had imagmed in the din-
ing room bread and then to his nanny, his wet nurse*
1
Now he clearly evokes his feelmg for this nurse. He

writes: "Affection with some DESIRE. I tremble."
He feels the urge to understand something which he
anticipates as very important in connection with his
nanny, and, as he writes, he realizes that the substitu-
tion of "m'* for "n" means substituting Mamafor Nana.
When he discovers this confusion, he writes several
times: "Nana and not Mama. Nana and not Mama."
—
He then remembers more of his nanny ^how she took
him out for walks when he was only two to three years
old, how he slept with her and caressed her; how un-
conditional her love was, how at ease he felt with her.
He remembers her appearance, her fresh face, her black
hair, her open laughter. And as he remembers her, he
feels sadder and sadder, sad at having lost her, of not
having his nana any more. "Nanny left," he writes.
"Alone. Alone. Alone. Anxiety. Mother was part, not
all. Nanny was all. She left. Came to see me later.
Loved me. Painful wound. I am. With pain. I am
more myself. I am myself. I am myself with my nanny.
How sad that she left. She gave me so much for noth-
ing. No! Because she loved me, more than her own
son. Poor boy, he lost his motherl She loved me so
much! She left, and I remained alone among others.
Mother. Searching for love."
He could now see all his life as a beggmg for love,
or rather, a purchase of love in which he had been
willing to give in and adapt to whatever others had
want^ to see and hear. Here was the reason for his
lack of direction in life, his submissiveness. He had lost
something so precious, and felt so deprived! His
thougihts now turned to the period when he was left
"alone" with his parents. The change from Nana to
Mama involved moving from die kitchen to the dining
room. He felt constrained here, uncomfortable, un-
loved. Intimacy and warmth were now missing in his
life; he was not imconditionally accepted as he was any
more, but had to adapt, live up to certain demands, have
good manners. Yet was something in his feelings
tiiere
at this stage — he was experiencing again in the
^feelings
session—which he could not grasp adequately or even
feel clearly. There was more than pain, more than love
for Nanny and loneliness. He felt anxious, and in this
anxiety lay something which he tried to understand
better. "What did you feel toward your parents?" I
kept asking, and no clear reply came at first. Then it
was the question, "Why did they let my nana go? Why
did my nana leave me? Why did you let my nana leave
me? Why?" It seemed to him that she had been fired.
Mother was jealous, perhaps, because he loved her
best, or because his father had an affair with her. "And
what do you feel in the face of this, now that they have
fired her?" His anxiety increased. "Did you accept this
without protesting? If you did, perhaps you felt
guilty. .
." And now he has it: guilt. This is what he
felt. Guilt for not having stood up for his nana, not de-
fending her, not leaving with her. Now it seems to him
that this was the point. He wanted to leave; further-
more, he was planning to leave the house, but his
parents did not allow him to. "It was horrible ... a
sense of weakness, weakness!" But now he also re-
members that after this he pretended to be weak, he
just played the good, weak boy, because when he didn't,
there was something very disgusting, something very
unpleasant that they did to him. "They came up with
all this stupid thing of guilt and hell. I had a very real
conception of the world, clear and clean. I feel it . • .
and then came a host of demons, devils of another

world, pain of punishment things that weren't in
. . .
my scheme, and were imposed on me. Who did this?"

His maternal grandmother? This is not clear. He goes
on reminiscing about the threats of punishment, sin,
heU, and devouring fire. "I had great trouble in believ-
ing that. To me, fire was fire, and if people went to hell,
there was no blame. And the person would have no
body, and therefore nothing in which he could suffer.
So this was a lie, a trick, a trick. For what? To make
me behave. Ha, Ha! A
trick to make me behave. So I
would be a bastard rather than be mistaken. I would
be a bastard, but a real one!"
As he goes on talking of fire and hell, now he sud-
denly evokes the image of glowing coals on which he
inadvertently dropped a necklace, and the sorrow of
not finding the pearls any more. Now he understands
that sorrow. It was not his mother's necklace, as he had
believed, but his nanny's. It belonged to that woman
who had given so much, invested so much effort, hav-
ing nothing, and who was so ill-treated. And then
somebody had spoken of hell. A maid perhaps?
"No, I am certain it was somebody else, somebody
who argued with authority. I believe it was my mother
... my mother! It was my mother. She was lying to
me. Yes, it was my mother. How awful! How stupid!
And she made me live this guilt! And this striving to
be what I wasn't, and the fear to be what I was! What
narrowness and stupidity! What insistence on making
me to her taste, damn it! She didn't have a child to
have him, but to make him. To make him into her
image! And she forced me into this stupid thing of sin
and hell. They coidd not be good and fair without this
stupid thing. What an idiotic lady! What a status-seek-
ing woman, danm it! No authenticity. Perhaps there
is more ... a postponement of values. What for? To
play the sweet young virgm, to play the lady. And my
father is a bastard, too, for that; they both exploited
an image. Ouch, how tougih it is to see your parents
shrink! How
small do I see them now! It seems that
they jomed forces aganst me. Not against me, but
against Nana, against life. Now I remember how they
regarded me as unintelligent. I was very perceptive,
intelligent, and I could fool them, ha, ha! Yes, using
precisely their arguments, the arguments they used to
put me down, more than put me down. Terrible! This
is more terrible! They subordinated my life, the life of
their favorite son, to such a pile of rubbish!"
This from the picture of his parents and the
is far
feelings thathe expressed toward them in his autobiog-
raphy. He had even remembered the dining room as
beautiful. His Intuition was right m
tellmg hhn that
something had gone wrong with him at an early age.
A complete change had occurred in his feelings in that
these were buried and replaced by a set of pseudo-
feelings acceptable to his parents. No wonder that he
felt limited and mifulfilled!
The session started at noon, and at 3 a.m. the fol-
lowing morning the patient went to bed. He went on
thinking about this throughout the next day, and
around noon he dictated to a tape recorder, interrupted
by outbursts of weeping, a description of what had
occurred to him the previous day and what he was
feeling at the moment. This is how he ends:
"I have to reflect upon this: Why do I think my
nurse suffered so much? Or was it myself that really
suffered? She was so detached from so many things
that it is possible that she did not suffer when told to
leave. She just felt sorry for the boy who remained
alone. That was her only sorrow. And for me the sor-
row was staying alone, completely unadjusted. I
suffered indeed, from a brutality. I suffered because
my nana was leaving, I suffered because she was fired.
I suffered for remaining alone. I suffered because she
was unfairly treated, and I suffered from my impotence.
Not being able to do anything! It was losing a part of
myself. What lack of consideration on tiiie part of my
parents! Lack of care, mismanagement, selfishness.
They did not love me at all. Sheer theatrics. Sheer
theatrics.Perhaps in the course of time they have seen
how satisfying it is to love a son, and they have loved
him, but I think that I was not loved at the begmning.
I was pampered, it is true, but the feeling of love was
only with my nana.
"Now came the problem that I had in appearing as
a master with a mask, in order to be accepted in ibis
new environment. It was my home, it is true, but it
was new, since my nana was not there. And I then
understood that I could have a lot of things by pretend-
ing to be good and weak. That was the mask I wore.
I think I wore it until yesterday. I have always wanted
to appear different from what I am. And I have always
doubted what I am, doubted my qualities. And now I
see that I have always worn this mask, and I know
how to adjust it to people and circumstances. This I
learned very early, to be a good boy, because other-
wise ... Ah! Now I remember that they once told
me that I had sucked the milk of a huasa (ignorant
peasant), and that was why I was so crude. I feel
honored to have taken my nana's milk! It is milk, milk,
milk, milk, milk^ of real breasty breasts! Of a really
—
womanly woman! They said such things to degrade

me. They thought their boy was crude, that he had
the inclinations of a huaso, and therefore they inhibited
me or pushed me around so that I would not seem
too much like one, I gradually gave in, it seems. A child
is flexible, very flexible. I really didn't notice that I was
giving in, then. Now I understand the trouble ihey took
to put me into those schools. These were truly good,
but tihiey were a means of social climbing. They wanted
me to feel guilty for having nursed from a peasant's
blood. What a way to degrade my nana! That blood
was the noblest of all!
"They slowly managed to make me betray this. And
this is my other sorrow: having betrayed my feelings,
not having seen her any more, not having told her
how I loved her, not having loved her any more
though deep down I always have loved her, and I have
lived with gratitude for her. Only with her have I ex-
perienced love in my life. Somewhat with my mother,
later, but not the same. And this, which was so strictly
mine, I forgot and postponed. This is the root of the
sorrow: having abdicat^ from myself. I found it: the
sorrow of having abdicated from myselfl I won't take
it any longer. I am going to be what I am and what-
ever I may be!"
I believe that this is a remarkable document, in that it

coherently describes a few hours that effected a radical
change in a person's psychological condition. In it is
portrayed a process that is the aim of psychotherapy,
and one that is normally achieved over a long period
of time. Drugs can facilitate the process, but even with
their help it is exceptional to witness a "one-day cure"
of the extent shown in this instance. Many people were
surprised to see the changes in the patient's expression
and demeanor on the following days. He stopped using
eyeglasses, except for reading, and the style of his dress
lost its formality. Subjectively, his feeling of his own
body changed, in that he retained some of the height-
ened physical awareness and pleasure experienced
with MDA, and not only his eyesight seemed to im-
prove but his auditory discrimination. In his thinking
36 The Healino Journey
he felt more security, as he could maintain the cer-
tain^ of certain things, and this showed in his work
and professional dealings. He felt an abundance of
energy which was unknown to him, except in childish
play, which he could now remember from his early
years. Life was now basically enjoyable, and he knew
to what extent he had lived in a state of depression.
As to the lack of direction that he felt in his life, this
was replaced by a desire for further personal develop-
ment and a concern for human development in general,
which he has successfully been serving in creative ways
through his profession.
This definitely fits with the picture that he gave of
his nurse when he was able to remember her, but for
one who knows him well it is hard to find better terms
to describe him. It would seem that the qualities which
he was projecting he was now able to express. This he
did first for himself, in his quest for self-perfection,
and for his children, in the quality of the company he
gave them. Then came his active concern for society,
in his work, and only at the end of a year did he feel
real love for his wife. (This step was the outcome of a
session of harmaline and MDA
which could be des-
cribed only at great length. Since it represents in many
ways an elaboration of the one summarized here, I
have omitted it from this account.)
I feel that one of the values of this case history is in

the light it sheds on the relevance of the past and its
explanation to the healing process m

emotional dis-
tuAances. It can be seen that it is not remembering
the facts that is important, nor even remembering
feelings, but the change in present views and feelings
which is involved in acknowled^g and confronting
reality, present or past The patient's view of his pres^
ent, before therapy, was part of the "mask" that he
was wearing, part of a role he had learned by which
he became a "good'' boy having a good boy's feelings
toward his parents. These feelings could be maintain^
only by *forgetting" the facts which did not support
them, facts which would give rise to other feelings,
not compatible with his role. Living up to his artificial
— self-image created
self-image ^the to meet his parents'
demands—meant up own
giving his experience, ignor-
ing what he had seen, heard, felt ("abdicating from
myself'). This was probably taking place in every as-
pect of his perception, not only in the interaction with
people but m the ordinary use of his senses. And this
was evidenced by the improvement in his eyesight after
therapy, his discovery of unseen nuances and unheard
sounds in nature. Wearing a mask seems to be an all-
or-nothing affair. It cannot be kept just for the parents;
it sticks so close to the face that it also interferes with
the sight of nature and the hearing of music. By the

same token, it is an all-or-nothing affair for a person
—
to be himself ^that is, to use his own senses, think
his own thoughts, feel his real feelings. There cannot
be both programming and a free flow of feelings and
thoughts. Only an openness to the unknown within per-
—
mits the discovery of every instant as with the god
in Apuleius' story who would stay with Psyche only
on condition he not be asked who he was.
For this patient, "being himself," opening up to his
own feelings, whatever the circumstances, meant open-
ing floodgates which were built to defend the land-
scape as he saw it. Early in his life he knew that a view
of his life like the one he grew up with could be main-
tained only at the cost of suppressing reality. This he
must always have known imconsciously (even though
he consciously ignored it, as he did all tiie rest) and
he therefore kept his conscious life in a watertight com-
partment. This explains his resistance to the effects of
MDA.
And since his defensive system was a highly intelleo-
tualized one, it is understandable that a non-verbal ap-
proach was the most successful in bringing him to a
position of spontaneity. As he himself commented
early in the session, even the perception of his body
had been replaced by an a priori image of himself, but
this was surely a less guarded area and more safely
questioned than his life style, character, or feelings for
other persons. Once a direct contact with reality was
established, and it was really "he" who was feeling the
true senisations of his body, the gates were open, and
—
he was in touch with a chain of associations that could
potentially leadhim to any experience on the same
level of reality.
It may be useful to think of the healthy individual
as a system in which all parts are in commimication
and therefore every action, feeling, or thought is based
upon the total experience of the organism. An aspect
of such availability of experience is remembering
either overt, conscious remembering or the implicit
memory involved in taking past experience into ac-
coimt as a clinician does when making a diagnosis, or
a hiker before taking a leap. This does not happen in
neurosis. Here a person's feelings or behavior are not
based upon the totality of experience, but part is "shut
off' so that he lives in a fragment of himself at a time.
In most adults some narrowing of personality has
taken place, so that the psychological island on which
they live is not the whole territory into which they
were bom. And since childhood is the time of the
greatest spontaneity and unity, it is childhood memo-
ries in particular that become dissociated from present
experience.
Itcan be seen from the above case history how in-
compatible it was for the boy, at a given age (probably
three to four), to feel sadness and anger and at the

same time to be accepted by his parents ^the only —
support he was left witii. He could only suppress his
feelings by suppressing the thoughts that caused tiiem
— î.e., forgettmg. Remembering was then a threat to
his security, to his feeling that he was acceptable to

the grownups. Yet the adult man who came for therapy
is not in the same situation any more. His active for-
getting, his defensive structure, has persisted in him
as a useless remnant of his biography, a scar, an an-
achronous device that protects him from a danger that
long ago ceased to exist. For there is no real threat to
him any more in thinking one way or another about
his parents. The world is large, and he does not need
them any more as he did when he was three years old.
Freud said that neurosis is an anachronism, and in that
fact lies the possibility of psychotherapy. In a way,
this can be conceived as an exploration of the feared
and avoided regions of the soul, whereby it is dis-

covered that there is nothing threatening or to be
avoided in them.
There may be sorrow, or anger, as in the present
instance, but only through a fearless acceptance of such
can the sum of a person's experience be integrated
into the whole of a healthy personality.
The cure of this patient can be viewed as a shift
from a way of being and feeling as he once learned
that he "should" be or that it was convenient for him
—
to be, to his "true" being ^that corresponding to the
imprint of his life experience on his constitution. It
—
can be seen that his neurotic pattern "mask," ideal-
—
ized self consisted of a replica of his parent's dis-
torted perception of the boy and their own aspirations
for him, at a time when he felt alone and greatly
needed their love. A salient aspect of this was that they
saw him as crude and unintelligent and wanted him to
be well educated, well manner^, and refined. So they
forced him to withhold anything which would be "vul-
gar" and forced him to regard culture as a "must,"
without which he would have felt like a worthless sim-
pleton. The compulsive quality of he process made it
something rigid, which turned him into an over-formal,
unspontaneous, wordy intellectual incapable of enjoy-
ing simple things. Such a process of substituting an
image for life, a set of "shoulds" for true experience,
lies at the root of every neurosis, however different
the circumstances may be that lead to the building of
tihe mask and however unique its features.
What seems unusual in this patient's history is the
neat demarcation line between a time of normal de-
velopment in an atmosphere of love, and that in which
he was faced with the demand of adapting to disturb-
ing influences. It is conceivable that such a shift from
Nana to Mama which caused a parallel shift from "be^
ing" to "appearing" may have been a source of diffi-
culty for the boy in his speech, since he must have
sought his nana in his mother and must sometimes
have called her by the wrong name. And as Nana and
associated thoughts became forbidden to him, the
word itself, like Mama, must have become loaded with
the conflicting feelings.
It was a happy though blind intuition which I had
in advising the patient to write, thus allowing the buried
conflict to emerge through decades onto his writing
pad. The channels between his past experience and
the present one of writing letters had been opened by
the agency of MDA, but it surely would not have be-
come apparent through the highly automatized activity
of adult speech. One can conjecture as to what mi^t
have happened if the patient had not been led into
writing. Would his repressed feelings and memories
have gained access to the present by another, different
route? Could it be that once the associative channels
are open, unification takes place along the path of least
resistance —as when water falls down a mountainside,
changing its course to accommodate the obstacles in its
way?
The following histories may suggest an answer:
The first concerns a thirty-five-year-old man who
had been engaged for years in the discipline of a spir-
itual school in the hope of becoming a more complete
human being. He expressed this hope in his first inter-
view, pointing out that to be really a "man'* would
imply qualities such as a will, responsibility, freedom,
which he was far from having developed. However
true these thoughts may have been, it soon became ap-
parent that the patient's feeling of not being a com-
plete man involved a specific fear of his being a homo-
sexual, which he hardly dared confess to himself, let
alone to his spiritual guides. Such fear was part of a
persuasive feeling of insecurity, as there was a constant
implicit assumption in hun that if he were to be spon-
taneous, others would see him as effeminate and "un-
mask" him. This insecurity spoiled his relationship
with people, especially in his profession as a physician,
and it had become his greatest concern. "I want to
be sure that this insecurity is based on illusory fears,
and that I am not a homosexual, or whether I have
reason to fear . .
."
The following is the autobiographical information

1
MDA , the Drug of A nalysis 4
mo3t relevant to his symptom —according

to the
patient's account prior to the MDA
treatment:
"From information given to me repeatedly and
with much emphasis by members of my family, my
mother had to spend the nine months of her pregnancy
in bed since she had a heart disease that later led to
her death [when the patient was nine]. When I was
bom, the midwife was upset at the difficulty of the de-
livery and she twisted my right foot. For that reason,
I was not able to walk until I was approximately iSve
years old, at which age I was cured after many treat-
ments.
"All these circumstances that surrounded my birth
caused my parents to give me a lot of care, and they
thus spoiled me, made me nervous and stubborn,
which in turn made my older brother very angry. He
did not dissimulate his irritation, but was constantly
bullying me and calling me *Uttle pansy' and 'sissy.' I
suffered very much for this and was permanently cry-
ing, since he was six years older and much stronger,
and I could not fight him, and the times in which I
tried to defend myself I got the worst of it. I would
get so mad at him that on some occasions I threw
knives or scissors at him and hurt him. In spite of
what I have said, my brother was my father's favorite,
since he pointed to him as an example of intelligence
and manliness, and always encouraged him and ap-
proved of what he did. This was never the case with
me.
"Since my brother did not let me
play with him
and I had no friends, I my time with
had to spend
—
my sisters espedally with the older of them, whom
I love very much and to whom I am very close. From
this relationship, I think, I picked up the effeminate
manners for which my brother scorned me and which
gave me problems during the first years of school.
"As to my mother, though I believe that she loved
me, she never expressed this affection, in contrast to
my father, who was much more expressive than she
was."
About one hour after the intake of 100 mg. of MDA
(a small dose for this patient), he reported some diz-
—
ziness, and nothing further developed for the following
fifteen minutes. At asked him to look at
this point, I
my face and report on whatever he saw in my expres-
sion. At once he felt that my way of lookmg at him
was similar to his stepmother's, so I asked him to pre-
tend I actually was his stepmother looking at him with
the expression that he perceived. How would he trans-
late this expression mto words? What would "step-
mother" say to make her attitude more explicit?
"Sissy!" she would say. "Sissy! Sissy! Always running
after your father, attached to him like a little gurl."
Now I asked him to answer her as he would have an-
swered as a boy if he had dared to say what he felt.
"I hate you! I hate you!" For the following five minutes
or so, I asked him to shift one role to die other and
thus sustain a dialogue with his stepmother, which led
to further expression of his feelings of being victimized,
his helplessness, his need for his father as his only pro-
tection from her attacks. At this point, a reminiscence
gradually began to dawn on him. "Something happened
—
with the gardener ^there was a gardener in the house
and something happened, I don't remember what ît —
—
was in the garage, that I remember Î see myself sit-
ting on his lap—can this be true?" Then there was an
image of the gardener's penis and his sucking it, then a
feeling of his face being wet, all of a sudden, and his
perplexity. All this had something to do with little
pictures which came in cigarette packages, and he
gradually remembered that tiWs man gave them to him
in exchange for sexual manipulations. And he did not
want them for himself . • . no, for his sister . . . yes,
for his sister he would do this, so that she would have
these little prints for her collection ... for she was
competing with his older brother, he now recalls, and
his brother . . . (now he remembers the important
part) ... his brother caught him! He remembers hun
looking mto the garage, and he remembers his own
fear — ^his brother would tell his parents!
It took about five hours to reconstitute the whole

situation brought about by the long-forgotten episode.
Most of his insights and memories are smnmed up in
the following pages written on the following day:
"When I was caught by my brother I was very afraid.

I ran to my sister and told her I had been discovered
and that Fernando, who did not love me, would teU
mother on me. She was very afraid of my father and
was so frightened he would beat her that she begged
me to plead guilty and say that I had liked what I had
done. 'Please, you are the king of the house, they will
not beat you, but me, yes.' I beUeve she was affection-
ate to me in order to get my father's love in exchange.
"When Fernando caught me, he thought, 'Ha, ha!
Hie kmg of the ho^se is a sissy! I am the only man.'
My molher was in a rage. 'I will beat you. Why did
you do it?' 'Because I liked it.' 'Ah, so you liked it!'
and she filled my mouth with pepper. I kept saying, 'I
liked it, I liked it, and I will tell Daddy on you!' She
became more angry and thought, 'Just like his father.'
'Aha, so you liked it!' And she sprained my foot.
"My sister: 'Poor little fellow! What have they done
to you because of me, because you would not tell on
me? They have sprained the foot of the king of the
house. Poor little kid.'
"Younger sister: 'So you are to blame! See what
they have done to Roberto on your account. You are
bad. I am going to tell on you.'
"Father: 'See what Sarah did! How did you dare get
the boy into this? It is you that is to blame!' And he
hit her with a ruler on the soles of her feet. 'Don't
beat her, Daddy. I liked it, I Uked it!'
"Mother: 'What have I done? I sprained his foot,
and my husband will get angry. Forgive me, Roberto,
I didn't know what I was doing.'
"I: 'You stmk. Mother, why don't you bathe? Don't
pick me up at school, Mother, because I feel ashamed
of you. I want my father to go. He is nice, you are
bad. You don't love me, you sprained my foot.'
"Mother: 'There goes the pansy again. He wants to
go with his father, the two of them are of the same
kind. Weak. The only man in the house is Fernando.
He is my son, he is like me.'
"I: 'So that hurts you to see that I am a pansy. That
is what I am going to be, and I will teU my father
every time you call me that.'
" —
"Father: *What a bitch I married! What has she ddne
to her son! I can unagine what she thinks of me
just the same as of him. In truth, the only man in the
house is Fernando, who resembles her.'
"Fernando: *My father loves Roberto best, but after
telling on Roberto I have Mother to myself.'
"Younger sister: *After tellmg on Sarah I have
Father for myself. Poor little kid! How sad it is that
they have spramed his foot See, Daddy, how I love
Roberto, too.'
"Fernando: Tansy, pansy! The only man in the
house is me.'
"I: *Daddy, Fernando called me a pansy.'
*Tather: *Don*t bother your brother, Fernando.
Don't you see that he is nervous since the accident
with his foot?'
The form of this document is reminiscent of the actual

course of the session, in that I asked him to imperson-
ate the diflEerent mdividuals in his family and express
the feelings of each in face of the situation. When all
that has been quoted was clear to him he became con-
cerned with the vague recollection of a later event
The process of gradual reminiscing was similar to the
—
previous one ^the room where his mother lay in bed,
his future stQ>mother talking to the nurse, something
about the dosage of a medicme, his wish that his
mother would die, and his guilt thereafter. By the
tune the effects of thedrug had worn off, he definitely
felt that he had killed his mother by giving her a
greater
number of drops flian those prescribed, but at the
same tune he doubted the reality of the whole episode
that he was "remembering," ^rfuch m
turn was rather
vague.
During the followmg two days, the patient could do
very little else but ponder on the events discovered
under the mfluence of the drug. He alternately accepted
them as true or distrusted their reality, deeming them
illusions caused by MDA. On the other hand, he
felt
that the process that had begun with the session was
not complete and insisted (unsuccessfully) on remem-
his
bering more of the circumstances assodated with
mother's death. As time went by, the feeling of reality
of the sexual episode increased, and this paralleled the
disappearance of his doubts with regard to his mas-
culinity. His security (self-assurance) also increased
greatly in his contact with people in general, and he
felt that he could be more spontaneous, though now
he was burdened by an unconscious feeling of guilt.
He did not care much whether he was a homosexual
or not and for the first time in his Ufe could discuss
the matter openly with others. His real guilt now lay
in feeling that he was a murderer and tihat he could
not confess. A dream that he had some days after the
session impressed him very much. In an episode of this
he was at his mother's funeral, and tigers came in
through the window. He felt that these were expressions
of his own anger, an anger that he had buried early in
his life, and only now was beginning to sense through
a curtain of symbols and memories.
The change that took place in this patient's under-
standing of his life and feelings may be noted by com-
paring the first paragraph of an autobiography written
before the treatment with the beginning of another
version of it written about a week after the session.
Before the session he begins as follows:
"I was bom on the 1st of August of 1930 in the
home of a businessman who was very respected in our
circle and belonged to one of the oldest families in
town."
This is an attitude reminiscent of that which the
previous patient displayed in speaking of the dining
room at home. There die subject initially ignored his
real feelings for this place, which had been the major
torture room of his Hfe, and had replaced them with
pride in his parent's social standing, conveyed by the
polished table and fine cups. In this opening, too, the
patient highlights his parents' "respectability" and, in
so doing, looks at them in terms of the values which
were most important to them. Into these values they
have also molded him to a very high degree, as he,
too, has had to "abdicate from himself," and when a
child abdicates from his real feelings and thoughts he
is left at the mercy of external influences, For this
particular boy, "being himself" meant such frustration
and anger at his mother and older brother that he could
not possibly cope, especially in the absence of a strong
father to take sides with him. His father did show some
understanding for his son, and so we can understand
the boy's great attachment to him, but he was weak
and submissive. After the session, the patient no longer
speaks of him as a respectable man who took great
care of him and was expressive of his affectionate feel-
ings, but says, "I see him as a very weak man whom
I —
have always dominated ^whom I have even scolded
on many occasions. He does not know what he wants
and is very cowardly. That is, he has all the defects
that I see in myself. I have never been able to speak
openly with him because he is very gossipy and would
not hesitate to tell others of my affairs. He never sup-
ported me in anything."
This view of his father is without doubt closer to
his real feelings, and the shift in point of view is prob-
ably related to the fading away of his perception of
hirnself as homosexual. It may be expected that, as he
grows more open to his real feelings, he will experience
less need to be supported by father or father-figures in
the mascuhne world. He is one step closer to tiiis, but
a sense of guilt sttQ prevents him from reconciling the
unknown state of his childhood with his present view
of his mother. It is enlightening to trace the feelings
toward the woman in his family throughout the time
of his treatment. All that he says of his mother in his
first autobiographic report is in a paragraph that has
been already quoted: "As to my mother, though I be-
lieve that she loved me, she never expressed this affec-
tion, in contrast to my father, who was much more
expressive than she was." His frustration here is al-
most unexpressed, not only in that he does not speak
of his own reaction, but in that he does not blame his
mother. Instead, he constructs the view that a character
trait of hers —
not being expressive —
caused her not to
show her affection.
Elsewhere in his account, he tells of his reaction to
his mother's death: "When I was nine years old, my
mother died from a long-standing heart disease. I re-
member, or I believe recalling, that I did not cry and
that I did not want to leave the house of a cousin where
I had been sent to keep me away from the funeral
rites, and where I was having a good time."
Of his stepmother, he openly says, "I hated her.
This woman never loved me and she separated us from
one another —
except me from my older sister, who
always showed me great love and whom I love very
much."
During the session it became apparent to what de-
gree this older sister represented a mother substitute

and was so important to him that he not only agreed
to the gardener's manipulations for her sake but was
able to blame himself for it and thus protect her from
being punished. Yet it also became clear that it was a
poor substitute for his mother's love, since he did not
really experience it as true affection but as a rol^ she
adopted and a manipulation to attract her father's love.
In view of such later insight, we may regard the
patient's initial statements of mutual love with his
sister as self-deception, at least in part, and as the out-
come of a desperate need to beUeve that somebody
loved him.
On the day following the session, in addition to the
writing that has been quoted, he jotted down the fol-
lowing remarks on his mother and stepmother:
"When my mother died, I did not cry. On the con-
trary, I was happy that she died. I got along better
with my stepmother, until my father separated us."
From this it would seem that much of the hostility
previously experienced toward his stepmother was the
displacement of repressed hostility toward his mother,
and as he could now acknowledge some of it (implied
in the fact of havmg felt happy at her death), his (re-
trospective) feelings toward his stepmother inproved.
A similar displacement seemed to be taking place in
his anger toward his father, since he initially blamed
his stepmother for bringing about separation in the
family, and he now sees that his father separated him
from her. That his stepmother acted like a screen on
which were projected the unacceptable feeUngs toward
his parents is further confirmed by the course of the
MDA session, which began with the perception of his
stepmother's expression in my face, but the dialogue
with her turned it into one with his mother as he pro-
ceeded.
In the autobiographic pages written a week after the
session the patient says the following of his mother: "I
remember her as a woman of exceptional strength. I
think she was very good, but at the same time lacking
in affection, or at least in the expression of it. I recall
that I kept asking her whether she loved me, and she
would answer, 'Leave me alone, I am very tired!'
Every once in a while she gave me a kiss, but I don't
remember her as ever having caressed me." As to his
stepmother, he sees her as "a lazy and dirty woman;
she used to beat me and drive my brother to beat me
all the time. My sisters used to defend me. If I cried
or told on her to my father, she called me a sissy. She
spared the food, and I think that the incipient TB
—
which I had was related to this or so my father
thought, at least ... I hated her as I never hated any-
body else, and she took her revenge by calling me
sissy, stupid, lazybones . . But I also feel sorry for
.
her. How must she have suffered with such a pack of

monsters as we were!"
It can be seen that the patient's views and feelings
have reverted to some extent to those prior to the
session. Not completely so, though. In his last state-
ment about his stepmother, there is an impUed recog-
nition that she was the target of his own irrational
reactions, and he conceives of her attacks as a revenge.
On the other hand, there is some difference between
the original statements about his mother and the fore-
going: "... lacking in affection, or at least in the
expression of it. I recall that I kept asking her whether
she loved me, and she would answer, 'Leave me alone,
I am very tired!' Here there is a distinct acknowledg-
ment of his insecurity and frustration, and the notion
that his mother did not love him is closer to being ac-
cepted and expressed. The way in which he constructs
the sentence ("lacking in affection, or at least in the
expression of it") is a miniature replica of the process
whereby the contents of the session as a whole are
being repressed again and restrained. First comes a
clear statement, then what appears to be a rational-
ization, a justification of the mother that may be under-
stood as a means of holding back the unacceptable
feelings that he would have if the former statement
were certain. This was typical of him throughout the
process described here. Under the effect of MDA, he
would vividly describe a scene (sperm wetting his face,
for instance) and then become concerned with its
reality. "Can this be true? Did this actually happen?
No. This is just my
imagmation. I cannot really re-
member this. I was too young to remember anything.
But then why do I see this so clearly? And everything
seems so coherent! If this is true Yes, it must be
. . .
true. Can it be true? What do you think. Doctor, can

this be true?"
Long sequences of this nature took place between
successive steps in understanding or remembering, and,
as I have mentioned before, the days following the
session were followed by intensive questioning of the
same type.
Soon after working with this patient, I left the
coimtry for two months and expected to see him again
upon returning, but he now felt that the help received
in the meantime from a fellow therapist of mine was
all that he needed and that he would rather concen-
trate on the spiritual quest as before. I have met him
accidentally on occasion since, and it is my intuition
from the quality of this contact that the process in-
itiated on die day of the session was never completed.
Even so, the treatment was effective in affording the
patient the symptomatic reUef that he sought, in giving
him greater self-reliance (which made his relationship
with others more satisfactory), and in bringing about
greater spontaneity in his life.
This patient's hesitancy in accepting the truth of the
events recalled while under the influence of the drug
illustrates a reaction frequentiy observed in the period
following a therapy session. It would seem that re-
pressed memories can be accepted only when a parallel
change in the patient's attitudes to or interpretation of
them takes place, in such a way that they are no longer
threatening to his present "balance." In truth, the un-
plicit fear of change that makes a patient ward off
certain events or experiences is an intimation of a
secret recognition of the instability of his present situ-
ation. Like the fear of high places in those who un-
conciously want to fall, the fear to remember bespeaks
a wish of the organism to fall back into the truth, a
hidden desire to see.
It would seem that MDA may be instrumental in in-
ducing a state where nothing is threatenitig, and where
the person can unconditionally accept his experiences,
for his security lies elsewhere than in an image of
himself. After such a phase is over, the information
in the person's subconsciousness may clash with his
current views, or elicit reactions (like condemnation
of a parent) that he cannot allow himself. The result
may then be anxiety or horror at the events remem-
bered, denial of their reality, or anmesia with regard
to the whole episode. For change to occur, time has to
be allowed, so that the gap between the reaction to the
critical event and the patient's personality struc-
ture can be bridged, as was successfully achieved
within twenty-four hours by the subject of our first
illustration. When assimilation of the critical event is
insuflScient during a session, the process may continue
for the following day or month or be resumed in a
subsequent session with the drug.
The following case is particularly illustrative of the
operation of defenses after successive MDA sessions
and shows how in each one of them the patient was
able to see more of his past and also integrate more
into his post-session awareness. The patient is a thirty-
year-old stutterer who had been in psychotherapy for
two years and who had experienced considerable im-
provement in his symptoms. He was referred to me by
his therapist because she felt that the lack of emotion-
al contact in the present therapeutic relationship was
precluding further progress, and she hoped that a
drug could help the patient in dropping his over-
intellectualized and normative approach in the thera-
peutic encounter.
When questioned as to his own interest in further
1
MDA , the Drug of A nalysis 5
therapy, the patient explained that stuttering was no

longer his main concern, but irritability at home, an
absence of feelings, and a lack of contact with things
in general. "I feel that I don't touch the ground while
I walk, but float above it; I don't feel fully in touch
with anything." He often used impersonal phrasings at
the first interview (i.e., "There w tension in my arms"),
and when I called this to his attention, he explained:
'This is my essential concern: I want to be able to
speak in the first person!"
One of several phychological tests used prior to the
treatment proper was the HPT,^ consistmg of a series
of human photographs to which the subject is invited
to respond in terms of what he likes or dislikes in
them. The most remarkable feature of his responses
was the rejection of many faces which he perceived
as criminal. He related this feature in his reactions to
his own unconscious perception of himself as a de-
linquent, as evidenced in dreams in which he was
persecuted by the poUce.
The most salient datum in the patient's history, as
remembered by him before the treatment, was that his
stammering began at the time of his first year in
school, of which he recalled very littie. He had very
—
few memories prior to this time in his life ^his mother
going to the clmic to have his younger brother, himself
naked for a sunbath and hiding from a new maid,
his parents buying him a gift. Of the next school he
remembered vividly a blond little girl that loaned him
a pencil. He said that throughout his childhood he
used to lock himself in his father's closet and secretly
give in to fits of rage and crying until he could not
stand the heat any longer. He described the relation-
ship to his parents as normal and uneventful and said
that he used to tell his mother everything until he was
twelve or thirteen, when he changed in this respect,
and she complained of his loss of confidence in her.
At school, he was a rather good student, but avoided
sports. Since the age of fourteen, he had taken an
active part in different Catholic youth organizations,
^ Human Preference Test, by the present author.

He had two brief love affairs before marrying, one at
sixteen and the other at twenty. He met his wife at
the university and established a good friendship with
her that still endured after six years. He had now been
married for four years and had two children, for whom
he felt much tenderness.
After the ingestion of 150 mg. of MDA the patient's
first symptom was anxiety, a fleeting wish to cry, which
he controlled, and then a sensation of his arms and
chest being smaller, thinner. "Does this suggest any-
thing?" "BetQg a child, I suppose."
For the next hour or so, he enjoyed the music
greatly and playfully moved his arms and legs to its
rhythm. "Supple, as if I ran naked in the wind."
Aside from the experience described, most of the
content of the seven hours that the session lasted was
related to the patient's mouth. At first he felt that
his jaw was clenched and tried to open it more and
more with the help of his hands. He constantly felt
his face and jaws. Then he initiated movements that
suggested those of sucking, and when this was called
to his attention, he intentionally engaged in sucking
movements for a long time. All along, he felt that his
jaws were tense and painful and kept feeling them.
His lower and left molars were hurting, too, and this
persisted until the following day. At another moment,
he felt like opening his mouth wide and pulling his
tongue out, and for some time, with his mouth wide
open, he felt like exhaling forcefully. Then he felt cold,
started moving to the music again, and went on open-
ing his mouth, pulling out his tongue, or sucking. He
explained (in English) that he had been concerned
with his jaws earUer in his life, since at the time of
puberty he did not want to masticate with force for
fear of distorting the oval shape of his face.
The patient's first words, at some point in the sec-
ond hour after the initial symptoms, were to say that
he realized that he had never been loved, that this
might have been so, but he never really beheved and
felt with certainty that somebody cared for him. After
this, he spoke English and continued to use this lan-
guage for the rest of the session, in spite of having
only learned it in school and being far less jfluent in

it than in Spanish. On one occasion he spoke French,
too, and at several points in the session he commented

with surprise on the fact of having forgotten the Span-
ish language —^but this did not seem to trouble him.
He spoke a few sentences in Spanish again after imag-
ining his father as the back of a seat with a metal
frame. I asked him to talk to his father and he said
in Spanish and with some resistance, "Why do you go
away?" "Why don't you stay at home?" "Why don't
you embrace me?"
Knowing that the patient's stammering had started
during his first year of school, I questioned him about
this period of his hfe, and he recalled a certain day
oa which a bunch of children unjustly blamed him for
having pushed a smaller boy. One of them threatened
to punch him in the mouth, but he could not quite
remember whether he had actually been hit. He spent
approximately an hour reflecting on the scene. He
imagined himself with his mouth full of blood, tended
to believe that he had begun stuttering on this very
day, and thought that he must have felt a victim of
great injustice and very helpless.
After this day and for the following month, the
patient noticed a surprising effect of the session on his
movements, which became supple and unusually co-
ordinated. He felt it as he played the guitar and the
recorder, as he worked in carpentry in his spare hours,
and at night, when he no longer felt the usual dis-
comfort of not knowing where to put his arms before
sleeping. Aside from this physical effect, he felt un-
usually warm toward his children and patient in deal-
ing with the events of family life. When presented once
more with the HPT, two days after the session, his
responses were very different from the week before;
the main theme in his rejections was predominantly
not that of "delinquent" traits any more, but half of
his comanents referred to expressions in the mouth area
of the faces depicted. Those most often mentioned
were fear and a wish to cry, too much showing of the
teeth, or falseness. In such emphasis of the mouth
and rejection of feelings expressed in it, the testing
54 The Healb^g Journey
MDA
situation paralleled tiie subject*s experience in the
session, during which the mouth had been the center
of attention in terms of both physical sensations and
fantasy.
Etespite the well-being experienced by the patient,
the therapeutic process described above suggested it-
self as incomplete for the following reasons: .
1) Incomplete expression of feeling: At the begin-

ning of the session, the patient felt hke crying, but did
not give in to the urge. At the end of the day, he
feared that he might feel suicidal, but again felt only
on the brink of sadness. These brief experiences, his
life history (crying in closets), the lack of any intense
feelings throughout the session, and the rejection of
sad expressions in the test showed that he was still
not ready to accept or even know his own emotions.
2) Incomplete recall: Symptoms of regression dur-
ing the session (sucking movements, shrinking of the
body) strongly suggest that the patient's mind was un-
consciously wanting to come to grips with episodes in
the past, and this is further confirmed by the school
scene that he remembered in part. Yet here, as in the
case of feelings, the patient only comes to the brink of
remembering an episode, the existence of which he is
able to sense. The emotions which he imagines that he
had when bullied at school (crying, rage, impotence)
match those that he perceived and rejected in the
HPT.
3) Incomplete insight: The patient's experience in-
dicates that he has grown up with a feeling of not being
loved, that he missed his father, and that at least once
he was permanently affected by being unjustly blamed
and attacked by other children. This in turn suggests
that he was facing the latter situation much on his
own, without expecting any support from his parents
or teachers. Again, this whole picture matches the feel-
ings of anxiety and sorrow fleetingly experienced dur-
ing the day of the session and subsequently perceived
by the subject as foreign to his habitual views and feel-
ings. The following day, he considered this experience
of helplessness a mere theoretical possibility, to say
nothing of his perceiving in his parents' past behavior
anything which would corroborate such feelings of

aloneness or make them understandable.
On the whole, it can be said that the treatment with
MDA led to the envisagmg of a panorama that was
not quite revealed. The patient was advised to attend
weekly group therapy meetings to achieve greater
awareness and expression of his feelings, and after three
months he took part in a group session with MDA
which I summarize here:
Early in this session, the patient, who sat next to
one of the girls of the group, had asked her whether
she wanted to be alone. When she nodded, he dropped
to the floor, where he lay on the cold tiles. The cold
led him to experience sensations known to him from
—
some illness cold and vomiting, alone and helpless,
unable to ask for help, abandoned He said he under-
stood that it was a feeling of rejection that made him
feel nauseated, cold, and alone. He then went onto a
bed at one end of the room and gave in more and more
to this feeling. He made soft moaning sounds which
became longer and louder until they turned into insis-
tent howls. After about half an hour of shouting, this
became increasingly articulated. The first words were:
"NO! NO! NO!" Then some minutes later, it was "Not
mediocre! Not mediocre! Not mediocre!" And later
still, he threw back insults at an imagined accuser:
"Mediocre! Mediocre!" and then "Criminals! Assas-

sins!" for a long time. He started hitting the bed, and
later the wall, with his fists. In the process, he real-
ized that the real target of his anger was his father.
Then there were references to his teeth. "They fall by
themselves! Mommy, thy fall by themselves!" Inter-
spersed with "No! Nq! Daddy! Daddy!" He called on
his father for help as he was being forced into some-
thing by his mother and finally ended, softer, with the
repeated utterance, "I have no Daddy, I have no
Mommy."
The process lasted some four hours, after which he
forgot everything. When witnesses informed him of
what they had heard, he was able to recall to some
extent what he had said or done, but not the situations
of the past that he was reacting to. This is what he
—
writes on the following day: "I think that the yelling
was for severial situations at the same time, in each of
—
which I felt in a similar position ^not being able to
count on the protection and love of my parents, either
because they denied it to me, because they were not
at hand, or because I did not feel that they were close
enough or that they could help me. Such situations
could have been an experience at the dentist, being at-
tacked by the children at my first school, or some
illness during which I felt very badly and alone."
I am not reporting on all the experiences of the
patient in the group, but it is interesting to note that
throughout the day he felt an intense desire to be
protected and caressed by other group members
along with an inabiUty to ask for it.
Comparing the patient's first MDA session with the
second, it is obvious that on the second he was able
to recall and feel more (of his aloneness, frustration,
and need), but at the expense of subsequent amnesia.
In spite of the latter, I felt that the depth of the experi-
ence itself showed a relaxing of defenses and that this
one might constitute a bridge to a following session
in which his memories and feelings could be integrated
into his conscious life. This was supported by the pa-
tient's responses to the HPT two days after the ses-
sion. The change here was striking once more, and
along with the rejection of weakness, a new theme be-
came apparent, a type of critical, sardonic, and de-
tached expression which in at least one of the pictures
he associated with his father's.
The next session took place one month after the
second and started out feverishly and with a lot of
yelling. He seemed to be going trough the same ex-
perience as in the previous session, but the situation
that inspired his feelings was different. This began to
unfold gradually as he gave in to his rage. "Your son
is a thief. Your son is a thief. Your son is a thief," he
—
wrote on the following days and after that, anger,
defense, hatred: "No! No! It is mine, I found it lying
on the floor! It is mine, mine, mine! I have not stolen
it! I have not stolen anything! I found it. Criminals!
Criminals!"
By the middle of the third hour he explained how he
remembered that in his first or second year of school he
found a smaU jewel (a diamond apparently), which he
kept without knowing its value. He was accused of
theft and he swallowed the stone. He clearly remem-
bered that he was given an enema and forced to vomit,
in order to retrieve the jewel. Now he had the fantasy
of still having something inside. He vaguely distin-
guished two packages. A
small one behind his sternum,
and a larger one below. He opened the smaller one
and found the diamond. "The other, which I scarcely
saw and forgot, is still unopened," he stated later, and
added: "In having discovered all this, I felt free from
something very big and heavy, as if I could breathe
deeply and for the first time in many years. But this
desire to breathe deeply and violently pointed at some-
thing which I was not able to grasp." During the rest
of the day, he interacted with others instead of with-
drawing, as in the past group sessions. After the effects
of the drug had worn off, he said goodbye to the other
group members, and while doing so was brought to
the verge of tears. Especially when saying goodbye to
me, he felt very moved and kissed me on the face as
a son would kiss a father. This was a dramatic contrast
to the feelinglessness which had made him seek treat-
ment.
On the following day, he was overcome by an in-
tense sense that he really had no father or mother, and
this made him feel as if he had killed them. He felt,
too, that the pieces of a huge puzzle were falling into
place: dreams, fears, life situations. Yet in the course
of the week it seemed that a curtain was being drawn
over his sight, his feelings were dampened again, and
the story brought to mind during the session appeared
to him as less and less real.
One further session was proposed to the patient for
reasons similar to those which precipitated the previous
one, and it is worth reporting that this particular one
was to be both the least remembered and the most
effective. In brief, during the first hours of the ses-
sion, the patient felt like a woman and enjoyed this
role; after this, he discovered that early in his life he
had taken on a feminine identification on the assump-
tion that he would thus attract his father's love. To be
a woman meant, principally, to be feeling and sensitive,
like his mother. But at some point in his life he had
told himself, "Men do not cry," —
this phrase came up
repeatedly in his MDA
experiences —
and he became
anaesthetized. On this occasion, too, his feelings state
led into a brief period of feelinglessness, incoherence,
and then indifference. "The value of this was to see a
caricature of myself," he later said. "What I am al-
ways, to some extent, I was then to the extreme." What
happened in his unconscious while he was feeling like
a woman or being incoherent or indifferent is hard to
know, but only after this session did the patient feel
that he had taken a definitive step toward emotional
sanity. A
fleeting state of anxiety made him realize that
this was the condition in which he had Uved all his
life before the treatment and which he had not even
remembered for some months. And furthermore, it
seemed to him that the whole world had changed, even
though he felt himself the same person. When ques-
tioned on the nature of the change, he said that it was
difl&cult to put into words, but was something Uke
"being related" to others. "I don't have to control
others, for I no longer depend on their acceptance or
rejection. I can accept them regardless of whether they
accept me or not. K they do, fine; if not, too bad; but
I have no need to spend energy in a sort of CIA ac-
tivity to detect how I am to others." In addition, his
efficiency at work has improved, according to his es-
timate, 1,000 per cent
Some months after the beginning of his treatment,
he summarized these changes in a letter, on the oc-
casion of my last days in the country. Toward the end,
he posed the question: "What happened during the
last session that brought about the crystallization of
this deUcate upper crust of sanity, which I nevertheless
feel is permanent? I could go on answering, "Nothing
. • simple. While I was there, the world was replaced
.
by a different one."
"Some facts I see. During the first stage of the ses-
sion, I lived in a closet, my hell. But now that I re-
member, the most unpleasant feeling that I can remem-

ber that of rejection, and, reflecting well, that this
is
was not so painful after all. Hell was nothing but the
release of much feeling, and much of this was quite
pleasurable. In the second stage, I could see myself as
I have lived for years: incapable of loving."
This is how the person that suffered from feeling-
lessness ends his letter:
"Qaudio, friend, I know that I cannot give you any-
thing like what you have given me. I know
that you
have not even expected this letter. I know
that you
have not even expected the affection which you know
that I can only feel in spite of myself. I know that you
accepted me knowing that I hold a faith that teaches
giving what you give, and which I imitated out of com-
pulsion. I know Siat you are happy about me.
"Now you leave. I shall not thank you. That would
be adding a flower to your garland, which you leave
behind. I want to say to you what my father never
heard, what I could never say to him, for I had no
chance, or he did not give it to me, who knows?: I
love you.
"My wife, my sons, others that meet me will never
know of the friend that you are, but if they knew, they
would have to smile, with the same smile that I now
have, hidden, for a long time, for this occasion.
"Have a good trip."
The above-cited accounts of MDA

therapy show both
the episodic hypernmesia that the substance can eUcit
and tile counteractive defenses that may set in, in the
face of unacceptable self-knowledge.
In the interplay of remembering with anguish and
forgetting or becoming confused, perceiving one's life
and not daring to face it, lies„the specific hell or pur-
gatory of MDA, a counterpart of the better-known
hells of mescaline or harmaline. But the picture of the
effects of MDA would not be complete without a view
of its specific paradise.
With many drugs, we find that there is a typical
field in which a peak experience is expressed, when it
does occur. This is, for instance, the domain of tran-
scendence and feelings of holiness for LSD, that of
beauty for mescaline, of power and freedom for harm-
aline, of loving serenity for MMDA. One may ask
whether there is anything that could be regarded as the
typical positive experience of MDA, and what this is
hke.
In an overview of some thirty sessions with the drug,
I find that the most characteristic feature of those that
convey a sense of completeness, depth, and integration
is something that I would describe as an enhancement
of the experience of I-hood.
In fact, just as the standard psychiatric term "de-
personalization" has been used in connection with the
state of mind often brought about by LSD-25 or mes-
caline, one could here use the converse term "person-
alization." Instead of the "egolessness" of ecstatic one-
ness with the world elicited by the former, there is
here an emphasis on individuaUty and on the unique-
ness of a given life. Indeed, some of the subjects have
at one point or other in their session come upon a
shared realization which they expressed emphatically
with an identical statement: "I am! I am! I am I!"
This trait in "good" MDA experiences appears am-
ply illustrated in the first case history presented in
this chapter. Let us consider once more the terms in
which the patient described his experience at the onset
of effects of the drug, as he enjoyed feeUng himself: "I
was strictly myself." "I was laughing at the man that
I was." "I went on feeling myself — ît was me!" This
experience resumed after some hours, while he was
beginning to remember his childhood events, and he
wrote in big letters, covering a complete sheet of pa-
per, "I AM MYSELF."
One aspect of this experience is that it entails the
sensing of the immediate reality. In contrast with the
person under the effect of LSD, who is prone to see
gods or devils, impersonal forces being manifested
Sirough his personal existence, here the individual's
consciousness is centered on the unique qualities of his
tactile, proprioceptive, auditory, and other sensations.
And these by no means show demons or abstract prin-
ciples, but the subject's particular reality. Records of
MDA sessions abound in such discovery of particulars,

which are often clues to unresolved past situations. A
patient, for instance, noticed that his voice sounded
fearful and submissive, as when he talked with his
father, and this led him into a clarification of his past
relationship to his father, followed by a greater freedom
from such an anachronous pattern. He had probably
always talked with this same voice, only he was not
aware of this aspect of himself. Once he could sense
himself, he could also become aware of his attitude, his
past attitudes corresponding to the present one, and
Hfe episodes that brought them about. Thus it could
be said that his perception of himself at the moment
and his memory of himself in the past belong to the
same personal domain and are linked by easy associa-
tion chains. When one became the object of repression,
so did the other, and the lifting of repression of both
past and present went practically hand in hand.
The child's discovery of his individuality probably
stems from the realization that he can control the
movements of his body and exercise a wiU. In analogy
with this, the adult rediscovering his I-sense in an
MDA session often engages in some motor activity
which is the embodiment and sign of his individuality.
Moreover, on two occasions at least, such movements
constituted an enactment of the playful spontaneity of
a baby. In one of them, the patient started by engaging
in wormlike movements that he felt were like those of
a baby in a crib. Soon he started to make sucking
movements, which he continued for some three hours,
while other manifestations gradually set in. First, the
sucking sounds, then the repetition of the syllable
"ma," "ma, ma" again and again, then hitting the bed
rhythmically with his fists as he shouted "ma, ma'*
louder and louder, and finally the word "I, I, I" re-
peated with the rhythm of his beating, with pleasurable
forcefulness. Subsequently, and up to the time of the
session's end, the whole panorama of his family rela-
tionships gradually unfolded.
Exactly converse was the sequence of events for an-
other patient, whose first experience worth noting after
MDA had taken effect was the sense of egohood: "I
moved an arm and became keenly aware that / was
moving it. / was there. What a wonderful thing, to be
myself! I could feel every muscle, every part of my
being, and all were I."
Shortly afterward, I showed him a photograph of
himself with his father. His father was leaning on his
shoulder in a gesture expressing both protectiveness and
possessiveness. As soon as he saw it, he talked to his
father in the photograph: "No, no . you are you,
. .
and I am me No, no, no! I will not let you live

. . .
my life, I will not let you lean on me. We

are two
different worlds, and independent of each other. I have
been living your life, I have been carrying you inside
and doing what you would, but this will not go on/'
He explained this further to me, discovering that, even
in a love affair that he recently had, he could now see
that it had been his father and not himself who was
loving the girl.
A similar process went on as he looked at other
photographs and evoked related memories. In face of
each, he was aware of what his own feelings and inter-
ests at the moment were and where lay the distortion
by which he was not being true to himself. Every time
he could sense this he experienced great discomfort,
until he relieved the situation, experiencing not what
had been but what would have been if he had been his
real self, talking to the figures of his past out of a
new stance that he now understood to be truly his own.
Thereafter, he was able to enjoy a sense of unity again
and the feeling of his own "I." "Only I live this in-
stant, only I. I Uve an instant that is mine. Nobody
has the right to live my life, and I am not to accept
being burdened by extraneous life." "I don't want to
lose this precious moment. To feel myself in the world,
with others, is marvelous. Not the people, but oneself."
At one point, his attention turned to his masturba-
tion at the time of puberty and his guilt about it. This
was his view of it now: "It was important only because
/ was there, and in it I found my I, my support. In-
deed, it was the only thing that / did, and this behind
my own back."
This patient was a twenty-five-year-old man whose
reason for consulting was a lack of spontaneity and

freedom of expression that he was aware of in face
of the persons about whom he cared most, especially
his mother. When I handed him photographs of his
mother he realized how she had manipulated him
through her suffering and that he had failed to stand
up for his real wishes and views. He Uved out with
intense feeling an imaginary encounter with her that
ended in stabbing "her" with a knife on the floor in
the midst of great anguish. He later wrote, *'I remem-
ber what difficulty I had in killing you, Mother. I
killed that Ufe of yours that was living for myself. I
could kill it so that I could then love you. I then gave
you my love, and it was not your own love back, but
that emanating from myself."
I thought at this point that there would be nothing
else to deal with, since the patient's state was of con-
tagious peace and balance, and the main issues in his
life had been dealt with in the past five hours. Nev-
ertheless, I kept showing him photographs. Most of
them elicited inspired reflections, advice to his parents,
objective appraisals. Yet when I showed him one of
himself at one or two years of age he experienced dis-
gust, relived an episode when his mother was forcing
food into his mouth, and then felt that he was biting
a breast. "Even then I was aware," he conmiented
later, "that this was for my
mother's lack of milk."
After a few minutes of silence, the patient's pos-
ture began to change and gradually became that of a
fetus. TTiere were no words, just a sudden spasm that
he later explained as a reaction to an "imagmary"
blow.
After three or four minutes more, he asked me to
leave him alone for some time, since there was some-
thing into which he felt that he could not go with a
witness. I was called in by him after five minutes or so,
and he explained his recent experience. He felt that
he had been present at the moment of the sexual act
out of which he was bom. He experienced his father
as a tough male, and his mother as frightened.
I am impressed with the last events that I have re-
counted, regardless of their interpretation, because this
was a young man who not only did not know about
MDA but who also had never been exposed to psy-
choanalytic or other expectations of prenatal memories.
Moreover, I know him as an exceptionally straight-
forward, honest person who sticks to what has mean-
ing for him in his words, so that I can hardly imagine
his weaving fantasies to put up an interesting show.
Whether these are memories, and there exists an /T'
independent of the structure of the nervous system that
can remember what he described, I do not know, nor
do I know anybody who does. Yet prenatal "mem-
ories" are a phenomenon of the human mind, observed
in the case of analysis or hypnosis, and an account of
MDA would not be complete without the description
of this experience.
The uniquenessof this patient's session does not end
here, thou^. After a short time, the patient emitted a
sudden cry and fell to the floor, raising his hands to
his chest. After the event, he explained, "This was a
death scene, and those stupid people had killed me."
But now, for the first time in the last hours, he began
to get restless, anxious, and uncomfortable. He ex-
pressed the feeling that he should not go any further,
but kept hesitating. "I feel that this does not belong
to me any more, and it is not for me to know. I
cannot bear the burden of another life." Yet, gradual-
ly, more scenes unfolded. He was a Nazi. He spoke
fluent German in a voice that I had never heard in
him before. He saw himself at a dinner table "Hilde,
bring mir die Suppe," he shouted. At another moment,
he sang while crossing a field in the countryside.
Was all this a fantasy or a true recall of a previous
existence? The patient had a German grandfather, with
whom his family lived until he was four years old.
Could this Nazi that he was identifying with have been
his grandfather, or a transformation thereof in the
child's mind? He could not answer my question. All
that he knew was that he was feeling heavy. He felt
afraid and nauseated at his own question. "Was that
I? Myself? Was I that?" He felt burdened with guilt
for that Ufe as if it had actually been his. Finally, he
decided that he would not take such a responsibility.
He told his alter ego, "No. I cannot bear you. You are
too heavy." Then he looked at the heater in the room
and own'self once more
felt his —
not just his ordinary
self, but his recently acquired sense of "I": "Knowing
that I listen, I do, I move, gives me an incredible
power."
The issue became clear only after his arrival at
home. He searched for photographs of his grandfather,
and looking at them he felt again the same nausea
that he had experienced while thinking of the Nazi.
He saw his grandfather as dirty and lecherous. Then,
looking at the photograph of a youth with a swastika,
he later explained, "My face contorted, and I saw my-
self as on the day when I raped her." He felt a great
relief and then set out to understand what had hap-
pened to him. Had he raped somebody? He was quite
sure that physically he had not. Had he morally raped
somebody? Had he destroyed somebody? Then mem-
ories started flowing from his mind. The way he had
frightened his little brothers and enjoyed their fear,
the way he had kissed that Uttle girl ... These and
other recollections were the source, he now knew, of
that feeling of dirtiness and nausea. For all that he
was feeling toward his grandfather, he now felt toward
himself. He now saw that he had been using the Nazi
and his grandfather as screens to protect his guilt
upon, since he had been unable to take responsibility
for himself.
In a note that he sent to me in the following days
he ends with these words:
"I did these wrongs, and I must compensate for
them with good.
"Here I am. /, with the responsibiUty for this /.
"I take it. I fully take responsibility for my /. I take
my responsibility."
I think that this account is of interest not only for
the light that it may shed on many other "past-life
memories" obtained in hypnotic or mediumistic states,
but in terms of an understanding of the effects of
MDA, as is my concern in this chapter. As with hyp-
nosis, the MDA
state is favorable to hypermnesia and
time regression, but it also appears to bring about the
emergence of false memories ("screen memories") and
particularly the identification with them in what may be
seen as a state of temporary shift in identity. The
quality of these age regressions or shifts in identity is
more often than not Aat of dissociation, in that the
ordinary personality tends to forget, deny, or feel an
incompatibility between its premises and values and the
validity of the events "recalled."
Yet, paradoxically, the experience of I-hood or in-
dividualized selfhood that crowns a successful MDA
experience is the very opposite of dissociation. It is
precisely a state of psycWc cohesion or unity, out of
which a person may say, as in the last example, "I
take responsibility for myself."
The whole process, therefore, may be seen as one
of integration via dissociation, or, more teleologically,
one of dissociation in the service of integration. As in
hypnotic states, only by forgetting his ordinary identity
and pretending, so to say, that he is not there as a
witness, can the person allow himself to experience his
life from a different point of view, habitually sup-
pressed. But this temporary lie of "This is not myself'
is the way to the realization of the truth.
Just as a shift in identity to a previous lifetime was,
in our last illustration, covering up (and indicating)
aspects of his real identity in this lifetime, we may
wonder whether this is not always the case with mem-
ories, however true they may be. For, in being con-
cerned with the past, we are most likely being con-
cerned with an indicator of our present. When our pa-
tient felt suddenly relieved of the heaviness that had set
in on him in going beyond his birth, this relief was his
reaction now to a change taking place in his present
condition. This change was expressed to his conscious-
ness at that moment as the notion of having raped
someone, which takes the place of a disgust toward
his grandfather or his previous life conduct and per-
sonality. Once his disgust is directed at his own ac-
tions, he not disgusted or overwhelmed any more,
is
but relieved, for he can take responsibiUty, and his
crimes are not so great after all. More than that, we
may be right in assuming that it is not his past actions
hat are so important, but his attitude at the moment.

11 his desire to atone for his sins, as he expresses it,
le is now leaving behind him the inclination that he
vas apparently condemning in his past actions, but
nost probably rejecting in his present self. This, which
ippears to be an acceptance of the past m
terms of a
>roject for the future, is really a change in motivations
>r personality in the present.
Thus theillusion of otherness can be the link to an
iwareness of selfhood, making the individual feel safe
n temporary irresponsibility until he can discover that
svhat he has hitherto rejected is bearable for him to
accept; and the illusion of an issue being in the past
:an lead to the discovery of its survival in the present.
[n a similar way, the content of a memory can be a
ie that leads to a truth. Our patient's pseudo-recol-
lection of a previous existence here leads to the re--
membering of his grandfather's personality, to that of
lis "having raped somebody,'' and finally to the spe-
cific events that he was not acknowledging and that
were the source of his disgust. How
much of the
"memories" recovered in other sessions is fact and how
much symbolic substitutes I cannot tell, but the present
case suggests a way in which we may look upon them.
One thing that is clear is that a "false" memory, though
factually wrong, is psychologically true. Consequentiy,
the acceptance of it is in some measure equivalent to
a coming to terms with the real events distorted into
it. Thus, in our last example, the "realization" that the
patient expressed by, "I see myself as on the day when

I raped her" brou^t immediate relief. Moreover, a
screen memory can, by virtue of its symbolic charac-
ter, pack into an experiential meaning that no
itself
single memory of a fact from a person's life might
convey. True, there are instances of traumatic events
(an example of tiiese is the separation from the wet
nurse in our first illustration), but in many lives there
is probably no single episode in which the abdication
from self took place, but a series of microtraumatic
interactions. The imagined day of an imaginary rape,
thus, is most probably condensing the guilt for count-
less occasions, of which those recollected are a sam-
pie. And that sample is enough to come to terms with
the issue.
My respect for the power of symbols increased great-
ly one day in my early practice when I was unsuccess-
fully treatmg with hypnosis a woman with an acute
case of vomiting. She was in the second month of
pregnancy, and her vomiting was so severe that it was
becoming a threat to her life. Her newly-wed husband
had died about a month before, and a connection be-
tween his death and her present condition could be
suspected but was not clear to us at the time. She
was a good hypnotic subject, and because of the emer-
gency I attempted suppression or substitution of the
symptom; but as the days elapsed, the effectiveness of
my post-hypnotic commands diminished. A colleague
then suggested the initiation of a guided daydream in
the trance state. I do not remember this clearly after the
ten years that have elapsed since, but I do recall
the crucial scene of it, in which the woman stood fac-
ing her husband and could see his stomach through his
transparent abdomen. My colleague acted on inspira-
tion and instructed her to take his stomach and eat it.
She did, and upon waking up, her nausea was gone.
An action carried out in fantasy, the "meaning" of
which neither she nor we could rationally understand,
had cured her of a vomiting so deeply rooted as to
resist hypnotic manipulation and so severe as to threat-
en her survival.
Similarly, I am ready to believe in the therapeutic
value of confronting memories that never took place
in external reality. They are an embodiment of a psy-
chological reality that may not be contacted at the
time, at least not in that form. Yet this is not the last
step. Once our patient had accepted the idea of having
rapped somebody, he was ready to look into the facts.
He had accepted the worst. He had pleaded guilty to
his worst accusations. Now he was not defensive any
more, but open to his reality, ready to see.
What he saw may seem to us more innocent than
his fantasy of a rape, but we must not forget that this
time it was surely he who was the agent of the actions
remembered, and the comparative mildness of the
crimes is compensated for by the reality-quality or cer-

tainty of his memories and the measure of his involve-
ment and responsibility. Screen memories, just like
symbols, both reveal and stand as obstacles to a fuller
revelation. They both disclose and cover up. Yet par-
adoxically, once the cover is lifted, we may find that
nothing was hidden behind it. Or, phrased differently,
what was covered up was nothing. For there can be
no question as to the activity of covering up, no mat-
ter how empty the container. This paradoxical fact, I
think, is one way of understanding the whole therapeu-
tic process: daring to look at the skeleton in the closet
. . . and finding that it is not there.
The willingness to become a patient in the psycho-

therapeutic endeavor is already an indication of a will-
ingness to lift the lid of what appears to be a Pandora's
box. Even more so is the decision to experience the
effects of a drug that will rend the veils of the ordinary
state of consciousness. Yet, drugs and all, I think that
few are able to make the last step in "looking at the
real thing." Looking at the symbol or dealing with it
in a symbolic way is already a great challenge and
without doubt a healing adventure. But even beyond
the battle with the dragon is the discovery that the
dragon was an illusion, which realization, by the way,
is the real killing of it.
Our patient was now ready to see the worst in him-
self, after accepting the blame of being a rapist. What
did he see? A certain measure of destructiveness in the
way he had gone about findmg his pleasure. His judg-
ment of himself in this was severe, but his sternness
had the taste of for^veness: "Well, here I am, and I
am responsible for myself. I take it." Essentially, he
could take it. It was not unbearable to have made mis-
takes. It was far more tolerable to him to face his
faults tiian the substitute that he had found for what
he implicitly assumed to be a greater terror: the crimes
of a previous incarnation, the meanness and lascivious-
ness of his grandfather, his own act of raping. As he
gradually moved from his habitual avoidance of the
issue, the crime was found to be closer and closer to
home, but smaller. It never ceased to be a crime for
—
him, but he found it far more tolerable to face it
Even more, it was exhilarating, and it added direction
to his life. "I did those wrongs and must compensate
for them with good ... I take full responsibility for
myself."
Thus we can frequently see a successful MDA ses-
sion as a process of reaching a truth through the indi-
cations of error. For error is often in the nature of
a shadow of truth, a shadow pointing toward its source.
Yet, when we find the source, we find that the shad-
ows of error are like those cast by the setting sun
much bigger than the object.
If the above is true, not only of MDA sessions but
of psychotherapy in general, or even of life, there is
a sense in which it is particularly true of MDA, when
compared with the other drugs dealt with in this book.
The domain to which the content of MDA experiences
belongs is that of life events, and the truth relevant to
it is a truth of facts. The domain of MMDA, as we
shall see, is more that of feelings in the present than
that of events in the past, and when we speak of
feelings we do not think so much in terms of truth as
in those of depth and genuineness. The domain of
harmaline, on the other hand, is that of visual sym-
bols of archetypal content, and here, too, we do not
habitually speak of myth in terms of truth but in terms
of beauty and revelation. Ibogaine is, of all the drugs,
that most related to the direct experience of reality,
according to the judgment of many who have been ex-
posed to a broad range of psychochemicals. Still, such
contact with reality has the quality of an ineffable
experience at the moment, rather than a clarification
of events. Of all psychotropic agents, MDA is the one
which best deserves to be called a "drug of truth." An
active concern for truth seems to be characteristic of
it, not only in instances like those presented here, but
in the reactions of more healthy individuals who have

become concerned with their present lives. In such
cases, the effect of the drug is frequently in the nature
of the great urge to clear away the distortions that
plague and impoverish human relations and to open up
channels of communication that can make life among
friends or family members more significant. Such dis-

closure does not occur (as with ordinary hypnosis or
the effects of so-called "truth serums") as an act of
disinhibition and irresponsibility, but as a consequence
of an active interest in confronting and sharing the
xuth and a realization that much of the avoidance of
such in ordinary Ufe stems from unwarranted fear.
Aside from the above fact, the reaction to MDA is
jy far the most verbal compared to other drugs men-

ioned in this book, and this contributes to its being a
useful agent in the protentiation of group therapy. But
with that I shall not deal here.
NOTE OF CAUTION:
The years that followed the writing of this chapter
have shown that MDA is toxic to certain individuals
and at various dosage levels; also that, as in the case

of chloroform, what is a regular dose to many people
may be a fatal dose to some others: a case of aphasia
occurred in CMe, and a death occurred in California.
Since individual incompatibility is consistent and bound
to dose level, however, it is possible to ascertain it
through progressively increasing test doses (i.e., 10
mg., 20 mg., 40 mg., 100 mg.). This should be done
without exception throughout the time preceding any
firsttherapeutic MDA session. Typical toxic symptoms
are skin reactions, profuse sweating, and confusion; I
have observed these in about 10 per cent of the sub-
jects at dosages of 150-200 mg.
CHAPTER m
MMDA AND
THE ETERNAL NOW
MMDA IS AN ABBREVIATION for 3-methoxy-4,5-meth-

ylene dioxyphenyl isopropylamine. Like MDA, from
which it differs only in the presence of a methoxyl
group in the molecule, it is a synthetic compound de-
rived from one of the essential oils in nutmeg. The
chemical similarity between these two compounds finds
—
an echo in their psychological effects on man în each
case predominantly one of feeUng enhancement. Their
chemical difference is reflected in some quaUtative dif-
ferences in effect, however: MMDA frequently elicits
eidetic displays, and not the past but the present be-
comes the object of attention for the person under its
effect.
MMDA stands with MDA in a category distinct
from that of LSD-25 and mescaline as well as from
that of harmaline and ibogaine. In contrast with the
transpersonal and unfamiliar domain of experience
characterizing the action of these two groups of drugs,
these feeling-enhancing isopropylamines lead into a do-
main that is both personal and famiUar, differing only
in its intensity from that of every day.
MMDA SYNDROMES
One possible reaction to MMDA, as to other psycho-

73
active drags, is a peak experience. How this experi-
ence dijffers from that brought about by other com-

pounds will become apparent in the following pages.
An alternative to the artil&cial paradise of MMDA is
its hell. This a reaction characterized by the inten-
is
sification of unpleasant feelings —anxiety, guilt, de-
pression —which may be regarded as a mirror image
of the first, and constitutes, too, a clear syndrome. Yet
these two types of reactions may be classed together
in tihat they are essentially feeling-enhancement states,
and contrasted to other states where the feelings are
unaffected, and there may be passivity, withdrawal,
and/or sleep rather than excitation. I find that both
imagery and psychosomatic symptoms are more prom-
inent in the absence of vivid emotions, so that I would
tentatively regard this syndrome as one of feeling sub-
stitution. Lastly, there are occasions when a person
reacts to MMDA with little or no productivity, both
feelings and their equivalents being absent, a state that
could well be regarded as the Umbo of MMDA. In
these cases, the effect of MMDA is one of even greater
apathy or deeper sleep, so that I would suggest under-
standing them as instances where the repression of feel-
ings does not even allow their symbolic expression, a
state that can be maintained only at the expense of
consciousness.
Broadly speaking, then, and for the purpose of de-
ciding how to proceed in the therapeutic situation, I
will consider the effects of MMDA as belonging to five
possible states or syndromes: one which is subjectively
very gratifying and may be regarded as a particular
kind of peak experience; another where habitual feel-
ings and conflicts are magnified; a third and fourth in
which feelings are not enhanced but physical symp-
toms or visual imagery are prominent; and, lastly, one
of lethargy or sleep. Psychosomatic symptoms or ei-
detic imagery may be present in any of these states,
but are most prominent in the third and fourth (as
feeling substitutes), while feelings are the most prom-
inent part of the experience in the first two, and a state
of indifference (possibly defensive in nature) sets in
in the third and fourth and culminates in the fifth. In
MMDA and the Eternal Now 75
the latter, as in normal dreaming, there may be much

mental activity, but thisbecomes difficult to grasp, re-
member, or express. These states may follow one an-
other in a given experience, so that the reaction to
MMDA may be initially one of anxiety and conflict
until better balance is achieved or somnolence super-
venes; or a session may begin with the pleasurable bal-
anced state and then lead into one of emotional or
physical discomfort, and so on.
ON THE ASSIMILATION OF PEAK EXPERIENCES
We have elsewhere remarked how the peak experience

that may be possible under the effect of MDA
is one
affirmation of the individual aspect of the self, in con-

trast to that of LSD, where the typical experience is
one of dissolution of individuality and the experience
of self as oneness with all being. In the peak experi-
ence that MMDA may elicit, it is possible to speak of
both individuality and dissolution, but these are blended
into a quite characteristic new totality. Dissolution is
here expressed in an openness to experience, a will-
ingness to hold no preference; individuality, on the
other hand, is implied in the absence of depersonaliza-
tion phenomena, and in the fact that the subject is
concerned with the everyday world of persons, objects,
and relationships.
The MMDA peak experience is typically one in
which the moment that is being lived becomes intensely
gratifying in all its circumstantial reality, yet the dom-
inant feeling isnot one of euphoria but of calm and
serenity. It could be described as a joyful indifference,
or, as one subject has put it, "an impersonal sort of
compassion"; for love is embedded, as it were, in calm.
Infrequent as this state may be for most persons,
it is definitely within the range of normal human ex-
perience. The perception of things and people is not

altered or even enhanced, usually, but negative reac-
tions that permeate our everyday Uves beyond our con-
scious knowledge are held in abeyance and replaced
by unconditional acceptance. This is much like Nietz-
sche's amor fad, love of fate, love of one's particular
circumstances. The immediate reality seems to be wel-
comed in such MMDA-induced states without
pain or
attachment; joy does not seem to depend on the given
situation, but on existence itself, and in such a state of
mind everything is equally lovable.
In spite of MMDAbeing a synthetic compound, it
reminds us of Homer's nepenthe ("no suffering"),
wi'iich Helen gives to Telemachus and his companions
so that they may forget their suffering:
But the admirable Helen had a happy thought

She lost no time, but put something into the wine
they were drinking, a drug potent against pain
and quarrels and charged with forgetfulness of all
trouble; whoever drank this mingled in the bowl,
not one tear would he let fall the whole day long,
not if mother and father should die, not if they
should slay a brother or a dear son before his face
and he should see it with his own eyes. That was
one of the wonderful drugs which the noble
Queen possessed, which was given her by Poly-
damna the daughter of Thon, an Egyptian. For in
that land the fruitful earth bears drugs in plenty,
some good and some dangerous: and there every
man is a physician and acquainted with such lore
beyond all mankind, for they come of the stock
of Paieon the Healer, ^
Whatthe therapeutic implications of such an episode

of transient serenity may be can be seen in the follow-
ing case of a twenty-eight-year-old patient who was
sent to me by another psychiatrist after six years of
only moderately successful treatment
The patient's reason for consulting, now as in the
past, was chronic anxiety, insecurity in his relation-
ships with people, and women in particular, and fre-
1 Homer, The Odyssey, trans. W. H. D. Rouse (New York:
New American Library, Mentor Books, 1971), 49.
quent bouts of depression. After an initial interview,

I asked the patient to write an account of his hfe,
as I frequently do, in view of both the value of such
psycholo^cal exercise and the interviewing time that
may thus be saved. As he was leaving, I said, "If
nothing new comes up, come back when you have
finished with the writing. But if you really put your-
self into it, you may possibly not need me any more
by then." The man came back after four months with
a lengthy autobiography and reminded me of what I
had said, for the writing had indeed been one of the
major experielaces in his life and felt to him like a
new beginning. Reading it, I could understand that, for
seldom have I seen anyone so explicitly burdened by
his past, nor such a heroic act of confession, in which
the author struggled page after page to overcome his
sense of shame.
Much of this autobiography, from childhood on-
ward, spoke of his sexual Ufe, and it ended with a
description of aspects of it in his present life which
were related to his generalized insecurity. On the one
hand, he was disturbed by the appeal which anal sexual
intercourse held for him and concerned with the
thought that women would regard this as a homo-
sexual trait. On the other hand, he Uked to stimulate
his own anus while masturbating and felt ashamed for
this aberration. When questioned about his own judg-
ment as to how homosexual he might be, he said that
he did not know of any homosexual inclination in
himself, but that he could not dismiss an "irrational"
fear that others would not see him as a truly masculine
person. Whether his anal eroticism betrayed a latent
homosexual trend he did not know, and he was fright-
ened by the thought of it.
MMDA,
While awaiting the first effects of the pa-
tient felt uneasy and somewhat afraid of looking ridic-
ulous, but to his own surprise, he gradually entered
into the state of calm enjoyment which is typical of
the more pleasant experiences vidth the drug: "Like
not needing anything, like not wanting to move, even;
Uke being tranquil in the deepest and most absolute
sense, like being near the ocean, but even beyond; as
and death did not matter, and everything had
if life
meaning; everything had an explanation, and nobody
—
had given it or asked for it ^like being simply a dot,
a drop of honey-pleasure radiating in a pleasurable
space.''
After some time, the patient exclaimed, "But this is
heaven, and I expected hell! Can this be true? Or am
I deceiving myself? Right now, all my problems seem
to be imaginary ones. Can this be so?" I answered that
this was possible and that if his problems were really
the fruit of imagination it would be good to understand
this very clearly, so that he could remember it later.
So I suggested that he might compare his present state
of mind with his habitual state and try to grasp the
difference.
The difference was obvious to him. What the drug
had done was to turn off the judgmental side of him
that we had exposed in the previous appointments, the
inner critic that would not let him live.
I said that now he knew what life was like when his
"judge" was artificially put to sleep, but that he would
—
wake up again and tihien it would be the patient's
choice whether to put up with him or not. He agreed,
and I proceeded to confront him with his problems
and photographs of persons in his family, in order to fix
in his mind the views of his postponed, non-judgmental
self. In doing this, he realized even more clearly the
reality of his tendency to self-torture in his ordinary
life. As he later said, "I had an intuition of it long
ago in self-analysis. But now I see it more clearly than
ever, and it is not just a cause any more, but a char-
acter with all its attributes. And its importance in my
life —
and problems I feel it now —
^has been enormous."
This insight did bring about a difference during the
days following the session, for the patient no longer
identified as much with his self-punishing criticism, but
looked at it with some detachment, as if he had a life
(his own judgment) independent of both the accuser
and the victim.
Looking at a diary from which the patient has kind-
ly permitted me to quote, it is possible to see that up
to four days after the intake of MMDA
there was an
almost undisturbed carry-over of that state of mind

first made known to him with the help of the chemical.
On the fifth day, he felt depressed for a few hours,
but recovered after writing in his diary. This writing
dealt first with his depression and then with what he
had felt when "I was at that center, the center of
myself, and I knew that I would never lose this, for
I needed only to breathe deeply, smile at the universe,
and remember the bookshelves that I looked at that
day," He continues: "I understood that a few seconds
and an empty room are enough to justify a whole life.
It does not matter any longer, then, to die or to lose
an arm. It is not a matter of quantity. In zero minutes
and with no things, life is as good as possible. In a
minimal space and with no money, even without health,
with no social success and all that shit." And he adds:
"But I feel this even today. I am at some distance
from the central point of the Aleph, but I continue to
be at the center, my center that is still chaotic, but
yet everywhere, and pure."
I think that the patient is being very accurate when
he perceives that in spite of his being "centered" in
the newly discovered domain of intimate joy, self-
sufllciency, and indifference to frustration, he is never-
theless in a state of disorder. In other words, he does
not confuse (as patients and even therapists sometimes
do) the experience of transcendence with that of psy-
chological balance and sanity. He is aware of negative
emotions that he recognizes as part of his neurosis and
he continues to react in ways that he knows are not
the most desirable; but in the same way that "losing
an arm" would not matter, he no longer tortures him-
self for such shortcomings. Instead, he experiences a
less compulsive but perhaps more effective wish to
"construct" and "make order" in his life, "like a duty
of love, or holy labor."
As different as spiritual detachment and healthy psy-
chological functioning may be, I believe that the latter
may gradually develop in the presence of the former,
making the therapeutic implication of such a peak ex-
perience an indirect one.
One of the ways in which a mood of serenity may
result in further change is that it increases the possi-
bility of insight, much as an analgesic can permit
surgical exploration of a wound. Such insight cannot
be possible insofar as the patient's sense of identity
depends entirely on the integrity of an arbitrary ideal-
ized image of himself. But when our subject now says
that "death would not matter," even though he is most
probably exaggerating, he may be unknowingly stating
a metaphysical truth; for "at the center" death of the
self-concept does not matter.
How a "not-caring" mood and attitude can lead to
greater awareness may be illustrated by other passages
of the same diary. The following was written three
days after the sesion:
Something could not come out of my throat.

Anal masturbation: the great guilt, the supreme
offense, that the Great Puritan does not forgive.
The utmost degeneration, the worst garbage.
It was necessary to discuss it with Dr. N., but it
did not come out . the fact of having caressed
. .
my anus, having introduced objects into it while I

masturbated with the other hand, having day-
dreamed of being penetrated ... the great hole,
the ass, the center of my hell remained hid-
. . .
den, not deeming itself forgivable or understand-

able, seeing itself as something at which even a
person like Dr. N. would feel disgust.
I can shove that Great Inquisitor into my ass,
shit or piss on him —
^but all this is already giving
it too much importance, the solution lies in under-
standing clearly and feeling that it does not matter

too much, that it is, like the rest of the problems,
a surmountable thing. And not something evil or
horrible, or a sign of inferiority, but a transitory
way out for a torrent that is transitorily stopped.
And he adds, three days later:
I have understood that the great guilt does not

lie in anal masturbation but in being homosexual;
and I feel dizzy at the thought of it, because it

seems to me that this is the worst that could
possibly happen to me.
The sequence of psychological events described

above portrays a familiar process in psychotherapy,
whereby an object or concern (i.e., ways of mastur-
bating) loses importance, while increased importance
is attached to a more substantial issue (e.g., being
homosexual). A detached, serenely accepting attitude
is truly the power that makes the change possible, and
petty conflicts may eventually lead to greater conflicts
that enrich life rather than detract from it.
Here are further illustrations of the patient's in-
creased ability to see himself:
I felt that nothing mattered. I thought about

many things in the following days. I understood
that my preoccupation about wearing comfortable
clothes, clothes to my taste (I felt some shame
when I retorted with this as the first answer to Dr.
N.'s question as to what I wanted to do) stems
from my mother's imposition on me to wear
clothes which I found humiliating. I understood
why I don't do things that I like or that I find
convenient: because I consider them an obliga-
tion, and my mother has been telling me of my
obligations for twenty-eight years. And I suspect
that not wanting to phone my girlfriends when she
or my father are around indicates guUt feelings
—
about sex and I also feel guilty about giving
other women the love that I don't give her,
I do not believe it is just a coincidence that the

passage telling of his insist into three different situa-
tions begins with a statement of the feeling that "noth-
ing matters." For insight, we well know, does not
depend on thought processes alone, but is one of the
facets of change. Only when "nothing matters" could
he accept being the "bad boy" that he never was and
conceive thoughts in which he opposes his mother, for
such thoughts are mseparable from his own self-
assertion and rebellion.
The behavioral equivalent to the openness to in-
sight described above is an openness to feelings and
impulses which would be incompatible with the ac-
ceptable self-image. These become bearable now be-
cause there is something other than an image to rest
—
upon a "center," which gives the patient confidence
to let go of his habitual patterns. If death does not
matter, why would getting angry matter, or not doing
the "right" thing according to previous conditioning?
The following passage is a good illustration of such
increased spontaneity in behavior and constitutes a
very exact parallel to the understanding expressed in
the previous quotation:
Once more I have felt rotten for living in this

house where life is impossible, with such heat,
with the old quack and his clients who keep ring-
ing the doorbell, and the old woman nagging,
nagging, nagging. Why don't I go with my car
and get those chairs, and why don't I go and get
the other crazy woman at the clinic on Saturday,
and what would Uncle John say if he knew that
I am not going to do this or that errand for her.
(And how full of ants the house is, millions of
them, and they fly! And they don't let me write.)
But I told them: Fuck Uncle John and all the
relative* and what they say! I shouted at her and
pounded on the table once, twice, three, four
times. And I told her not to expect me to go on
listening to her just because this was what I had
done for twenty-eight years, and so on. And she
left with a bag. I thought that she was going to
her sister's house, but she has come back, so that
it seems that she just went over to the laundry
with some clothes. And I felt rotten guilty at

hating a shitty woman who has screwed me up
—
and wants to go on screwing me up.
But enough! They will have to learn not to
plague me in these last days that I'll spend with
them.
The episode described above might be compared to

the period of "worseniBg" that often supervenes at
some point in the course of deep psychotherapy with-
out drugs. In truth, the patient's hostiUty has only been
laid open, and this may be the unavoidable price for
him to pay, for the possibiUty of experiencing it fully
and understanding it, before he can leave it behind.
The utter rejection of his environment portrayed in
the patient's account may seem the very opposite of
the unconditional acceptance of reaUty that is charac-
teristic of "the MMDA state of mind" at its best.
How can ants matter so much to one who has felt
that not even death does? Nevertheless, the patient is
accepting his own anger to a much greater extent than
before, rather than repressing it and having it emerge
in the form of symptoms. Such anger probably con-
stitutes a defense against other feelings which he is
still not ready to experience (the loneliness of not feel-
ing himself loved or respected by his parents, for

instance) and which are triggered by certain stimuU in
the house, so we may expect that further progress in
the same direction should bring such feelings into focus
and make him less vulnerable to the heat in his room,
the ants, his father's cUents or his mother's demands.
We mi^t picture the psychological state presently
described as one in which the "amount" of serenity
remaining for the maximum of five days before is just
enough to dissolve, as it were, one layer of the mental
onionskin. But if this change remains, the same power
will be henceforth going to work on the next layer.
A parallel may be seen between the unveiUng of the
patient's anger and that of his fear of homosexuality.
Neither his irritability nor his sexual doubt is a mani-
festation of health and psychological balance, but now
he can at least face them— and facing them he faces
himself to a greater extent than when he was concerned
about the clothes that he wore or what a woman
would say of his love-making. An indication that this
is so is his evolution, for even at a later hour the same
day he was feeling as well as he ever had, and for
the following week had no more downfalls than re-
coveries of a level of well-being that had been un-
known to him before. In these moments, he would
write passages like this one:
I have understood that there is very little that

matters. It doesn't matter that the car doesn't
work, that a girl won't love us, that they won't
give us the best appointments at the university,
that they say that I am a homosexual, that I don't
have a lot of money or a kingdom, that my par-
ents will die, that Aunt Rose is as crazy as ever.
It only matters, perhaps, to be able to breathe
deeply and feel here, now, enjoying the air, and
that fly. It doesn't matter not to be able to go to
England, not to be a writer of a playboy.
And fifteen days after the session:
And goodbye to the vicious circle, to the "onto-

logical"boredom about everything, to problems,
and psychotherapy. The Sargasso Sea is over, and
the dark night and the storm; it is the end of
anxiety up to the neck, depression, and shit in
little spoonfuls. The sun is out, the sea is out,
the world, and the fly.
The reader may have noticed how several quotations

in which the patient expresses his new understanding
are written in the past tense: "I understood"; "I felt."
That they are conveying the patient's state at the
moment, which he confirms personally, and the fact
that they were not written before (even though he
produced a detailed description of the MMDA
session,
which is not included here) probably indicates that
the understanding belongs only to this moment, even
though it was potentially present during the height of
the effect of the drug. In other words, the state of
feeling at the time of the session was one in which
such viewpoints were implied, but which did not de-
pend upon such views. The return process can be un-
derstood as one in which the remembered feeling is
translated into explicit attitudes about specific issues.
Or, using another image, the peak experience might be
ikened to a spot on a mountain top from which the

jurrounding panorama may be viewed; yet being on
he top of the mountain does not supply more than the
jossibility of seeing, whereas this process of observa-
ion is different from that of mountain climbing. The
ârticular view that can be seen from a given spot
mplies the viewpoint and makes it explicit, and in a
jimilar fashion the particular insights that may be ob-
:ained from a given state of consciousness imply and
express that level of awareness. Yet insight is distinct
Tom the mental state from which it originates and con-
stitutes the result of a creative act in which conscious-
less at a certain height is directed toward what lies
jelow.
In other words, that "center" which can "justify life
n an empty room" has to be brought into contact
vith the periphery of everyday life; the "heaven" of
spiritual experience must be brought to bear on the
'earth" of particular circumstances before real under-
Jtanding can develop. And only then can life be cre-
ated (i.e., behavior chosen) according to the point of
dew implied in the transient flash of understanding.
The reason it is difficult for the above synthesis to
>ccur is that from the mountain top the valley may be
nvisible for a dizzy person who may feel inclined to
ook at the stones, or even to fall. And the atmospheric
conditions are such that the mountain top can hardly
>e seen from the valley. Or, translating this into em-
)irical terms, a person's present diflBculties may be
lard to bring to mind during the peak experience, when
luch reflection would be so desirable; or their unpleas-
mtness may lead the person to avoid remembering
hem; or the particular state of mind that constitutes
he peak experience may be disrupted by such thoughts.
On the other hand, when the person is closer to
he issues of his daily life, to which he is most vul-
lerable, he may not be able to reflect on them at all,
or he himself will be lost in them — like our patient
vith the bell ringing and the mother asking him to do
hings for her.
Since neither one of the alternatives is a complete
mpossibility, though, I believe that much value should
be attached to the attempts at directing the mind, at
the time of the "good" MMDA experience, to the
conflicting situations in a patient's life, as well as to
the patient's remembering his peak experience at the
time of contact with his difficulties.
It is the latter that naturally occurred during the
days following the session under discussion, and this
explains the patient's use of the past tense, even when
he was not only recalling, but re-experiencing, the
taste of "centeredness" in face of given circumstances
that he had ix>tentially contemplate during the course
of the drug's effect.
The way in which the patient alternates between
"remembering" his experience of calm satisfaction and
moments of despair (when he thinks that the treat-
ment has been worthless) indicates that the state of
mind reached under the facilitation of MMDA is not
something that simply lasts for a given time and then
is lost, but one that may be learned. Once a person
has used his mind in that way, he has easier access
to the same way of functioning. And in this learning,
whereby a desirable attitude can be "remembered" not
only intellectually but functionally (as the movements
of writing and walking are remembered when we do
them) after it has been adopted once, lies, I beUeve,
one of the major justifications for the edification of
an artificial peak experience. This could be Hkened to
the guiding hand which holds that of a child to show
him how to draw a letter, or those of the practitioner
in M. Alexander's system, showing a person how to
stand or sit so that he can feel the "taste" of rightness,
or, in the conception of Mexican shamans using peyotl,
the guiding hand of God. Once in possession of such
discrimination or knowledge, it is up to the individual
to remember it and put it into practice. An expressive
passage on the role of learning when applied to a state
of mind is the following recollection of Jean-Pierre
Camus (quoted by Huxley in his Perrenial Philoso-
phy):
I once asked the Bishop of Geneva what one

must do to attain perfection. "You must love God
with all your heart," he answered, "and your

neighbour as yourself."
I did not ask wherein perfection lies, I re-
joined, but how to attain it. "Charity," he said
again, "that is both the means and the end, the
only way by which we can reach that perfection
which is, after all, but Charity itself. Just as the
soul is the Ufe of the body, so charity is the life
of the soul."
"I know all that, I said. But I want to know
how one is to love God with all one's heart and
one's neighbour as oneself.
But again he answered, "We must love God
with all our hearts, and our neighbour as our-
selves."
I am nofurther than I was, I repUed. Tell me
how to acquire such love.
"The best way, the shortest and easiest way of
loving God with all one's heart is to love Him
wholly and heartily!"
He would give no other answer. At last, how-
ever, the Bishop "There are many besides
said,
you who want me to tell them of methods and
systems and secret ways of becoming perfect, and
I can only tell them that the whole secret is a
hearty love of God, and the only way of attaining
that love is by loving. You learn to speak by
speaking, to study by studying, to run by running,
to work by working; and just so you learn to
love God and man by loving. All those who think
to learn in any other way deceive themselves. If
you want to love God, go on loving Him more
and more. Begin as a mere apprentice, and the
very power of love will lead you on to become a
master in the art. Those who have made most
progress will continually press on, never believing
themselves to have reached their end; for charity
should go on increasing until we draw our last
breath."2
2 Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy (New York and
London: Harper & Brothers, 1945), pp. 89-90.
What complicates this picture is that in the case of
higher (non-instrumental) attitudes and ways of mental
functioning, as in that of motor skills, the learning
process is interfered with by the arousal of habitud
patterns of response that are incompatible with the
new. In other words, remembering the sane state ^ be-
comes possible only when specific stimuh are not elic-
iting the conditioned responses which the individual
wants precisely to get rid of. Consider, for instance,
one more quotation from our patient's diary:
It is now one week since the session with

MMDA, and today I felt alone again, in my bed,
in my dark, hot room, in this sinister house, and
I feel like escaping, like going someplace, to a
movie perhaps, or to visit Alberto, or anybody,
and I know that I will feel bad anyhow, for I
won't be able to get out of myself, and I will be
with them like a zombie, Uke a Uttle boy crying
inside, licking his wounds or masturbating, and
introducing his fingers into his anus, hating his
parents and dreaming that he is a king.
And I feel all this today, only a week after
having seen something of a definitive cure. And
why? Because I didn't sleep well last night (after
a quarrel with Alice), because garbage is accumu-
lating in my soul again, because I came to wait
for Ana's phone call. (Damn her! She slipped
away from me) That is it!! She screwed me up
by not calling me. My security is down to zero
again, and I continue to be one himdred per cent
dependent on others.
The fact that the patient was temporarily precipi-

tated into his neurotic pattern when the girl rejected
him shows that such rejection had not really been
taken into account when he felt himself so invulner-
3 it "sane," I am assuming that this is the natural
In calling
state and that only because there is such a thing as a natural
state can it be manifested spontaneously and without learning.
Learning becomes necessary only for its "realization," ie., its
translation into practical reality.
able. Only after being confronted with it and recover-

ing from his fall, could he really say, as he actually
did, "It doesn't matter if a girl doesn't love us."
I believe that in such confrontation with experience
(or its possibility) lies the healing property, as well
as the insight that gives permanence to the new con-
dition. Such confrontation may take place during the
session with MMDA, if the patient is led to consider
the conflictive circumstances of his life, or later, when

iving is unavoidable. In the present case, I did lead
the patient to a contemplation of his difficulties when
le seemed ready to look at them with pleasurable
:alm, but I did not realize how he was dissimulating
lis avoidance of certain issues. This was his first con-
cern afterward ("things that did not come out"), and
le aptly describes the effect of the session, later, as
'an antiseptic that eliminated the infection for two
>r three days, so I felt completely rid of neurosis."
It is to be expected that the more the issues have to
>e avoided in order not to disrupt a "peak experi-
mce," the more unstable and short-lived such experi-
mce will be in the midst of ordinary living conditions.
3ut I use quotes here for "peak experience" to imply
hat such an experience has an element of self-decep-
ion in it, in that it is possible only at the expense of
epressing, or not looking at, what is incompatible with
t. What can the validity be of feeling that we can
iccept death ifwe are unable to imagine it? Yet I
>elieve that in most pharmacologically induced peak
experiences there is a substratum full of issues that
cannot be confronted.
We can ask ourselves, therefore, which may be the
tore desirable: to take a directive attitude during the
/CMDA session and attempt to confront the patient
nth what he is avoiding, at the risk of disrupting a
tate of partial integration, or to let the patient ex-
rience as much as he can of his newly discovered
|enteredness, so that the taste of it remains while he
ter meets life as it comes.
In truth, there is not so much room for choice as
might seem. In my experience, only about 25 per
nt of the persons react to MMDA
with a spon-
taneous peak experience, while an additional 30 pei
cent arrive at it after working on their problems. In
the latter instance, there can be little doubt that the
experience has occurred in spite of, and as the result
of, the resolution of at least some of the person's
conflicts, which has generally been the object of most
of the session. As to the former 25 per cent, it is
generally my practice to allow the experience to pro-
ceed undisturbed for about two hours and then devote
the remaining three to the examination of the patient's
life and problems. In doing this, I am assuming that
I can help the patient more by being present at this
confrontation than by leaving it to him to experience
in the following days, and that remembering life at
the time of a peak experience may be easier than
remembering it at the time of Kving. In actual prac-
tice, this does not violate the patient's inclinations, for
he is open to whatever is proposed, in
either feeling
his acceptingmood, or else feeling naturally drawn to
such self-examination. This was true in the case
(among others) of the man in our illustration who,
after about two hours of enjoying his heavenly state,
wanted to know where his hell was and to ascertain
whether his present state was really valid or justified.
Sometimes, the crucial confrontation occurs sponta-
neously in vivid imagery, as was the case of a patient
who had always felt insecure in his work as a manager,
and would compensate by adopting a bossy attitude.
Toward the end of his MMDA session, he imaged
himself at work in the present state of relaxed warmth
and really learned from such creative fantasy how this
was truly possible, how his defensiveness was unneces-
sary and his undistorted expression of himself more
satisfying and not inconvenient. There was very little
talking with this patient, but his mood and behavior
at work changed.
That there are limits to how mucha person wants
to confront at a given time is also true, and I think
that the therapist's possibilities are more limited here
than it would seem. The patient will not hear, or he
will just pretend to hear, or his feeUngs wiU not parallel
his thinking, his mind will go blank or be filled with
distracting thoughts,and so on, and this will have to

be accepted. Moreover, there may be a natural wisdom
in the unconscious regulating process that controls the
length of his steps toward integration. All the therapist
can do in these instances is be available to offer what
he can.
Another instance of such spontaneous confrontation
in imagery is described by a patient in the following
words:
Then something significant happened. First I

just felt something had happened, something was
different. As if I had forgiven myself for some-
thing. Then I became convinced that the forgive-
ness was associated with the throwing-up some
time earlier. Then I found myself in fantasy mov-
ing about within my ofl&ce at the college. I dis-
covered that I no longer was caught up in the
self-flageUating depression that I had been in dur-
ing the last week. I was free and at ease.
Then I had moments of realization of a quaUty
of peace of mind that I almost never have (in
my anxiety, computing, rehearsing, manipulating,
worrying, and other habitual states), and the
quality was —
and still is today, after fifteen days
— a state of being able to let time pass with
graceful ease, even to luxuriate and enjoy friends
in the moment.
What then, in practical terms, that the patient

is it,
may be offered in such moments, when his state of
mind could not be better? In general, I would regard
the following immediate aims as conducive to the
stabilization of a peak experience:
1. Explicitationor Expression of the

Present State and Point of View
It may be assumed that the change that has taken place

in the subject's feelings is not just a matter of meta-
j ,

bolic processes in his nervous system, but that is en-
tailsan implicit change in the perception of people or
relationships, or in his values. Since it is such changes
that may support the new feeling state if they endure,
it is desirable to make them as conscious as possible,
and thus help him consciously discard the implicit dis-
torted views that were supporting the symptoms. Thus
somebody may no longer be seen as a persecutor, or
the individual may discover his own worth in an area
where he had been rejecting himself. The whole ap-
proach amounts to asking the patient why everything
seems all right to him now (or why it is unnecessary
to worry so that he may translate into concepts his
implicit understanding).
In the case of the patient in our first illustration,
this led him to a greater awareness of his self-punitive-
ness, as was mentioned earlier. Another realization
that helped him in the expression of his new state of
mind was the one he described in terms of "nothing
matters," meaning really something Uke "nothing can |
take away from tiie joy of existing, which is an end

iu itself." The value of expression is that its products I
are like reservoirs of the experience that gave them

birth and are to some extent the means of re-creating
the experience. The fruits of expression are, like art,
a means of making the invisible visible and fixing in |
a given shape a fleeting instant in the mind.
2. Contemplation of Everyday Reality \
Most important here is the confrontation of stimuli I

(circumstances, persons) which are normally painfull
or elicit neurotic reactions. This is the opportunity fori
the discovery of a new pattern of reaction stemming!
from the integrated state, which would be less likelyl
to occur after the peak of serenity is over, and where
proximity to the given circumstances is too great. Con-
frontation in the mind before confrontation in reality|
takes place in a strategy which might be compared tc
that used by Perseus in his approach to the Medusa:! m
he does not look at her directly, but at her reflectioii
in Minerva's shield.^
Photographs are useful to this end, since the cues
oflEered by them are valuable startmg points for asso-
ciation with life experiences, in contrast with the
stereotyped views that are often elicited by verbal
questions.
Whenever a new approach or feeling is expressed
which breaks the vicious circle of neurotic attitudes,
the expression of it may be encouraged in order to
^ it in the mind as part of the enlarged repertoire of
responses. An imaguiary encounter with a given per-

son, in which a dialogue is produced, may be a useful
resource, and also writing, which is perfectly com-
patible with the effect of MMDA.
The following illustration is from the report by a
young man who had been in therapy for five years
and was at the time of the session Uving through a
chaotic and painful period in his marriage:
. . • I remember
lying on the carpet in the
room, enjoying a warm, glowing, soft sense
fully
of well-being. Dr. N. came to me and suggested
that we talk together. I told him about my love
for Jeanne and the hurt I felt. He suggested I
write down my feelings on paper. I wrote as
though writing a letter to Jeanne. I told her how
much I loved her. And that I was waiting for her.
During this time, I experienced the most acute
sexual response, especially in the pelvic area. I
was thoroughly immersed in the joyful fantasy of
loving Jeanne. Loving her in a quiet, tender way,
caressing her ever so gently. I felt, perhaps for
the first time, that my desire to be tender and
loving toward her was the power that would
break through her sexual anesthesia.
Their relationship improved after the session, since

the attitu de expressed in this letter persisted to some
^ Minerva is the goddess of wisdom, suggesting that the
mirror-shield represents the mind.
extent and replaced previous feelings of rejection and
resentment. The act of expression (by committing
these feelings to paper) can be conceived of here as
a commitment, as well as a realization, in the sense
of "making real" what was merely a feeling, living out
what was only a possibility.
3. Exercising of Decision in Face of

Present ConfUcts
I usually ask the patient tomake a list of the conflicts

that he is aware of, or I make it with him before a
session with MMDA,and this provides many questions
to consider at the time of an eventual state of psydio-
logical harmony.
Conflict is perhaps the most central single mani-
festation of a neurotic disturbance, since it is the ex-
pression of a disunity or split in personality. In the

exceptional moment of integration, when the usually
incompatible fragments of the person's psyche are
united, many of his conflicts will disappear. If the
integrated attitude of the person is not rendered ex-
plicit at the moment, it will be lost more easily once
the exceptional state is over; yet this is the occasion
on which the person may know the attitude of his
integrated self and learn what it feels like. When his
self is not there any more, the memory of such an
attitude will be one more thread in his fabric of ex-
periential remembering —
and perhaps the best possible
advice as well.
HANDLING THE STATES OF

FEELING ENHANCEMENT
Everything that I have elaborated upon up to this

point applies to the kind of experience that ensues
spontaneously in about 20 per cent of aU instances
after the intake of MMDA, It may apply in part to

the similar experience which supervenes in an addi-
tional 30 per cent of cases after therapeutic interven-
tion, as conflict resolution and personality integration
are achieved. But in about 50 per cent of all instances,
such feelings of "all-rightness," calm, and loving ac-
ceptance are not experienced at all, and in 80 per
cent they are not present at the beginning of the
session.
In such instances, the reaction to the drug may be
predominantly that of an enhancement of certain emo-
tions and/or psychosomatic symptoms, or one where
imagery becomes the main object of attention. Each
one of the possibilities constitutes a type of effect that
calls for distinct approach, and I shaU presently deal
with the predominantly feeling reactions. These feeling-
enhancement reactions might well be grouped together
with the "peak-experience" reactions, for flie emotions
are the focal point in both kinds of experience, yet
both are in contrast in terms of the kind of feelings
involved. As the peak experience constitutes MMDA's
"heaven," the feeling-enhancement state constitutes its
"hell." Instead cf calm and loving acceptance of ex-
perience, the emotions of the second state are typically
those of anxiety and discomfort, which render imme-
diate experience unsatisfactory.
What the second type of experience has in common
with the first is the relevance of the feelings experi-
enced in relation to the present situation and to the
immediate environmental and social context. I find
such a "here and now" quality of the MMDA ex-
perience particularly suited to the non-interpretive ex-
istential approach of Gestalt therapy, which I have
—
used as will be seen from the forthcoming illustra-
tions— ahnost free from admixtures in the handling of
most sessions.
Experiences of discomfort are usually the outward
expression of self-rejection or the fear of imminent
self-rejection. Once this becomes explicit, the top-dog-
underdog impasse can be re-examined to see whether
the person can discover some value in his rejected side.
whether his judgmental standards fit his true judgment
or are in the nature of an automatic reaction, which
can be dispensed with. Some examples may make this
more clear.
Afemale patient has been encouraged to do or
express whatever she wants during the session. When
the drug begins to take effect she withdraws to her
bedroom, where she Ues down and listens to some
music. After five minutes or so, she returns to the
therapist in the living room and explains that she has
not been able to enjoy these minutes since she has felt
distressed at what she calls her "voraciousness" she —
could not really listen to the music since she wanted
a number of things at once, such as a drink, the
therapist's presence, and, most of all, to be special.
Since her discomfort seemed to be associated more
with her self-accusation of greed and voraciousness
than with the unavailability of means to satisfy her
needs, I inquired, "What is wrong with wanting more
and more?" This comment proved to be more than
superficially supportive, since it led her to an open-
minded consideration of the question. When I later
insisted that she state her wants and be increasingly
direct, she found that in giving way to the expression
of such wants she became more herself. What she
initially labeled "voraciousness" soon came to be seen
as wanting to be specially loved by a man. As I em-
phasized the humanness of this want, she saw the ac-
ceptability and even essentiality of fulfilling it in her
life, in one way or another. "I've been going after my
wants indirectly all my life, and the indirectness and

lack of consciousness are what have fouled me up."
The process of increasing self-acceptance depicted
in this illustration came about by the therapist's re-
peated invitation that she take sides with her rejected
urges and acknowledge them as her own, rather than
as something happening to her.
The following fragment of a retrospective account
by another patient illustrates in greater detail the
process of gradual unfolding of rejected urges in an
atmosphere of support:
... As I felt the first effects I lay down on my
bed. Dr. N. sat next to me and suggested that I
relax and let myself be carried by whatever I
might feel. I began to feel much anxiety and a
great desire to cry. Dr. N. told me to do so if I
wanted, but I was resisting. I told him that I
would not permit myself to do that, for it seemed
ugly to me; that I disliked persons who indulged >^
in self-pity and that I, who had chosen my way

with so much struggle, felt that I had no right to
feel unhappy.
Dr. N. said that perhaps I had good grounds to
feel pity for myself, so to go ahead and not mind
crying. He said: Take a holiday for an afternoon
and do whatever you feel like. I asked whether he
would approve, and as he said yes, I wept bitterly.
Dr. N. then asked me how would my tears ex-
plain their flowing if they could speak. I said they
were flowing for the world's sorrow. He asked
what that was. I said I imagined a great lake
formed by the pain of every human being smce
the world exists, from the smallest, such as that
of a child that falls down and cries, to the great-
est. Aground of collective sorrow, in the fashion
of Jung's collective unconscious. Dr. N. said he be-
lieved that I might be weeping for my own ex-
periences, for concrete and definite things. That
perhaps I had lacked something as a child, for
instance, and this fact was still affecting my life.
I continued to weep and suffer, but with free-
dom and a feeling of relief. I had put a Vivaldi
concerto on the record player. I felt the music
very deeply and felt that through the music I
could reach into the being who had produced it.
I think Dr. N. asked me what the music was ex-
pressing, and I replied that this was Vivaldi's
being, turned into a voice; a voice that expressed
him totally. I marveled that he could have turned
his inside out so completely.
As is usually the case, once the patient contacts her

own urges before they could be supported and could
con- she is turned inside out, she can read the ex-
pression of another being.
Such "turning inside out" in the last illustrations can
be understood as an achievement of greater directness
in the expression of wants. In both instances, it was
important to point out to the patients how they were
opposing their own ruges before they could be sup-
ported and could consider the possibility of letting go
of their opposition. Only when self-criticism is voiced
can it be looked at in the face and reconsidered. So,
questions such as "What's wrong with wanting more
and more?" or "What's wrong with crying?" had to
uncover the self-accusations of greed or self-pity before
the patient's mature judgment could evaluate such
automatic condemnation in a new light and make a
decision. The end result is that unconscious desires
become conscious and therefore a matter of intelligent
problem solving.
Whereas the unconscious want is expressed in devi-
ous and symbolic ways, the satisfaction of which never
quenches the underlying thirst, a conscious want can
be fulfilled. Furthermore, the more conscious a wish
is, the more it is accepted and becomes in itself a
satisfaction. Thus, unconscious sexuality is experienced

as isolation, loneliness, frustration, whereas conscious
and accepted sexuaUty is a pleasurable experience of
enhanced vitality. Unconscious rage may be experi-
enced as unpleasant irritation or guilt, whereas ac-
cepted rage may be welcomed as a powerful striving
for an end.
The following serves as one more instance of the
bringing out of an unconscious desire and will show
a way of dealing with visual distortions. ^
Dr. N. now looked to me like a hidden wolf,

an animal that is used to hunt for its prey in
caves. He invited me to address the monster (that
I saw him as), to relate directly to it, forgetting
it was he, that I knew him, that he wouldn't harm
6 Exceptional with MMDA (5 per cent of subjects).

me, and so on. I spoke with all the courage I had:
"Why are you so ugly?" "What do you care about
my being ugly?" he answered. "That is my prob-
lem, not yours." "But I wonder how you get
along with that face. Who can love you like
that?" And then I began to laugh as I thought
that perhaps in his country everyone had a sinis-
ter face and maybe he was regarded as handsome.
I told him of this thought, and his face began to
clear up until Dr. N.'s face emerged with no dis-
tortion. He said that in his experience such dis-
tortions indicated repressed anger, and even
though he did not see this in me it would be
profitable to explore the question of possible re-
sentment. I said that I could not imagine any
resentment toward him since I had such good
feeling toward him; he had helped me so much
and been so kind to me. As I finished saying
this, I went on almost unconsciously, as if some-
body were using my voice to say, "Why should I
resent you except for not having loved me." I was
surprised. Dr. N. commented that this was an ex-
cellent reason for resentment. The experience
ceased to be so burning and became more sweet,
with that sad sweet sadness that remains after a
good weep.
The importance of this session lay in the fact that

not only could the patient's wish to be loved by the
therapist be expressed, but even this appeared to be a
substitute for the expression of her own loving. Some
days later, she was able to accept her feeling as a
richness rather than as a shortcoming, as she wrote a
poem that was the first after ten years of interruption
in her creative production.
In the examples cited above, the patients were in
a conflict where a given urge (to love, to cry) was
opposed by a resistance, and the outcome was the
expression of the urge. This need not always be the
case, and one of the foremost contributions of Gestalt
therapy has been that of showing how the defense,
too, is an urge that can be redirected to more satis-
1 00 The Healing Journey
factory expressions than self-controlling and self-
squeezing. To this end, the patient is encouraged to
take sides with the voice of the super-ego ("top dog"),
and to experience this as his own judgment rather
than an external command by voluntarily "becoming"
it.
WORKING THROUGH A PSYCHOSOMATIC SYMPTOM
The following excerpt from a tape recording deals

with the conflict between the need to rest and self-
squeezing in the most Uteral sense, relaxation and
dysfunctional contracture. In fact, this is an example
of working through a psychosomatic manifestation,
since for the patient in it, the "squeezing of the soul"
by her defensive system was embodied in a parallel
physical symptom which caused her abdominal pain,
and for which she had sought medical advice.
So, in dealing with this idea, we are also turning
to the question of how to deal with MMDA
syn-
dromes of type 3 in our proposed classification: those
in which the positive or negative feeUngs of the fore-
going types are replaced by physical symptoms.^ Nat-
urally, an enhancement of physical sensations may be
part of type 1 experiences, but the substitution of
bodily symptoms for feelings understandably occurs in
the measure that the subject will not give in to ex-
periencing the emotional discomfort of the type 2
state. This may reflect the chronic tendency of the
individual, as in the case of this patient, who at the
time of the session may have been described as a
—
hypomaniac hypochondriac Chappy with herself and
unhappy about pains that she tended to regard as the
consequence of her physical illness.
This time I am quoting only my side of the dialogue
for a pe riod that may have extended over twenty or
®The aim will here be one of decoding the individual's at-

titudes toward self and others which lie encoded and expressed
in body language.
.
thirty minutes and eventually led to a figure-ground

reversal in the patient's experience. More than a dia-
logue, in fact, this session might be regarded as
comparable to that between a movement therapist or
a chiropractor and his patient, the verbal part of it
consisting mostly in therapeutic manipulations and thp
patient's reactions to them, often in the form of
postural changes, moans, yells, and sobs.
Doctor. I can help you then, but I think there

is only one way in which you can stop squeez-
ing, and that is to learn how you are squeezing,
become aware how you do the squeezing, and
you can only really become aware by becom-
ing that part of you that is reaUy squeezing. • .
Did you become the squeezer or just the victim

of it? . . .
Yes ... Is that something you can decide to do

again? . . .
I would you to tell me what you are feel-

like
ing. Just be aware how it is squeezing. . . .
Preventing what? Don't interpret, don't . . .
make theories, just go with your feelings. Do

you feel squeezed? . . .
Only there? . • .
Does your voice sound squeezed? ...

Now do you hear it? . . .
Are you aware how you are squeezing your

own voice, how you squeeze your throat? . . .
You are aware of the squeeze in your chest? . .
OK, there is a squeeze in the chest and down

in the belly, both places.
You feel squeezed in your movements, your
arms, your neck, your fingers? . . .
What about your hands now, and your arms

now? You are squeezed now? . . .
Can you squeeze now, deliberately? . • .
No, I don't expect it to be the same thing. Just

experience it. . .
What does it want from you? . . .
What does it respond? . . .
Can you be it squeezing you so that you know

what it wants, what you want when you are
squeezing yourself? What is it you are wanting

when you squeeze yourself like now? What do
you want to do to you? And what is the satis-
faction you are getting from this squeeze? . . .
Yes, the squeezer is getting a satisfaction. It

wants to squeeze; it gets pleasure from squeez-
ing. . . .
Don't struggle. Let it happen, let yourself be

squeezed. Don't try to back out, be the victim
now, let the torture end. . . .
You don't have to have the strength to suffer.

To resist, you must, but if you. . . .
Try not resisting now. .
Let go. Don't stop it. . . .
Let go, let go. Don't resist it. Let everything

be. . . .
Don't it, you are resisting it, experience

resist
Be
it. open as you can and experience it.
as . . •
What are you experiencing? . . .
I saw a lot of activity coming through you for

the first time. Can you feel ...?...
Can't you feel any desire for that activity, as
if you wanted to go back to it? Any enjoyment
of the movement? . •
Just despair? . . .
This being tired is like a deadness, a grey dead-

ness, lack of energy, and all this energy is con-
tained behind it. . . .
And I feel that in the squeeze you have this

energy, this force. . . .
So you have to become that other side, if you

want to have strength. . . .
Maybe, while the squeezing is taking place,

while you are being open to the squeezer, may-
be you can experience yourself as wanting to
squeeze. . . .
I want you to talk about it, the squeeze want-

ing sex. Can you elaborate on this, say more
how it feels? But try to be the squeezer while
you are talking about it Say what you want as
squeezer. ; . .
Can you experience the squeeze as your urge,

your satisfaction? Your sex urge, your
. . .
anger, your desperation? Your longing? . . . . . .
You still haven't been able to identify with the

squeezer. . . .
Well, do without taking pleasure, just let it

it
come as it comes. "I am the one squeezing

you," you can begin, even if you don't feel it.
Just play the game.
Speak of what you want, you the squeezer, how
you are, what kind of a person you are. . . .
At this point the patient had the insight that turned

the session into a success. Being able now to switch
from the position of victim to that of "squeezer," she
could see that the force causing her pains was none
other than greed for all and everything, a rapacious,
clutching infant that could never be satisfied. Imme-
diately after this, she spontaneously understood and
was exhilarated at the discovery of the perversion
involved in the turning back of desire upon herself
in a relentless squeeze. Meister Eckhardt says that
all our desires are ultimately the desire for God.
Many would perhaps choose another word and speak
of a urge, the absolute. Good, a longing for the
life
ideal state, Eros; yet all these conceptions imply the
recognition of a unity beyond the apparent multiphcity
of human wants. A
given desire can be understood as
the expression of an imphcit behef that the attain-
ment of such specific goals will bring about happiness.
Of course, this is not the way it works, but implicit
or unconscious behefs cannot be altered by reasoning
(or even experience). Thus most thieves get little
satisfaction from their stealing, moneymakers from
their riches, or compulsive scholars from their leam-
jing. Whenever the therapeutic process leads to an
lunderstanding of the urge, the subject attains some
[freedom from that particular need, since it is now
mderstood as merely a means to an end and often —
|a roundabout or inadequate one. So when the thief
mderstands, not with the mind but with his feelings,
is need to have something from others, he may begin
to ask for love, and when the neurotic intellectual
acknowledges his need for recognition, he may become
less attached to the prestige game, since its value now
does not appear to him as something intrinsic to the
accumulation of knowledge.
I beUeve that an experience such as the one quoted
above, leading to the reaUzation of a "Ufe force," is
one step beyond all this, in that it leads to a realiza-
tion of unity beyond rather limited needs, such as sex,
ambition, greed, and protection. This is the domain
of experience which interests the mystic, even though
in the present quotation there is no usage of reUgious
or mystical terms. And it is the domain that Jung
regards as archetypal, beyond personal differentiation,
even though its presentation in the case report is not
essentially mediated by images.
ACTIVE PARTICIPATION AT NEUTRAL POINTS
One might understand the different types of reaction

to MMDA as different pointson a gradient of aware-
ness and openness. An increase in awareness may
transform the psychosomatic type of experience into
one of the feeUng type; and the latter, through under-
standing of resistance, may give way to the integra-
tive peak experience. K we go to the other extreme,
we find reactions in which the patient has less and less
to report. Even physical sensations seem to be blurred
in a state of restricted awareness, most probably of a
defensive nature, which may culminate in drowsiness
or sleep. It would seem that this state of calm con-
stitutes a manifestation at another level of that calm
or serenity which is characteristic of the peak experi-
ence with MMDA. One is a calm in richness, a still-
ness in the midst of inner movement, the other, a
state of calm where little happens, a placid bluntness.
As we approach the unconscious end of the scale,
where passivity takes the form of somnolence, the
subject even becomes unaware of his dreamlike imag-
ery. When questioned, he may be able to report an

isolated scene that he is visualizing at the moment,
but he is unable to remember the previous one. Or
possibly he knows that his mind is active but cannot
grasp tiie content of his thought or imagination. For-
tunately, this is the case in only about 25 per cent
of all instances.
Whenever the effect of MMDA
is not remarkably
productive in terms of either positive or negative feel-
ings, a very active participation by the therapist may
be required in order to deal with the patient's somatic
sensations, imagery, or actual behavior.
Feelings may thus be brought into conscious focus
by attending to the outer symbolic or physical ex-
pressions and the unfolding of experience or behavior,
as is the practice in Gestalt therapy.
Take, for instance, the following illustration:
Doctor. Are you aware of your tight jaw?

(Patient nods affirmatively and intensifies the
contraction of her chewing muscles.)
Doctor. Intensify that.
(Patient begins to grind her teeth.)
Doctor, (after a few minutes) Intensify that.
(The grinding of teeth now gradually becomes
a locked jaw once more while the patient, who
raises her head, opens her eyes in a
is sitting,
fierce stare, and breathes deeply.)

Patient. I feel strong. Not tense anymore, but
severe, masterful.
Doctor. "Stay with it.''
Patient. (She gradually relaxes and begins to
swallow saliva.) My chewing has become swal-
lowing. Now that I have found my strength, I
don't have to knock angrily at the door to get
satisfaction, but I can simply give it to myself.
Another patient felt very sleepy and relaxed, but

Itended to stretch his toes. He was encouraged to at-
Itempt to give in alternately to his desire to rest and
Ihis desire to stretch,
and soon he realized the bearing
of those opposed tendencies on his whole present life.
He perceived the tension in his toes as an urge for
excitement, an expression of boredom and dissatisfac-
tion with his passivity, whereas the latter he under-
stood with a resigned withdrawal from conflict. With
this awareness, his need for excitement became stron-
ger than his need for withdrawal, and this is what led
him to engage in additional psychotherapy after his
MMDA treatment.
Whenever not only feeling but physical sensations
or the desire to communicate is sli^t, this may be an
appropriate occasion to deal with a dream. As men-
tioned earlier, because of the increased faculty for
creating imagery under MMDA, it may be easy to re-
experience dreams, whereas an increased insight into

symbolic or metaphoric forms is favorable to the un-
folding of their meanings.
IMAGERY AND DREAMS
When imagery, rather than psychosomatic manifesta-

tions,dominates in the picture of symptoms elicited by
MMDA, it is the content of such images which may
be regarded as "the royal road to the unconscious.
Indeed, such cues, like fertile seeds, may develop from
within and reveal some of their meaning, if only at-
tention is given to them. The first task of the therapist
will usually be that of helping the patient to direct
his attention to the unfolding sequence of scenes, so
he can become aware of and remember their detail.
The following example is from the session of a forty-
seven-year-old man who lay most of the time witii his
eyes closed, feeling pleasantly relaxed, and who prob-
ably retained very little of what he saw. When ques-
tioned at one point, he described a scene that is one
of three that he could remember after the session was
over. This is how he described the image on the fol-
lowing day:
One picture that came to me was about a

camel being led by a lean, angular, Sherlock
Holmes type of Englishman. They were on a

tour. I don't know why the Englishman was
leading the camel. It had no pack on its back.
Possibly the Englishman was too impatient and
felt he had to drag the camel in order to get there
My
at all. body goes slowly, has to, and much of
the work I do seems to have to be done in spells,
with much resting in between times.
What the patient said nine days later, writing about

the session, shows how the number and significance of
associations between the symbol and his personality
were increased after a period of spontaneous elabora-
tion:
What I originally mentioned hardly expresses

what I have later come to feel about this picture.
The Englishman who is taking a world tour is not
riding; he is so foolish as to pull the camel along
because he is impatient. The Englishman is me.
He is very "hawk-nosed," and this is much em-
phasized. Actually I think of EngUshmen as being ^
fools who would go on playing cricket while their

world falls apart and who play games with no one
but themselves. The camel is the part of me that
can carry me there. It represents all the wisdom
of the East. The idea of die self, the kingdom of
God within, is familiar to me. In my daily life, I
do not seem to believe this; I do not feel it within
or project it without ... As for my thoughts
about the camel, I feel that in this Ufetime I am
not going to allow myself to ride him and take
me on the journey. I do not act as though there
were a self to carry; evidence of inner spontaneity
is very faint. Depending on others to run things,
however, is becoming more intolerable to me.
The therapeutic implication of such readiness to

read into the symbolism of the reverie is obvious. And
since this is frequently of spontaneous occurrence, it
ay be mentioned as a cognitive aspect in the descrip-
tion of the MMDA experience. It might be suspected
that it is precisely this proximity between visual and
conceptual understanding that accounts for the tenden-

cy of some individuals to prevent aspects of their inner
life from becoming expressed in conscious images.
In dealing with imagery at the time of the session
proper, the aim should be, as with psychosomatic
symptoms, that of contacting the experience which is
dormant in the visual symbols. Mere contemplation of
the latter may not be suflBcient to this end; on the
other hand, identification with the characters or ob-
jects in the fantasy may lead the patient to undo a
projection and recognize a hitherto unacknowledged
part of himself. This was the case of a woman, for
instance, felt disgust at the sight of a ridiculous clown,
but who, when attempting to identify with such a
character, suddenly yelled in panic, for she felt like
a httle baby tossed in the air. Then she realized that
she had been played with like a doll; she had actually
adopted this role and played the clown all her life to
please others. Yet all along, in the process of this
"show," she was suffering from postponement of her
real urges and feeling the loneliness ijnpUed in the
assimiption that nobody would want her except as an
object of amusement.
This sequence of events shows that the facilitating
effect ofMMDA on the therapeutic procedure lies not
only in the presentation of a significant clue (image of
the clown) to the patient's conflict ("playing" the
clown vs. wanting to be loved as she is). Once the
button of the significant symbol was pressed, her ex-
perience changed in quaUty: The patient's emotion was
released, and she switched from a visual type of re-
action to one of the feeling-enhancement type (being
tossed in the air, treated as an object). As a conse-
quence of attending to the unpleasant feeling of being
treated as an object, insist ensued: She was treating
herself as an object, in presenting herself to others as
such. Lastly, a new feeling came to the fore: She did
not waru to treat herself like this; what she wanted
was love. It is significant that, for several days after
the session, she felt an intense desire for food, which
ended abruptly at a later appointment, during which
she came to accept her desire for love more fully.

The entire process may be seen like a rising from the
feelingless type 3 MMDA reaction, though the latter
was achieved after the end of the session.
The condensed illustration above may give an over-
simplified view of what form the therapist's interven-
tion can take in the process of leading the patient to
the desymbolization of the experience embodied in
visual terms. An image may have to be brought to
mind again and again, its transformations followed,
and attention directed to the patient's feelings, while
watching or identifying with objects or persons in the
scene, interpretations given at this or that point, and
so on. The following passage, from the transcript of
a tape recording, never led to the expected explosion
of feelings, but illustrates in detail the exploration of
an image and shows how much interpretation can be
achieved by means of a non-interpretive approach:
Doctor. Let us work on this image. Could you be

this place into which you enter?
Patient. Be that place?
Doctor. Yes, speak out of the experience of being
the place.
Patient. I have a problem here, because I don't
know what is in the center of it until I open it,
so to find this place I have to be aware of
what is inside of babies. Is that all right? Which
one shall I do?
Doctor. Either.
Patient. OK. I'm this place, and there is this baby
inside, and I'm waiting for someone to come
and open the door and take it out. And somehow
I'm trying to watch. I want to know what is
inside, somehow. I'm being curious about it.
Doctor. Can you say how you are? Could you
describe yourself?
Patient. I can't do it too well, but there is a part
of me that is looking outside. Outside of me
there is light, a bright light, a beautiful outside
world, and I am kind of a shield that doesn't
let this outside penetrate to the inside. The
insideis amorphous, black, neuter, nothing
about sense, but the sense of being shut of,
kind of stopped, waiting for someone to pick
up this baby and bring it out, and in a way
my task seems to be to shield the baby from
the outside, keep it in cold storage, almost.
Doctor. Keep it in cold storage. Can you sense
this part of yourself, this protective function?
Patient. You mean in my normal self, or right
now?
Doctor. No, in your life, in your everyday sell
Do you see yourself as shielding a very pre-

cious part?
Patient. That's very interesting.My tendency oh,
— —
I'm getting quite a bit, I think ^my conscious
tendency as soon as I realize how to get it
will be to go in and pick it up and get it out
real fast, probably faster than I should.
Doctor. The same thing! "Probably faster than I
should" .the fear of
. . . . .
Patient. I want it to be that I get it out right

away. I force it.
Doctor. So there seems to be a conflict here for
you between the tendency to overshield and
really remove this core of Ufe from life, keep
it in storage, and the opposite tendency and
over-tendency to take it out fast into life.

Patient. Now I think what's happening is that,
consciously, I'm doing it much too fast, so it's
blocked to my conscious mind so I can't get
to it any faster than I'm supposed to. So, un-
consciously, I have to go to tiie other extreme,
to keep it shut. There is one interesting thing
which may help. In meditation and other ex-

periences, whenever anything interesting starts
happening, I have to grab it spontaneously and
put it down. So I don't let myself. I pull myself
out of it, as soon as an image ... I had this
experience before, so this may just indicate
that.
Doctor. Which is, in a way, shielding the experi-
ence, and in another way it is taking it out.
Patient. I try to takeit out, so I lose it. Yes, wow!
Wife. (As spectator):! don't know if it's the

MMDA or Dr. N.
Doctor. It's the dream; all it takes is to start with
a good seed. So I think you can get more out
of this, if you go on being this room. Say all
you can about yourself, as a room, not disre-
garding the obvious —
anything about color,
temperature, the dimensions, whatever.
Patient. I get the impression it was painted white,
almost like an apparatus you'd see, like a ma-
chine in a hospital. It was obviously man-made.
Doctor. But say it in the first person.
Patient. I am painted white-yellow, kind of a
warm white, and I'm obviously man-made, with
handles and knobs and things, and the signifi-
cance I get is that I am the part of intellect,
not of emotion. That's very much like my con-
scious mind really is. Consciously, I'm usually
very intellectual; the emotions are inside.
Doctor. So you are an artificial room, designed
to protect this baby.
Patient. It's interesting that I wouldn't call it arti-
ficial at all. In a way, "artifical" is true, but
to me it has a connotation of not being real.
To me a machine is just as real as a human
being. It's just created in a different way, so it
kind of bothered me to use that connotation
"artificial." It's here, but it's something else.
It's just as real, though.
Doctor. Yes. You are controls, man-made . • .
Patient. . .More a matter of well-defined, with

.
boundaries and laws, that are clear-cut, that

aren't fringes. Ether it's here or it isn't here,
like I can have exactly, and that's what it is.
it
Doctor. What can you see as a room in you?
else
Could you give a description of your feelings re-
garding yourself as a room?
Patient.My main purpose, that I can see, is to
take care of what's inside, which is this baby,
and I can't get to it, for I feel that I have all
around these devices and apparatuses, to main-
tain the right environment for the mside, like
temperature, atmosphere, etcetera. So my main
function, as I see it now, is to just keep the
optimum environment for the baby.
Doctor. You said something about being sani-
tized?
Patient. Yes, the way it was in the dream . . .
Now I am
almost an incubator.
Doctor. Would you concentrate a bit more on
that —^how it feels to be an incubator.
Patient. How it feels to be an incubator? Some-
how it doesn't seem to be enough. I'm having
trouble identifying with it, because what I was
doing before was half looking at it. Now I'm
trying to be it completely, and the action of
being this incubator just isn't enough. I'd like

to do other things, somehow, but I can't, be-
cause I'm an incubator, and an incubator isn't
supposed to, and this baby is the most impor-
tant thing, so I can't really be concerned with
anything else.
Doctor. Does it make sense in your life to say,
"I am an incubator for the baby to be bom,
—
but this is not enough ^to be an incubator"?
Patient. In my life I have never been aware of
being this incubator. What I have been trying
to do is have the incubator do what the baby
is supposed to do, if anything. I'm trying to get
the baby out of here. Well, in the dream, the
way I do it is to wait until somebody ... No
.. OK, the way it is in the dream, I go to
.
the incubator and pick up the baby. Now, as

the incubator, I'm trying to do what the baby
is supposed to do, rather than waiting for
someone to come and pick it out, and it's inter-
esting that there is no feeling that at some
point the baby is going to wake up and open
the door. It has to be an action from the
outside.
Doctor. Isn't there anything in being an incubator
that suggests an action from the outside?
Patient. I an action from the outside, yon say?

am
Doctor. The is an action from the out-
incubator
side, a lot of action, a lot of
manipulation of
machinery, in that room, that sanitized room,
which is all action from the outside, which con-
verges on the baby, as if there were not enough
faith that the baby will survive without
so
much incubation.
Patient. Well, it I have been set
feels like this:
up to do something specific, which is to keep
everything normal and constant and all that. I
should be doing that, and if Tm not, I'm fail-

ing. And I don't have any free will of my own
as an incubator, so I have to wait until some-
body from outside tries to do something
through me, whether it's open the door or
change any of the constants. Now, whether the
baby needs it or not I don't know, because I
don't reaUy know anything about the baby.
The tape goes on for a long time and shows an

impasse that could not be resolved in the session: The
"baby" in the patient wants to get out, to be bom,
but wiU not cry for help or feel the despair of being
locked in. Yet only feeling could free him, for it is
the patient's feelings that are being locked in and
replaced by thinking and self-manipulation (incuba-
tor). After this situation was exposed, the problem
was tackled more directly in an encounter between
the patient and his wife. The rule was that they could
voice nothing but the feelings of the moment (i.e.,
withholding opinions, judgments, interpretations,
thoughts), this was not only useful to the patient, but
a rewarding experience in communication for the
couple.
Whenever not only feelings and physical symptoms but

imagery and the desire to communicate are slight, a
previous dream of the patient may be taken as a
starting point for therapy. The increased faculty of
creating imagery under MMDAmakes it easy for
the patient to re-create dreams and deal with them as
—
an ongoing process, whereas an enhancement of th€
ability to read into metaphoric or symbolic forms i^
favorable to the unfolding of their meaning.
The following instance, from the session of a young
scientist, will complement previous examples of the
handling of imagery, since it shows the process of
"encountering" between the patient's different sub-
selves as portrayed in multipledream elements. Thisl
is a common resource of Gestalt therapy, but littlel
has been described of this procedure, and it can bel
so useful with MMDA (and ibogaine) that it deserves|
detailed illustration.
The dream was examined in this session con-
that
sisted of a single image, which the patient described I
before the drug had begun to take effect. In this

scene —part of a dream that he could not remember
there was a shrimp stapled to the inside of a plastic |
ba^ full of water.

He was first instructed to look at the dream scene
as a picture of his existence, regarding himself as the
shrimp. He said, "This is my existence. I am a shrimp
in a plastic bag. I am stapled. I can't move. And I
have no head."
This made sense to him, since there was a sense of
bein^ immobilized in his life. At the suggestion that he
describe the experience of being a shrimp, he now
realizes that not only is he enclosed by the bag but
by the shell that covers his body. He reacts to this
by wanting to be free and have direct contact with
the environment, and realizes that this is a true though
unexpressed urge in him.
But then, when asked to enact the he realizes
shell,
that this is also part of himself, since he wants to
protect himself. As he pursues the enactment of the
dream elements, it turns out that all these are engaged
in mutual antagonism, but after the various "voices''
talk with one another, a sense of unity develops.
Thus the subject as shrimp does not feel encased in
his shell, butendowed with it for his own purposes;
the shell does not insist any more on protecting the
shrimp beyond its interest, but wants to serve as his
instrument; shrimp and water enjoy each other, and

they all feel protected in the bag.
A new element of the dream is now recalled by the
patient. It is from his mother's hand that the plastic
bag is hanging, with all that there is in it. Shell, bag,
and mother appear now as progressively explicit pre-
sentations of a function of himself, which both protects
him and restrains him. I now ask him to enact the
shrimp talking to his mother. At first, he wants to
say, "Let me out, let me free," but cannot be heard
from inside the bag. He cannot reach her, feels too
distant and isolated, in the same manner that he does
in real hfe. He now realizes he cannot communicate
intimately with his mother.
I then ask him to take a step out of the dream and
imagine his mother sitting in front of him and tell her
of his feelings of constraint or imprisonment. The out-
come of the encounter is a long episode which he
retrospectively summed up as follows:
I couldn't, i couldn't. I knew I had to really

get angry at her, to hit her. I remember now the
firsttime I saw her. I had set her up on the floor.
She was just about two feet tall, and I felt like
smashing her to pieces with a club. I reaUy wanted
to so much, but again I couldn't. Finally, she just
sort of fell to pieces. I hoped for a second that
this meant that she was gone for good, but I soon
found out that she was still with me. I guess she
won't ever go away until I knock her away, get
really angry, cry, etcetera. When that day comes,
I believe I will be totally free from her.
He was not able to go beyond the impasse, but he

could now understand how his unfulfilled feeling was
not mere inertia, but a silent struggle between rage
and guilt.
We worked on the dream scene for about four
more hours, in the course of which he was able to
understand the image of the staple. It represented bit-
ing, childishly vindictive rage turned against himself.
But after a period of contemplating this "Baby-me"
attitude, his closed-oflf, clinging, biting hardness gave
way —now he wanted to be tucked up (folded anc
just
put away) and dropped in the corner of the bag. Ir
other words, the hostility of the staple, which was
mitially directed to a possessive and hardheaded "bit-j
ing" at the shrimp, came to be felt by the patient asl
a misdirected desire to hold on, to have contact, to bel
not alone. And he now saw that the baby in him that|
wanted to be loved did not need to go about it ag-
gressively, but that, on the contrary, he could achieve|
much more by just enjoying his surroundings.
As to the bag, it was she "who is in charge," who I
wanted the status quo. Everyone else has other things [
he (or she) wants to do. Shrimp wants to go back to
the sea and live free, with his head back on; water
wants to evaporate; and staple wants to find his place,
too. Only the bag wants to keep things the way they
are
—"she feels fuU and warm with water, shrimp and
shell and staple all inside her." The end result of the
session for this young man was insight into his inner
world to an unknown and surprising degree.
He started out his report on the following day with
the assertion, "I now really know how I see myself.'
And now, after eight months, he still explains that he
is different from before, "in that now I see myself, un-
derstand myself." He values this understanding to such
an extent that he has decided to study psychology.
The reading of the case illustrations presented on the

foregoing pages may well seem, on the whole, not very
different from a collection of accounts taken from
ordinary psychotherapeutic sessions not involving the
use of a drug. Most of the reactions to mayMMDA
be understood as an intensification of feelings, symp-
toms, and visual imagination rather than a qualitative
change thereof. The value of such an intensification
in the psychotherapeutic process lies mainly, perhaps,
in that clues to the significant issues take more fre-
quently the therapist's or patient's attention than they
otherwise would, whereas, in the normal situation,
much of the time and effort in a therapeutic process
may go into cutting through a veil of verbiage and
MMDA and the Eternal Now 1 17
automatisms that form part of the habitual social role.

With MMDA, there a more prompt access to the
is
patient's underlying experience, or symptoms resulting

from its denial and distortion.
Another aspect of the effects of MMDA that con-
tributes to the greater density of the therapeutic inter-
action, if not to its qualitative change, is that, without
loss of the reflective disposition, thinking takes on a
more experiential quality than ordinarily would. In-
it
stead of being purely conceptual and verbal, the think-

ing that characterizes the MMDA-elicited state seems
linked to visual images, sensory data, and emotional
experience, so that an abstract statement tends to bring
about in the person's mind concrete instances of its
application, and insight tends to be a complete, feel-
ing-intellectual process rather than conceptual realiza-
tion.
The value of visual fantasy in psychotherapy is an-
other instance of this experiential thinking, bound to
images and not divorced from feelings. Though some
persons have a natural facility for summoning up vi-
sual images, and others may acquire it through train-
ing, the facilitation that MMDA can effect in active
imagination must be Usted in this final summary of its
usefulness as an adjunct to psychotherapy.
Last but not least, the value of MMDA lies in its
potential to bring about peak experiences which may
occur either spontaneously or as a consequence of
therapeutic work, and which may last seconds or
hours. In such moments of serenity and love, a person
may experience his reaUty from a different point of
view and thus learn to let go of his habitual attitudes.
The bearing of such peak experiences on the doctor-
patient encounter may be that of a step toward learn-
ing to relate in the Now, a present free from trans-
ferrential bondage to past conditions and stereotyped
mechanisms.
CHAPTER IV
HARMALINEAND
THE COLLECTIVE
UNCONSCIOUS
Harmaline is the main alkaloid in the seeds of Pe-

ganum harmala, a plant native to Central Asia and
Syria, and which now grows wild along the Mediter-
ranean coasts of Africa, Europe, and the Near East, in
Persia, Afghanistan, and northeast Tibet. These seeds
have been used for centuries and appear in the Spanish
and Italian pharmacopoeia as "semen Harmalae sive
rutae sylvestris.'* They constitute an article of com-
merce from Persia to India, where medical tradition
recognizes them as an emmenagogue, lactogogue, eme-
tic, anthelmintic, and disinfectant, and they are known
for their psychoactive effects.
Aside from Peganum harmala, harmaline is also
found in the South American rain-forest climbers of
the genus Banisteriopsis, which provide the main in-
gredients of the drink variously called yage, ayahuasca,
and caapi, employed by the cultures settled along the
headwaters of the Amazon and the Orinoco systems.
This drink has been employed in the initiation of
shamans, in puberty rites, and, in some cultures, for
healing various ailments, and more generally, to in-
duce a state of clairvoyance; hence the name telepa-
thine once given to its active principle.
Although in this chapter I shall be dealing with the
effects of harmaline only from the angle of psycho-
therapy, I want to mention that this alkaloid is of
special interest because of its close resemblance to
119
substances derived from the pineal gland of mammals.
In particular, 10-methoxy-harmaline, which may be
obtained in vitro from the incubation of seratonin in
pineal tissue, resembles harmaline in its subjective ef-
fects and is of greater activity than the latter. This
suggests that harmaline (differing from 10-methoxy-
harmaline only in the position of the methoxy group)
may derive its activity from the mimicry of a meta-
bolite normally involved in the control of states of
consciousness.
The effects of harmaline in the dosage range of 4 to
5 mg. per kilogram of body weight by mouth (or a
total dose of 70-100 mg. intravenously) are a state
of physical relaxation, a tendency to withdraw from
the environment, keeping eyes closed and wanting
noises and sounds to be kept to a minimum, a certain
numbness in the extremities, and above all, very vivid
visual images, which may take the form of meaningful
dreamlike sequences. In addition to this, about 50 per
cent of the subjects experience nausea or vomiting at
some point in the session. On account of the symptoms
described, it follows that the ideal setting for the use
of this drug is a comfortable couch in a quiet, dark
environment.
In a study carried out in 1964 of the subjective ef-
fects of harmaline, using volunteers who knew nothing
about the drug's effects, one of the most surprising
findings was that of the similarity of the content of
their visions, which in turn resembled those of the
Indians. Some of the more frequent items in the con-
tent analysis of the thirty sessions that composed that
study were tigers and animals in general, birds or
flying, dark-skinned men, death, and circular patterns
conveying the idea of a center, source, or axis.
The recurrent expression of themes such as those
enumerated and the mythical quality of many of the
images reported by subjects leaves little doubt that
harmaline characteristically evokes the presentation into
consciousness of such transpersonal experiences (and
the symbols thereof) as Jung contemplated in speak-
ing of archetypes.
For one sharing the Jungian point of view, it would
Harm aline and the Collective Unconscious 121
be natural to think of the artificial elicitation of arche-

typal experience as something that could facilitate per-
sonality integration, and therefore psychological heal-
ing. Yet the observation of the psychotherapeutic
results of the harmaline experience was not the out-
come of anv deliberate attempt to test the Junrian
hypothesis. These results came as a dramatic surprise
in the above-mentioned study, even before the recur-
rence of images became apparent. Of the group of
thirty subjects who were our volunteers, fifteen experi-
enced some therapeutic benefit from their harmaline
session, and ten showed remarkable improvement or
symptomatic change comparable only to that which
might be expected from intensive psvchotherapy. Eight
of the ten were psychoneurotic patients, and another
had a character neurosis of which he was sliehtly
aware. These nine amounted to 60 per cent of the
subjects with obvious neurotic symptoms (N=15)
among the volunteers.
My
lack of further experience with pure harmaline
derives from my having been engaged, since the time
of the above research, in the study of harmaline com-
binations: harmaline-MDA, harmaline-TMA,i harma-
line-mescaline and others. Since my intention in the
present chapter is to present a view of the effects and
use of harmaline when employed by itself, I shall men-
tion only that these combinations can be useful in the
cases of individuals who, for psychological or physio-
logical reasons, do not respond well to the pure drug.
It would be hard to offer a simple explanation for
the instances of improvement brought about by the
harmaline experience. Such improvement usually oc-
curred spontaneously, without necessarily entailing in-
sight into the particulars of the patient's life and con-
flicts. As in all cases of successful deep therapy, it did
involve greater acceptance by the patients of their

feelings and impulses and a sense of proximity to their
self.^ Statements like these, however, are not very ex-
plicit, and only case histories can adequately illustrate

the natu re of the process.
1 TMA: trimethoxyamphetamine.
One of the first subjects to experience the effects
of the alkaloid was a young man who had spent five
years in rather unsuccessful psychoanalytic treatment
for an anxiety neurosis. His reaction after five or ten
minutes, soon after I had finished injecting the drug
into his vein,^ was an exclamation of wonder: "It is
unbelievable! Everything I do, everything I say, is a
distortion! I have been living for years without sus-
pecting what I really am. I must have forgotten as a
child, and only now can I feel myself again, my real
self!"
This realization was the most important of the day
and one of the most important in his life. It was not
arrived at through reasoning, or analyzing a life situa-
tion, nor was it the outcome of any therapeutic inter-
vention on my part. The following is a description of
the subject's experiences during these moments:
His first sensation upon receiving the injection he
describes as "an internal buzzing and physical anxiety,
as if I were to burst out through my nose, or my blood
were to explode out of my arteries; it also had a tran-
quility, like that of feeling a strong sun for the first
time in my life, or at the last instant, something like
seeing peace and life in the moment of death. It was
physical despair, as if my faculties would not respond
— neither my voice, nor my movements, nor my
thoughts."
After this which may have lasted only
initial stage,
five minutes, he lost the fear and gave in to a rapid
flow of imagery which he scarcely reported, since his
effort to talk only interfered with the experience (and
he did not feel like interfering with it). Very soon,
while he was having imagery related to his childhood,
he achieved the insight that accounted for the ther-
apeutic benefit of the day: "I see myself as I am, and
this has no relation to the way I am living. I behave
in contradiction to myself, because I don't acknowl-
edge myself."
2Harmaline may be used in intravenous injection if an
immediate onset and somewhat shorter duration of effects are
desired.
Harmaline and the Collective Unconscious 123
Here is more on the following

of his report writen
day: "I felt like I had another person inside or was
being another person —
something I have never experi-
enced before. I felt free from my everyday 'I.' I saw
myself in a world of certainty, surprised at the ig-
norance in which I have lived with regard to what lies
in the depth of my being. It was a being connected
to my real self, like living in a different world in
which nothing was hidden and in which I went along
with great serenity."
Three months later, he wrote:
"There remains with me the image of a self of which
I had no notion and had never even imagined, with
more of these attributes which I considered desirable
and perfect, a tranquil self with its eyes turned to-
ward the world, with not the least worry about itself.
And with an old taste in me, not new, but deeply
united with my past and my true being.
"At this very moment, in which I am away from
myself again, I can see as I walk along the street or
ride the bus how I am contained in a sort of shell,
blind to what is important, and yet I cannot escape
the feeling of my true being inside."
I had known only two weeks prior
this patient for
to this day. His therapist had told me of the dead end
to which his treatment had apparently come during the
past month and suggested him as a possible volunteer
for our research project. My
knowledge of him was not
exceptional as compared to that of other candidates
whom I interviewed and tested during the days pre-
ceding their sessions. My
rapport with the patient was
less than average. The patient was rather withdrawn
and seemed more interested in the exotic prospects
of a mind-changing drug than in a therapeutic ex-
change. The outcome was only moderate in terms of
immediate improvement, for, as the patient describes,
his novel feeling of his true self was still no remedy
for his estrangement from himself, but only a standard
of comparison between his actual state and his poten-
tial or ideal. The main result of this experience was a
change that was brought about in this patient's psy-
choanalytic treatment, which was never interrupted.
1 24 The Healing Joukney
His sense of authenticity and his enhanced awareness
of "distortion" or "lying" or "being contained in a
shell" now led to the establishment of a more pro-
ductive relationship with his therapist and provided
both with a goal to achieve in the treatment and a
challenge that gave meaning to the analytical process.
In other words, a "deficiency motivation" (becoming
free from his symptoms) became a self-actualization
motive. In psychotiierapy, as in alchemy, "one must
have gold to make gold," and in this case the session
gave Sie patient the initial "capital" required for the
work.
The episode described in the foregoing pages took
place during a lapse of no more than thirty minutes
and ended when I started questioning him. Soon after
he stated that everything in his life was a lie or a
distortion, I thought that it would be useful to him to
look more closely into the particulars of this distor-
tion, so that he could have something to remember
after the session, something upon which he might an-
dior the otherwise vague sense of his reality. To my
question as to what in his life was a distortion, he
answered, "Everything. Everything that I say or do.
Every gesture, the way I talk, the way I climb onto a
bus." And now he suddenly felt nauseated and restless.
As I continued to invite him to look into the concrete
instances of the lie, the distortion that he had dis-
covered, he felt increasing malaise, resented my speak-
ing to him, and said that my questions made him feel
more nauseated. Soon he started vomiting and spent
the next four to five hours alternating between periods
of vomiting and periods of sleeping. During this time,
he said that he was thinking or contemplating images,
but there was little that he could report, partiy because
of his inertia and his desire to withdraw from contact
and partly because he could not remember anything
that he did not mention as soon as he had experienced
it. When he did speak, though, either in answer to a
question or taking the initiative to talk, his physical

discomfort increased. The clearest of the images that
he did capture was very expressive of the world of
—
harmaline on its "hellish" side ^he was having a pic-
lie with his family and was sitting in a circle around
he fire where they were roasting ... his father.

This session displays both a fragmentary sample of
he harmaline peak experience and a view of the drug's
mpleasant effects. The former is quite characteristic
rf the drug and consists of a state in which anxiety
nd destructive forces are assimilated into a peculiar

ype of ecstasy marked by a sense of energy, even
)ower and freedom ("as if I were to burst out through
ny nose, or my blood were to explode out of my ar-
eries") and at the same time, tranquillity ("like feei-
ng a strong sun for the first time in my life or . . .
>eace ... in the moment of death"). Frequent sym-

>ols of this power are, aside from the sim and the
>rocess of dying, fire, tigers or lions, dragons, aU of
hem typical of the psychic domain tapped by harma-
ine Yet, to he fire or to he a lion in actual life is
M>mething that not many can even conceive, and this
nay account for the fact that either symbolic visualiza-
ion or an experience of pure feeling (as iu the quota-
ions in the earlier parentheses) is the most that the
iverage person can allow himself without meeting
>sychological obstacles. I think that this patient's dis-
covery of his sense of self and freedom for his every-
iay "I'^ was a step toward practical realization, but
this was all that he could afford to see without threat-
ening the structure of his present personality.
The state of physical discomfort, fatigue, and half-
jleep (with unclear dreams), present throughout most
>f the session just described, constitute 3ie typical
'adverse reaction" to harmaline. Though little in it

svould suggest its being more than a physical toxic
yndrome, the time of onset, the persons who are prone
:o it, and the contexts in which I have seen such a
taction occur leave me with little doubt as to its

>eing in the nature of a psychosomatic reaction. In
his particular instance, illustrative of many others, the
ethargic state seemed to be an active evasion of the
liscomfort accompanying the alternative state of atten-
ion to the ongoing process (a rich flow of imagery,
nemories, thoughts, and feelings) and communication.
SVhy this experience turned into one of discomfort is
probably not the ri^ht question to ask. The pain o
self-confrontation may well be an individual constant
reflecting the person's present state. If this is so, the
question to ask the case under discussion is, How waj
the peak experience of the first minutes possible at all'
The reason, I believe, is the same as that which ao
counts for the possibility of peak experiences in dis-
turbed personalities in general: a realization is madt
possible by the temporary ignoring of its ultimate con
sequences; a state of being is grasped in abstractioi
(not as a conceptual abstraction, but more like a feel-
ing abstraction), like the perfume of a rose withou
the sieht of it, or like a feeline state conveyed by i
work of art which may be identified with and enjoye<
by many who would not carry that feeling state intc
embodied expression as a style of Ufe.
It may be a matter of speculation whether the pa-
tient's initial state of well-being might have persistec
had I not pressed him with questions. Apparently, my
question posed to him a challenge of consciousness thai
he could not meet, but it is conceivable that he might
have arrived at the corresponding answers himself ii
left to his spontaneous rhythm. The natural tendency
of most persons to withdraw from contact under the
influence of harmaline (the opposite of the typical
MDA experience) may well be a constructive avoid-
ance, a fencing of the seedling while it attains matur-
ity, as discussed in more general terms in our intro-
ductory chapter. The metaphor used by Ramakrishna
to speak of meditation and the way of detachment
may be relevant to this point: Once butter has been
separated by churning the milk, it can be put into
the serum again or into water, and it will not dissolve.
Whether I was adding water prematurely or not,
I do not know, but I am bringing up the issue because
it illustrates what I see as a permanent dilemma in the
guidance of harmaline sessions: the balance between

stimulation and non-interference.
Little intervention may well leave a patient to his
own inertia and result in an unproductive session; on
the other hand, uncalled-for intervention may disrupt
the organic development which is characteristic of the
more successful harmaline experiences. As a conse-

quence, more tact is needed in conducting these ses-
sions than with any other.
The more successful experiences with harmaline
have a characteristic spontaneity, and these pose little
problem to the therapist. In contrast to experiences of
self-exploration at the interpersonal level, it is prob-
ably in the nature of an archetypal experience to de-
velop naturally from within, so that the most a per-
son's ego can do is stand by watchfully. Yet such
experiences of easy and spontaneous unfoldment of
images and psychological events occur only in about
every other person, so that it is the business of the
psychotherapist to induce them when they will not
naturally occur. To illustrate this, I am quoting some
notes taken from one of the less interesting sessions,
which is representative of many others in which the
subjects were left to follow their own course. In this
case, the subject was a rather conventional thirty-year-
old woman suffering from anxiety neurosis. The fol-
lowing fragment adequately represents the whole tran-
script, which is that of a monologue in which she re-
ports images succeeding each other with no clear logic
of transition:
I see a white bird.

Across.
A lamp with violet teardrops
I feel a ringing in the ears.
—
glass.
I see two crystal balls, like glittering lamps.

I see sand on a beach being tossed with shovels.
I see a red rag^
I seethe image of an old and ugjy man making
globes with his mouth.
Many lights are reflected, and then light and
dark follow. Lights go on moving by in turquoise
shades, green in the middle and turquoise all
around.
A black teardrop of a turning lamp.
I see a radiant sun.
I see the face of the beast in Beauty and the
Beast.
—
A large black blot.
A map. I first see America and then Europe
Italy.
I see some stained glass windows.
only see lights. I see glittering lights, many
I
lanterns in red-green-yellow colors.
APersian carpet with a red background and
shapes^
Anyone acquainted with the world of harmaline

would recognize here the typical themes: the bird, as
the very first image; then the archetype of the cross,
with its religious connotation and its implied signifi-
cance of intersection, center, and outward extension
from it; the turning lamp, again conveying centrality;
the radiant sun, with its significance of source once
more, and stressing the element of light; the colors,
expressing li^ht once again. Yetj in spite of their po-
tential or hidden significance, the images followed each
other in this inward display, without revealing their
treasure, while the onlooker watched them go by with
little emotional participation other than curiosity.
It is in cases like these that the therapist can some-
times step in and help the patient unlock the experi-
ence hidden in the visual symbol, not so much through
interpretations, which would interfere with the more
important primary process, but through an encourage-
ment of attention. Merely by more attention being
given to these fleeting images, it may be discovered that
they might start to unfold in a meaningful way; if only
tiiey are "listened to," they may begin to "talk."
The following excerpt is a literal transcript from
part of a session, the first part of which had proceeded
much like the one reported above. The passage quoted
here is taken from a moment when the therapist chose
to guide the process, and the fleeting and disjointed
images then took the form of a continuous and co-
herent sequence. The episode transcribed took place
after the first thirty minutes of the session.
Patient. I see a woman dressed in white with a

bandana on her head. She's leaning against an
ivy-covered wall, and she is looking at a statue,

a golden statue of a lion. Well, the statue is
very close to her, on top of a tall white granite
obelisk, as phallic as the Washington Mon-
ument.
Doctor. What is the statue?
Patient. What does it tell me?
Doctor. No, what does it represent?
Patient. The monument? Fm standing
Well, now
at the base of the monument and looking up at
it. It's become a rocket.
Doctor. A rocket. Did you mention a golden lion?

Patient. Yes, a golden lion. It may have been on
one of the friezes on a public building nearby.
It looks like the lion on a European royal coat
of arms. It is an almost Oriental or Siamese
lion. The features on the face of the hon, the
mouth in particular, suggest this. It is standing
on its hind legs, with its forepaws in the air,
its mouth open, half-lungmg forward, as if it
were attacking.
Doctor. Do you have any feeling about the color?
This golden color?
Patient. It's a very yellow gold.
Doctor. Do you like the color?
Patient. Yes.
Doctor. How does it feel? . . . {Rest of question
inaudible.)
Patient. Well, I can feel myself touching the lion.
When Itouch it, though, it tends to become a
real lion. It loses its cold metallic cover and
becomes warm fur.
Doctor. Can you talk to the lion?
Patient. He's turned into a real lion now, an
African lion. He has a tremendous tawny
mane that is very stiff and bristly. His eyes are
yellow.
Doctor. How do you feel about this lion?
Patient. I feelhe is my friend. He is like a dog
I might have for a pet. But he is nonetheless,
in his own domain, a fierce and wild animal.
Doctor. Is this a good feeling, being a friend of an
animal in its natural state?
Patient. Yes.
Doctor. Maybe that's what the image conveys,
this pleasantness of joining the wild animal,
being accepted by the wild animals.
Patient. I'm curious to know what things he could
tell me if he could speak. The lion is turning
and walking away toward the jungle.
Doctor. Can you follow him?
Patient. Yes. He's trotting now, and I have to
trot, too, to keep up with him. Now he's loping.
He's chasing an automobile. (Sounds of outside
traffic on tape at this time.) There's a trainer,
a man, running along behind the automobile.
He jumps onto the rear bumper and hangs onto
the back window. The car pulls away from the
lion, the man riding on the back of it. The lion
slows down and stops, looking after the car.
Now he's turning around to talk to me. He
says, "It's too bad that one got away," or
something like that.
Doctor. What did it want to do?
Patient. I'm not sure. He may have been going
to attack the man. Or he may have been just
curious. But he is hungry. It doesn't make any
difference to him whether his meat be human
or some other animal.
Doctor. What does the lion do now?
Patient. He is standing there licking his chops.
You know, licking his mouth with his tongue.
Doctor. What would you like from a lion?
Patient. What would I like from a lion?
Doctor. Or in a lion.
Patient. Warmth is the first thought that comes
to mind. Strength, I suppose. And I see children
climbing on the lion's back and sliding down
on his sides and rolling under him and climbing
up again and sliding over his back ^having a —
wonderful time. And he is standing there en-
joying it aU.
Doctor. Can you imagine yourself as the lion?
Patient. No.
Doctor. Assume you have a lion in yourself. You
would like to play with the children as they
are playing with the lion. have a wild ani- You
mal as weU {Rest of sentence inaudible.)
. . .
Patient. I can do it better if I see tiie lion as a

lioness. But somehow I don't see the lioness
being as .
.'
.
Doctor. ... as lion-like

Patient. I guess I see the lion as a dog, a play-
mate, whereas the lioness is strictly a mother of
the children.
Doctor. For some purpose, it is a lion and not a
lioness.
Patient. All right, we'll go back to the lion. {Long
silence.) I'm having a lot of trouble becoming
the lion. I êss I know why. It's because I
don't much feel like taking on the job that he
is performing.
Doctor. Suppose you have the lion talk to you.
Patient. Talk to me? And those are my children?
{Long silence.) It isn't going anywhere.
Doctor. Let's see if some conoimentary leads any-
where. I see some themes in what you have
been saying. There's a theme of nobility: the
lion insignia, the chateau, the political figures.
Not only nobility, but authority, let's say. Then
there's the theme of the movement around a
center —
galaxies, drum, merry-go-round. Then
there's a theme of animal hfe, impulse ^the —
horses on the merry-go-round that became a
stampede, wildness; then the cowboys, with re-
volvers .impulse, aggression. Then the lion.
. .
And the lion, I think, contains the three: the

central role, the authority, the vitality, the ag-
gression, and the nobility. I feel there's a place
in your life for these feelings. It's something of
your self-image that is being expressed, your
ideal self. It should be very easy to enact the
lion.
Patient. If he were doing something. But he is
just standing. Very tired, and probably after
hunting day, he's come to rest in the park.
all
And byaccident some children come to climb
on his back, and he's just too tired to do any-
thing about it.
Doctor. Try saying, as if you were the lion, "I'm
tired. I've been hunting allday ."
. .
Patient. I'm tired. It feels good to have the chil-

dren scratching my back, but they're getting
heavy. He's a Uttle afraid to start walking be-
cause one of the children might fall off. And
yet he also has the desire to slip out from under
them and be gone before they realize he's gone.
Doctor. Don't shift to the third person. "I'd like
to slip out .
." .
Patient. Now the children have left.

Doctor. What do you feel like doing, lion?
Patient. Well, he urinated. It's getting dark. He
iswalking slowly but very softly. He is walking
down a road with cars and trucks coming to-
ward him with headlights on. (Sound of traffic
on tape in background.) He stays over to the
side of the road, and they don't see him. Now
it's a lioness. She is looking at the trucks, and
the truck drivers aren't aware of her, but she

is thinking that if they weren't in the trucks,
they would make a good dinner for her. And
that although lions know what trucks are, she's
wondering if the truck drivers know anything
about lions. She is starting to hunt. She is
walking down a dusty path trying not to stir
up any dust. There's a log by the side of the
path. A beggar in a tattered leather coat hob-
bles around behind the log, puts his hand on
the shoulder of a man who was sitting there
before he came along, and starts talking to
him. The beggar has gray hair and ... I don't
know. The log has become a log cabin. The
lioness sees a httle snake crossing the path in
front of her. She has no interest in eating it
Its taste would not be very good. Now the
lioness is walking along an exquisitely designed
walkway which is made up of inlaid tiles. It's
a picture. The center of the figure depicts the

rising sun. The light from the sun is drenching
the sky in very rich yellow and orange glitter-
ing rays. And there are three women standing
in the center in white Grecian robes with myr-
tle on their heads and with their arms uplifted,
singing. {Long silence.)
Doctor. Do you hear the song?
Patient. Do I hear what?
Doctor. The song from the women.
seems to be one note that is sustained
Patient. It
throughout eternity. It's a great choral voice
that they are singing with, although there are
only three of them.
Doctor. Do you feel what that song wants to say
throughout eternity?
Patient. I'm listening to it. It has a familiar sound.
It's the sound of high power wire vibrating with
electrical impulses. Ahigh, humming sound.
Doctor. I would suggest that you pay as much at-
tention to the sound as you can. Enter the
sound, become the sound. It may contain some-
thing very important.
Patient. I think part of its function is to carry
telephone messages. I almost heard some voices
I could understand.
Doctor. You are hearing some voices?
Patient. I heard very indistinct voices.
Doctor. In the sound?
Patient. No, the sound continued. It is as if it had
connected its circuit to a telephone switchboard
so that an occasional call would come into it.
Doctor. There's always a hum?
Patient. It's a pulsating hum.
Doctor. {Inaudible on tape,)
Patient. It's much too high. {Choral music on
record player in background.) {Long silence.)
I see the heavens opening up. The clouds puU
back and form a wide ring. And from the
ground, floating upward, are women with one
hand upraised, like somebody would hold up
their hand to be helped up a ladder. And they
are floating slowly up toward the peak of the
dome. Two of them are elderly, but they like
the feeling of floating upward in space to the
point that they forget the reason for this phe-
nomenon, and they start doing somersaults and
laughing and giggling and playing, enjoying
themselves instead of assuming a pose. There
are other people waving goodbye. I still haven't
heard the music. (Long silence.) I heard one
of the voices, but I couldn't catch the complete
sentence. The woman who was talking on the
phone was a farmer's wife with an unpleasant
voice.
Doctor. There's still a hum? Like an electric wire?
Patient. Or high speed.
Doctor, High-speed what?
Patient. I guess I am associating it with jet air-
liners.
Doctor. So it seems to suggest energy. Can you
say anything else about the energy? How it
feels? Aside from speed, are there any other
associations?
Patient. Power.
Doctor. Contained power?
Patient. Yes, very definitely contained.
Doctor. Inward? Like the essence of something?
Something very essential, latent, potential?
Patient. I can't say I am the power, because it is
a limited power; it is only a utility.
Doctor. How do you know?
Patient. Well, the setting it appears in . . tele- .
phone poles with wires strung between them.

Doctor. But it originally was a song of the three
women.
Patient. Yes, it was.
Doctor. The lion led you to a very beautiful
place. While listening to it . . .
Patient. It's a hymn, really, that they are singing.

Doctor. What words would you give to it to con-
vey the feeling of this hymn?
Patient. Praise God on the highest, or to the high-
est.
I would probably not have picked the image of a

sculptured lion as a starting point for a fantasy ex-
ploration had I not become aware before this particu-
lar session of the prominence of big cats in harmaline
experience, in the lore of South American shamanism,
and in mythology in general. The role of the Uon as
a guide to a domain of sacredness is not peculiar to the
episode quoted above, but is similar to the role that
the jaguar plays in the Indians' visions and that tigers
and snakes play in the visions of other subjects. Even
the association between the lion and the sun, indicated
in this sequence by its walking on the sun's picture
and also by its golden color, is a replica of South
American mythology, in which the jaguar is regarded
as the incarnation of solar energy.
The development of the sequence and the discussion
may be seen as a gradual unfolding of an experience
of power, jSrst petrified in a sculpture, then emanating
from the image as color and the expression of the lion
as ready to atttack, later meeting the observer as a live
animal, then a hungry animal, and finally perhaps
speaking to the subject through the ear rather than the
eye in the form of vibrating electrical impulses.
Still, we are left with the feeling of a certain lack.
Rich as the episode may be in meanings or mythical
overtones, the subject remains a detached observer, un-
related to the events in the dreamlike sequence by feel-
ings that go beyond the aesthetic. The image of the
lion, like a seed developing into a tree, has displayed
its contents, but this is still bound up in visual sym-
bols, much like a work of art which lies open to us
but which, according to our state of mind, may either
shake the foundations of our being or leave us cold.
It may have been noticed that many of my inter-
ventions were made to draw the subject's attention to
her own feelings— of which the vision may be assumed
to be the external indication and substitute. Yet the
response to these questions usually came through the
medium of a symbol. Asked, for instance, how she
felt about the lion's color, she felt that she was touch-
ing the warm fur of a live animal. Asked about her
feelings about being in the company of such an ani-
mal, she tried to understand its feelings and saw it en-
gage in movement (walking toward the jungle.) Asked
what she wanted from a lion, she -saw the children
climbing on its back. Her experience was projected
onto the screen of her fantasy, leaving her as a detached
and rather indifferent observer, and she had difficulty
in stepping into the action as a character. A way to
re-own the experience of her unacknowledged lion
nature might have been to enact the lion, stepping into
its skin to feel how it felt. But she was reluctant to do
this and would not even go through the moves of pr^
tending to be the lion or speaking in the first person
as it (him) rather than than oi it. The subject's ten-
dency to project her experience into the medium of
symbolic forms was expressed in a trait of her fantasy
which also exemplified a typical defense mechanism
in harmaline sessions —the abundance of art forms,
which made her fantasy the representation of repre-
sentations. The suggestive obelisk is merely granite,
though when she attended to it, it became a rocket;
the lion was a sculpture, a frieze in heraldic style; the
sun, a mosaic. The opposite of this would naturally
be an experience of interacting with beings perceived
as fully alive; one where aesthetic distance gives way to
some degree of forgetfulness of one's self as a person
lying on a couch and contemplating an illusion.
The following is an example of this type of experi-
ence, which I have always seen to be followed by posi-
tive therapeutic results:
We were face to face, the serpent with its open

mouth, menacing, trying to devour me, and my-
self, full of curiosity, trying to enter it without
being bitten. The solution to the problem was in-
stantaneous: I had to get in very fast —
so fast
that the serpent wouldn't be able to get me with
its fangs. Idea and action were simultaneous. In a
leap, I found myself inside the serpent. Of course,
this was a black tunnel with elastic walls, and I
saw nothing. (It seems the serpent had closed its
mouth.) I felt a horrible fear of never being able
to get out of it. But then I remembered that this
was a dream and that I could at any time go

through the walls — —
open my eyes and find my-
self in bed. Next, I considered that since I was
already there, I should find out what the serpent
contained, for I was absolutely sure that^ some-
thing was in it. I was still afraid, so I decided to
proceed as quickly as possible. I walked for a
while toward the tail, and suddenly there was
light. There was a grotto at the rear. It was sub-
terranean grotto, inside of which was a lake. The
water proceeded from a fountain and was very
pure and fresh. I felt an imperative need to go
into the water. I was very tired, and the water
was going to enliven me and especially purify me.
It also seemed that it was veay hot inside the
snake, so the freshness of the water left me with
an exquisite sensation. I entered the little lake
wearing a white robe; I saw myself, for I was at
the same time bathing and on the shore, looking
at myself while I bathed. The "I" that watched
had no body, but the one bathing felt very cold
after the initial pleasant sensation. I therefore left
the water; both of my "I"s became one, and I
returned through the tunnel to the snake's mouth.
I was afraid of being able to get out, but as I
reached the spot the serpent opened its mouth,
—
and with incredible speed to avoid being bitten
— I found myself in my bed.
This sequence is one of many in a session of great

therapeutic value, and it illustrates a trait common to
both. In every episode, the patient is the main charac-
ter of the story, and as things happen to her, she is
affected by them. Not only does she visualize herself
entering the serpent, but she identifies with her visual-
ized self and experiences her experiences to the extent
of forgetting that she is in her own bedroom having
a fantasy. She, the dreamer, feels curiosity, fear, and
delight, and finally feels that she has taken decisions,
surmounted obstacles, added something to her own
life. If we accept imagery as symbolic of unconscious
feelings and urges, we may regard experiences like the

one quoted above as interactions of a person with his
unconscious, and find in this the reason for their the-
rapeutic value. Moreover, it appears from the sessions
that every time confrontation with the unconscious
"other*' taies place, some integrative experience ensues
which is expressed in visual symbolism at the time (i.e.,
light and water of purification after facing the danger
of being destroyed).
Several factors seem to be involved in making this
type of experience possible. Some individuals appear
to be naturally more prone to it than others, and the
personality factors involved in this remain to be eluci-
dated. I think that mental health is one of them, but
definitely not the only one. I also have the impression
that mesomorphic somatotonics are more likely to have
a rich experience than cerebrotonic ectomorphs.
But beyond the question of individual diflferences,
training can prepare the ground for a fruitful harma-
line experience— ^training in the observation of mental
events, as is provided by most forms of psychotherapy,
and particularly training in active imagination. Iliis
particular patient had both, having been prepared for
the session by a period of analysis and several guided
daydreams.
In spite of the spontaneous unfolding of many
harmaUne experiences, such spontaniety most certainly
needs favorable conditions. TTiis was evidenced by the
unpleasant and unproductive sessions of two subjects
during the recording of electroencephalograms, as con-
trasted with productive and pleasant ones which they
had in the standard setting. Rapport with, and trust in,
the therapist also seem to play an important role,
since the persons with less meaningful experiences were,
on the whole, those who had communicated less dur-
ing the preparatory interviews.
I believe that one of the most important functions
of a therapist in a harmaline session is that of hstening.
Persons who volunteered for experimentation witii
harmaline, regardless of their personal interest in this
venture, were instructed to report what they were ex-
periencing, so that even when they kept quiet, they
tried to keep a mental record of their reactions in view
of making a report. I did some unsystematic experi-

mentation on the bearing of this attitude of intentional
watchfulness by not questioning the subjects at some
periods in their sessions, by walking into the next room
and telling them to spend the following half-hour as
they wished and not care about reporting this episode.
Also later, after the first thirty cases, I administered
harmaline to other subjects without the standard in-
struction stressing watchfulness, alertness, and the
prospect of a report. It is my impression that, under
these circumstances, less was remembered or less act-
ually took place in the person's mind — except in the
cases of persons who were left to themselves after hav-
ing arrived at what seemed to be a peak experience.
Conversely, when a highly productive level has not
been reached, it seems that watchfulness will lead to
it more easily than passive surrender. This watchful-
ness may be sustained through communication. I es-

pecially ask the subjects not to overlook reporting their
physical sensations, since their doing so stresses a state
of alertness, which counters the natural tendency to be
carried along lethargically and forget the harmaline
'dream," much as happens with nocturnal dreams. It
appears that the usefulness of harmaline is that of
bringing about an integration of the conscious and un-
conscious spheres by a facilitation of symbolic oneiric
processes in the wakeful state. If alertness slackens, un-
conscious life proceeds unconsciously as in natural
sleep or habitual "wakefulness."
There are instances in which imagery or feelings
flow so meaningfully and spontaneously that little or
no "coaching" is needed. Other cases illustrate how
some guidance can lead the person to the point where
such productiveness is reached. In the following ex-
ample it was the guided daydream which channeled
the subject's creativity into tiie visual sequence. This
procedure proved most fruitful in several instances as
a framework in which the person's feelings could be
translated, manipulated, and eventually interpreted. I
have generally adhered to DesoiUe's basic scheme of
ascent, flight, and descent into the ocean, since this
lends itself well to the expression of some basic atti-
tudes (effort and search, freedom, plun^ng into the
unknown) and, like the standard pictures of a projec-
tive test, it can give the psychotherapist some orienta-
tion on the person's individuality as contrasted with
that of others in developing the common theme.
The following is an account of a complete sequence.
The patient is a thirty-four-year-old man with marital
problems and an anxiety state of short duration.
Dr. N. tells me to imagine a mountain, which I

do easily . . . but I do not see it. The mountain is
not there, like the previous images, but I only
have the "idea" of a mountain in front of me.
And not in front of me, really, but in me.
I describe the mountain. It is a truncated cone,
very high, and of a blue-gray color. Strangely, if
I were to see it, it would be different from all the
mountains that I know.
I am asked to climb this mountain, and I see
(from here onward I shall speak of "seeing"
things, though the comment above continues to
hold true) a very high ladder and innumerable
men climbing it in a row, like ants.
and I do not go about it in the
I start climbing,
normal way, but on the side of the ladder, with
one of the side rails between my legs, placing one
foot in front and the other behind the rungs. I
feel the rung between my thighs, and this suggests
bicycle riding. Without any choice, there I am, on
a bicycle. Gone are the mountain, ladder, and
men. I am riding a bicycle in a street with a lot
of traffic. I feel that I am intermingling with
people and vehicles traveling at high speed. There
is great disorder. A
train going at hi^ speed ap-
pears, and heads toward a tunnel. In passing
through it, it tears off its concrete coating. Now
it is a train covered with concrete, like a giant
beetle, which goes on and on, penetrating every-

thing that is in its way, and going under the
bridges instead of over them. I would say that the
crazy engineer wants to go through every hole
that he finds.
But we must return to our mountain. Time now

proceeds at a normal tempo, the mad rush of the
previous scene being over. There are no other
men now, and I am getting to the top of the
mountain. The ladder is just as tall as the moun-
tain, so that, on grasping the last rung, I am
touching the very edge of the mountain top. This
edge is very fragile and breakable, so I find no
other solution then to enter with my whole body,
like a reptile. I say "enter," for the mountain is
hollow.
I am
deciding on the best way of descending
when strange beings appear, climbing the walls.
They are like giant rats with bulging eyes and
spider feet. They look at me and follow their way
to the top where they wander along the edge.
I am on my belly like a worm and I crawl
along. I have come down a considerable distance.
I cannot resist looking up at the place through
which I entered. It is almost a luminous spot, but
— looking downward from the opening I see —
myself! The descent goes on, and there is a Dan-
tesque sight. There is, at the bottom, a sea of
fire surrounded by a beach of white sand, which
encloses the fire hke a ring. The ground on which
I find myself is dry and rough. I do not know
how I came to be on the beach and on my feet.
I look at the sight. It is marvelous —a fiery sea.
What a strange mixture of water and fixe in which
water does not extinguish the fire and fire does
not evaporate the water. The fiery waves, break-
ing close to the beach and caressing it, turn to
crystalline fresh water.
I slowly draw closer. I can see the foam. I
touch it and enter the water. It is fresh, refresh-
ing, very refreshing.
I am instructed to approach the fire. I am
afraid of getting burned, though something tells
me that I will not be burned. I question my
rea-
sons for being in that mountain. Why am I here?
What am I here for? And I feel like returning.
Dr. N. then insists: "Try to enter the fire. After
all, if you happen to die that will be only an illus-
ion, and it may prove to be worthwhile."
I then continue to advance, and the water now
reaches my calves. It is now that I contact the
fire. Before breaking, one of the waves touches
my leg, and, far from burning me, it tickles me.
Soon I am swimming in the midst of the sea of
flames. I swim like a frog.
I was expecting it —
Dr. N. asks me to dive into
this sea of fire and see what is beneath. I do it,
and I feel myself swimming vigorously, head
down. I do not feel fire any longer, only water. I
do not need to breathe, and I could go on swim-
ming indefinitely. I try to reach the bottom, but
without success. I think of returning. The excuse
is the same: lack of incentive. But I am well into
all this, and it is not the time to worry. I must
get to the bottom.
The water pets clear, and now T dimly see the
bottom of the fiery sea. It is of white sand. I touch
it with mv hands. It is coarse. I am with my feet
on the sand, now, and I walk, half-floating. I see,

to the left, giant pearls (sixty centimeters in dia-
meter, approximately) which look wet, like they
were perspiring. There is no plant life. The sea
bottom is sterile.
To my right I see three naked women. Two
are white and the other black. Only black in
and they are
color, for their bodies are identical,
like one woman. The three have exceedingly
beautiful breasts. I feel instantly attracted and
would like to make love to her (or them?).
Once more, I am struck by the absence of
humidity on this sea bed, in spite of the fact that
it's all under the water. There is nothing that I
feel as wetness, that wetness that gives warmth

to things, which enhances their odor, and is to me
an expression of life. Though the pearls are wet,
I am not satisfied with them. I look for plant life,
green color, smell of earth or sand or wet grass,
and I do not find it.
To my right there is a young couple. He is lean-

ing on a gigantic slice of melon, which supports
his back or on which he half-sits. She is firmly at-
tached to his chest. Their mouths are united in a
tight kiss. He caresses her breasts and sex at the
same time with his hands. Their faces look com-
placent. She enjoys his hands, and he enjoys her
pleasure.
At once imagine making love on a great slice
I
of melon. No
doubt I have found the wetness I
was looking for. The wetness of a melon, of a
mouth, of a gigantic vagina. Why not enter? After
swimming in fire I think that there are many things
that I could do.
I enter into a dark cavity and touch its soft, wet
walls with my hands. I would say that the en-
closure caresses with an enveloping caress. I am
naked and feel the contact with my body.
At the end, there is a spiral stairway which
leads through tubes to the ovaries. I start climb-
ing, and tremendous excitement at being on
feel
the verge of knowing the place where life begins!
I have arrived, and I find myself in a spacious hall
where the color white predominates. Behind a
table there is a young lady in a white cloak and
wearing eyeglasses. She looks very serious. I dis-
like her. She is cold.
I ask her what she does, why she is there. I am
surprised to hear that she and a companion in a
similar hall are in charge of determining concep-
tions. I am aware of my own astounded express-
ion, but she does not notice. At my request, she
explains that people believe that conception is the
outcome of sexual intercourse. But such inter-
course is just an act of love, she says, and she is
in charge of controlling conception.
I inquire about the criterion or policy in such
decision-making, and she tells me that all con-
ceptions are registered in a big book, which is
something like a book of life.
I draw close to see it. It is extremely old, some^
what like an old Bible, with a pecuUar binding.
The book indicates all births, with nine-month
waiting period. It is not complete, but ends in
1892. The rest is blank pages. The last sentence
is: "And the day will come when man, with the
help of science and technology, will become his
own creator."
The place displeases me, and I decide to leave.
I try to descend the way I came up, by the spiral
staircase, but I do it through a narrow tube, fall-
ing at last in a giant womb. I bounce against its
walls, which look like rubber.

As my sight gets used to the dark I see big
erosions in the walls, half-healed gouges that have
been left by a huge curette. I feel that I am wit-
nessing the register of all the children who were
not bom.
One thing that can be noticed in this fantasy as —

in most —
is that many events in it would not have
taken place were it not for a specific direction to this

effect. Furthermore, the most significant episodes gene-
rally unfold only after meeting some resistance. Where
the dreamer would, left to himself, interrupt a sequence,
follow the most pleasant aspect of his imagination, or
be distracted, the therapist can press him to enter the
burning sea, to dive in spite of his initial lack of inter-
est, to meet the monsters, to knock at the door, all of
which involves increased interaction between his every-
day "I" and his other self, between his usual center of
consciousness and the symbolic presentation of his un-
conscious processes. In the case of this man, the dream
leads to an increasing expression of an urge for all that
he symbolizes as "wetness": sensuousness, sex, earthi-
ness, woman, love. A
peak is reached in the expression
of this theme with the fantasy of entering the womb,
after which a sudden change takes place from "wet-
ness" to frustrating "dryness."
I would advance the hypothesis that fantasies of the
wish-fulfillment type express the fact that a person is
accepting his own impulses, whereas self-defeating fan-
tasies are the expression of self-rejection in the form
of repression. In other words, the pleasure which gener-
ally accompanies a fantasy is not so much that which

arises from the imaginary fulfillment of a wish, as it
would appear, but that of self-acceptance, involved in
the acceptance of fulfillment.
In the present instance, the final episodes of the
patient's dream faithfully depicted his chronic state of
being and feelings and may be rightly regarded as a
regression from the previously experienced state of
inner freedom and fluency. Such a chronic state of be-
ing, nevertheless, was unconscious to the patient, in
that only unconsciously did he experience dissatisfac-
tion (i.e., as symptoms), while consciously developing
much resignation and even idealizing the postponement
of his spontaniety. Only after the episode in his harm-
aline session described above in which he felt all-spon-
taneous and all-himself was he able to sense the con-
trast between such openness and the sterility of his neat
and clean but artificial and self-rejecting way of going
about his ordinary life. Thus, he associated the abor-
tion scars, dryness, and texture of the womb in the last
part of his fantasy with the idea that his mother had
undergone abortions and with the thought that she had
considered an abortion at the time when she was preg-
nant with him. Even this thought, stemming from a
comment heard as a child, may have been no more than
a symbol itself for the final experience of not feeling
loved by his mother, which he had denied, but could
now no longer avoid acknowledging.
The conception-controlling nurses in the patient's
"dream" are hke an echo of his mother's attitude dur-
ing his childhood, during which time she continually
guarded him from imagined illness and dangers, sub-
jected him to restrictive diets and schedules. Her over-
protectiveness may further be indicated by the fact that
when she was told that her thirty-five-year-old son
would be undergoing the above-described session, she
sent me (a stranger to her) a detailed account of his
medical history since the time of his birth — a history
no different from that of an average child.
The patient had found himself a wife with many of
his mother's traits: intellectual, moraUstic, responsible,
polite, and sexually inhibited. He admired her and felt
guilty for not loving her more than he did. Yet he did
not find with her the depth of communication or in-
timacy which he later knew with another woman. For
four years, he felt unable to decide between his home
and his new love, and he felt continually more aware
of these alternatives as entailing a choice between
different sets of values. At a time when a choice had
become critical, he volunteered for the experiment in-
volving the cited harm aline session, in the hope that
this might give him a better understanding of himself
and thus help him in his decision.
After the session, the patient sensed that his mar-
riage had been to him a choice of "dryness," to which
he had been adhering out of a sense of duty but not
love. His wants now became more pressing, and his
demands on himself diminished. Indeed, five days after
the session he indulged in impulsive behavior which
had no precedent in him. He got drunk in the company
of friends and became violent, and then forgot the
whole incident.
One mi^ht speculate as to the effect that this excep-
tional reaction to an already exceptional state for the
patient (alcoholic intoxication) constituted an intui-
tively sought continuation of his harmaline session.
For the latter had set up the scenery, so to speak, of
his psychological state of affairs, but it still remained
for the patient to experience the violence of his
smothered self in face of the "antiseptic" nurse im-
planted in his soul as a chronic anti-life force. Com-
parable episodes did not occur after this explosion of
anger, and the patient continued to feel more like him-
self than he did before the session. Now he has been
living for four years with his second wife in what he
feels is his own style.
Some of the experiences undergone by persons during

their singleexposure to the effects of harmaline (as
has been seen so far in both the illustrations and com-
mentary) constitute a plunging of the mind into an
area of myth, transpersonal symbols, and archetypes,
and thus constitute an analogue to what is the essence
of initiation in many cultures. Typically, for instance,

the puberty ordeals are occasions when the young are
brought into contact (with or without drugs) with the
symbols, myths, or art works which summarize the
spiritual legacy of their culture's collective experience.
The attitude toward the world that is expressed by such
symbols is regarded as important to maturity and to
the order of life in the community, and for this reason
its transmission is reverently perpetuated, made the
object of initiations and of other rituals or feasts in
which the people renew their contact with, or aware-
ness of, this domain of existence, irrelevant to practical
life but central to the question of life's meaning. The
harmala-alkaloid-containing drinks of South American
Indians are not only employed in puberty rituals but
also in the initiation of the shamans, primitive psychia-
trists whose expertise in psychological phenomena is
revealed, for instance, in the fact that they are fre-
quently expected to understand the meaning of dreams.
Aside from the apparently therapeutic implications of
an initiatory process (understood as one of establishing
a connection between everyday consciousness and the
archetypal domain), we may be left, after considering
the sessions reported so far, with a feeling of incom-
pleteness.A process has been initiated, but then what?
A person has undergone a novel experience and
emerges from it with an enriched sense of selfhood,
the intimation of a connection with a deeper region of
himself, a more clear awareness of the noble and ar-
chaic animal within, and the taste of a greater spon-
taneity than he had heretofore known. All this is an
asset and may suffice to bring about changes in feel-
ings or symptomatic relief, to awaken new interests or
orient the individual in a decision, as shown above.
Yet most of the sessions that I have seen leave me
with the impression of my having witnessed no more
than the first act of a drama. Symbols may remain un-
deciphered, conflicts unresolved, events in the visual
display interrupted at crucial points. In the case of the
subject in our last illustration, the ending of the dream-
like sequence itself suggests the subject's defeat and the
incompleteness of his soul's journey, and we can imag-
ine his unacknowledged frustration as the motive be-
hind his alcoholic intoxication and his unexplained
outburst of anger.
All this suggests the desirability of an appropriate
context for the assimilation of the harmaline experi-
ence, which implies time for reflection in the days fol-
lowing a session, a certain freedom from excessive en-
vironmental constraints, and particularly the continu-
ity of the therapeutic contact. The question also natur-
ally arises as to the effect of a series of harmaline
experiences on the development of the themes, insights,
or feelings encountered in the first one. I have only
occasionally given harmaline more than once, but the
following case history, comprising a series of four
sessions, may illustrate both the nature of such an
evolution and the bearing of the sessions on cUnical
manifestations in the course of time.
This is the case of a twenty-five-year-old woman who
had undergone psychoanalytic therapy for a year and
a half with great gains in terms of her personality, but
with no improvement noted in the symptoms which
constituted her main reason for imdergoing treatment.
These consisted of intense anxiety, fear of dying or
fainting, and physical symptoms like suffocation and
paresthesia. These symptoms occurred especially in gray
city streets, less so in curved, irregular streets, or those
bordered by trees. She also experienced anxiety in
movie houses and would usually close her eyes when-
ever something unpleasant was to be expected in a film.
The phobia was preceded by a period of absent-
mindedness in the streets, during which she would
often go beyond her destination, either walking or by
bus. The closest associations to the feared situation in
analysis were episodes of danger during the war, when
she had actually been (with her parents) in open spaces
under aircraft fire and in areas under attack by bomb-
ing. Yet the symptoms developed many years later,
during her father's fatal illness. The exact relationship
between these two incidents had never become clear.
She had been very attached to her father, and also
shared his extreme violence. When she was a child,
he used to take her to the shore, and now that she was
grown up, the sight of a beach would put an end to

11 her anxiety and depression.
Much of the patient's first session with harmaline
took the form of a series of dreamlike sequences rich
in archetypal content. The image of a tiger was promi-
nent in these visions and constituted the very first of
them. "Floating spots like a tiger's eyes" were the first
symptoms of the drug's effect and then many tiger
faces. Panthers followed and all sorts of cats, black
and yellow, and then the tiger. This was a very large
Siberian tiger, and she knew (for she could read its
mind) that she must follow it. This she did several
times, but none of the scenes seemed complete. Still,
I "longing for the tiger" persisted in her. After an
ipisode (to be described) in which she met her father,
she intuitively knew that she was now ready to follow
the tiger, and this proved to be the case. Here is the
description of the last episode, in her own words. The
quotation begins at a pomt after she has followed the
animal to the edge of a plateau and is looking down
toward the abyss, which is hell. It is round and filled
with liquid fire or fluid gold. People swim in it.
The tiger wants me to go there. I don't know

how to descend. I grasp the tiger's tail, and he
jumps. Because of his musculature, the jump is
graceful and slow. The tiger swims in the liquid
fire as I sit on his back. I then suddenly see my
tiger eating up a woman. But no! It is not the
tiger. It isan animal with a crocodile's head and
the body of a fatter, larger animal with four feet
(though these weren't visible). All kinds of lizards
and frogs begin to appear now. And the pond
gradually turns into a greenish swamp of stagnant
water, though full of life: primitive forms of Hfe
such as algae, anemones, microoganisms, etcetera.
It is a prehistoric pond. Ashore appears, not
sandy but covered with vegetation. Some dinosaurs
are seen in the distance. I ride on the tiger on the
shore. The serpent follows us. It catches up with
us. I stand aside and let the tiger take care of her.
But the serpent is strong and my tiger is in danger.
I decide to take part in the fight. The serpent
notices my intention, lets go of the tiger, and pre-
pares to attack us. I hold its head and press on
its sides so that it will open its mouth. It has an
iron piece inside, like the bit of a horse. I press

on the ends of this bit, and the serpent dies or
disintegrates; it falls to pieces as if it were a
mechanical serpent. I go onward with the tiger. I
walk next to him, my arm over his neck. We climb
the high mountain. There is a zigzag path between
high bushes. We arrive. There is a crater. We wait
for some time, and there begins an enormous
eruption. The tiger tells me I must throw myself
into the crater. I am sad to leave my companion,
but I know that this last journey I must travel. I
throw myself into the fire that comes out of the
crater. I ascend with the flames toward the sky
and fly onward.
As I mentioned earlier, the journey related in thi

foregoing paragraphs was insinuated on many occas
ions early in the session, but could not be completec
before she confronted her father, and as soon as shi
did this, she at once knew that she was ready to fol
low the tiger. Yet it took some insistence on the ther
apist's part to lead the patient to the point of findin
—
her father the first personal image in an otherwis
anonymous array of dream characters.
I saw many faces, one after another, faces of

elderly, gray-haired gentlemen. But none resem-
bled my father. I finally set out to rebuild my
father's face, feature by feature. I first saw his
hair and forehead, then his nose, the mouth, and
finally the eyes and shape of the face. But still he
had no ears. In spite of my efforts, I was not able
to put them on. I finally decided that this was un-
important.
Then her father came alive and smiled, and she coul<
see his whole body. They embraced and kissed on th
mouth. The meeting took place in a tunnel which was

a place of communication between the living and the
dead. She told him she was in love and introduced
her fiance to him, with some fear. He approved, as he
was more affectionate than in real life. As he finally
withdrew toward the dark side of the tunnel, she wept.
On two occasions during this patient's session, I sug-
gested an exploration into her phobia of streets by con-
fronting such scenes in fantasy. The following descrip-
tion (prior to the one just quoted) tells, in her own
words, of the first attempt to cross the main avenue in
Santiago at a familiar and threatening spot:
I am standing on the Alameda at the corner of

Victoria-Subercaseaux. All is gray as on a foggy
day. I look toward the hill, and this is vaguely
green, but I do not discern colors very well. I
approach a little is there on the corner.
tree that
It is as if I wanted
protection. I reflect that I
its
may support myself on it if I don't feel well, and
I may thus avoid falling into the street. I get
ready to cross the Alameda. I look at the cars.
There is much traffic, and the cars go faster and
faster. Suddenly, this becomes a continuous row
of cars that looks like a train going at high speed.
There are faces in all the windows men, women, —
and children —and all of them look in my direc-
tion. Then this fades away, and the traffic be-
comes normal again. I wait for the green light,
and I cross, Because I feel
feeling very afraid.
afraid, I feel that I don't quite touch the ground
but float in the air. A
man approaches. He is
short and wears a brown overcoat and hat; his
complexion is dark and he has a mustache. A
typical Chilean face that can be seen in any street.
He says, "Good afternoon." I answer his greeting.
I vaguely sense that he is the man who assaulted
me in the elevator, even though I don't remem-
ber my assailant's face. I walk on toward Portugal
Avenue, but with effort, trying to avoid the ten-
dency to float. I stay close to the University walls
so that they can hold me in case I fall. I look to-
ward the palm trees and I see in the sky a pro-
cession of bishops — ^bishops in a line, all in cere-
monial dress, miters, and robes of white and gold,
all identical, with the face of Nehru.
Here the first dream fades away. The second at-

tempt took place toward the end of the session, after
the vision of hell. As she attempts to cross the Alameda
at the same spot, a crocodile falls from the sky.
It is a gray crocodile with a green design on its

back, and I believe it is plastic, since real ones are
not like this. I cross as far as the middle of the
street. Then traffic becomes very thick so that a
continuous line of cars passes at great speed on
each side going in opposite directions. I panic to
see myself running up the street together with the
cars and at the same speed. I think. "What a
crazy woman!" Only then do I realize that this
crazy woman is myself. This cannot be, so I force
myself back to the place where I was before I
ran. The lights soon changed, traffic stops, and I
walk with delicate calm to the other side of the
Alameda. There I walk toward the University.
—
People pass ûgly people, fat women, badly
dressed— and I feel that I have to look at all these
faces, ugly as they may be. I relate these to the
ones I saw in a previous dream. These were here
for me to look straight at, without fear and per-
haps without compassion. They were all ugly, un-
pleasant. I have always sought after beauty, light,
and harmony. But I realized that the beautiful and
the ugly were different aspects of a whole: that I
could not appreciate nor even know a part with-
out looking at the whole. That is, beauty without
ugliness loses its quality as such, its specific hue
which makes it unique and distinct, beautiful.
Again I looked at the faces of the persons cross-
ing. There was a man with a scar on his face as
if the flesh had been bitten out of his cheek or
his face burnt with an acid. I felt that I had to

look at those faces as I had had to look at the

ones in the previous dream.
have cited both sequences in spite of their similar-

I
ity,precisely because of the consistency that this re-
semblance indicates, where as a single piece of fantasy
might appear as a rather chaotic or arbitrary array of
images. In both, she experiences the familiar fear of
falling and the search for support (on the tree or the
walls). Yet her confrontation of fear in both leads to
—
unsuspected embodiments of danger the common-
place man resembling an assailant and the crocodile
falling from the sky. A crocodile became part of the
patient's fantasy in the later episode (already quoted),
which xmderlines its signijBcance in spite of its present
appearance as a lifeless plastic object. This appearance,
like the transformation of animals into toys or cartoons,
is a common process by which the mind protects itself
from the feelings potentially conveyed by some images.
Interestingly, the colors of this crocodile are very rele-
vant to her phobia: the gray of the avoided streets
(like the color of the sky from which it falls in this
fantasy) and the green of trees that make them toler-
able.
Like the crocodile and the human "aggressor," the
mad traffic in both episodes conveys violence which
the patient was not aware of fearing in the streets on the
occasions when she experienced anxiety and the ac-
companying physical symptoms. The dreams now con-
front her with faces she would normally avoid looking
at (and this session actually marked the end of her
avoidance of looking at the screen in the movies). Such
faces were later associated with war memories, and
precisely one — that of the man with a wounded cheek
— evoked the repressed memory of a wounded soldier
running in the street that had impressed her deeply
as a child.
The overall effect of this session was positive to the
patient in many ways, but her phobia persisted. There
was a change in the quality of her fear, though. Where-
as it had always been that of fainting or falling in the
street, it now took the form of a fear of aggression.
The wheels of trolley buses and truck noises seemed
menacing now, and for the first time she had
to her
fantasies of being attacked by a man with a knife.
Associations to the symptom in subsequent psycho-
analytic sessions were richer and included consideration
of the assailant mentioned above, which took place
when she was fourteen, and which she remembered,
but had never mentioned or seen as important in any
respect.
Two monthsafter the session quoted above and the
change symptoms, she was administered harm-
in her
aline for a second time, following which she wrote an
account from which I am quoting at length because of
its manifold interest.
I have great diflBculty reliving the experience.

I don't remember anything. I have only discon-
— —
nected images: the girl ^myself in front of the
church on a dusty road, myself at Communion,
receiving the Host from an invisible hand at a
grandiose altar.
I feel that I am going crazy. Something inside.
Indescribable. It is not anxiety. Not depression.
Yet something of both. Irritation, disorientation.
/ am dead. I still have to come back to life. Sex.
I cannot accept it. It is bad. I like it, I am bad. I
strongly feel that God and sex cannot go together.
I need God, and I am all sex. It is horrible. I
suspect that there must be some way of fitting
things together, but outside myself, not inside. I
am facing a reality of mine that I cannot accept.
I believe this makes me feel as I do.
I also knew yesterday why I couldn't go out in
the street. Not now. It escapes me. Now
I remem-
ber. I could cross the Alameda; I could do it at
the same spot at which I failed to do it in the
previous session. This was after the doctor left. /
crossed with all ease, dancing. The music was in-
side myself. The dress I wore was red, very tight,
glittering, with brilliant golden ornaments. But
this dress was my own skin. I crossed the Ala-
meda dancing, passing between the automobiles
without caring about anything. I enjoyed moving

my feet, happy to dance and be in the street. I
feit great pleasure in effecting every movement,
in being able to follow my own music. As I
crossed, there was a wreck in the middle of the
street. Several cars collided head-on and formed
a rising bouquet. I passed on without caring much.
I knew that there were probably dead people in
the accident, but I didn't care. Their time had
come, and things were just as they were. I knew
that I would die, too, some day, but this didn't
matter either, since that was the way it was. I
carried my skeleton inside since the time of my
conception. This is what I was: dance and death,
but all together. I was my death and my skeleton
alive, and dance with joy in crossing the street.
But I knew why I couldn't cross the streets,
why I couldn't walk in the streets, and this I have
forgotten now. It had to do with my being bad,
with death, with the wish to die, because I am
bad.
I want to die. Or I wanted to die. I was seek-
ing this instant —
a point, infinitely small, or a
fraction of time imperceptible in its brevity, the
moment of death, this extremely short bridge
where life and death touched, where the opposed,
contradictory, and disunited cease to exist. This
was the only way of uniting all my pieces. This
is the only way of finding, for an instant, har-
mony. The moment when one is neither alive nor
dead: in this moment one KNOWS. I don't know
of what knowing consists. It is not just knowing,
but knowing and understanding at the same time
• .
. It is the essence of life that matters, and the
only way of grasping it is in the moment of dy-
ing. Moreover, here the opposites disappear; God
and sex come together; they blend. All things are
one, the good and evil, beauty and ugliness.
The thing is that I had to die. Unknowingly, I
was seeking death. But without joy, with con-
sciousness. And something in me held me back.
Streets are death. It is so easy to die. Not that I
would deliberately throw myself under the wheels
of a car, or that I would step down from the curb
on purpose to do it. But it is as if the protective
mechanism would suddenly not work. I wouldn't
realize anything. This happened to me several
times before the onset of my phobia. I would
walk in the streets and suddenly realize that I had
walked for several blocks without knowing how
I had done so. And I would also, on occasion,
"wake up" in the middle of the street, surrounded
by terrible traflBc. At least once, I remember, I
was awakened by the cursing of a driver who had
to jam on his brakes to avoid running me over.
But there was a part of me that did not want
to die. It knew what was happening. This part of
me fought the skeleton, did not want to go into
the street, didn't want to risk. But this was the
bad part. Sex, perhaps? But was it really the bad
part? For it seems that one of the reasons I had
for dying was that of killing what was bad in me.
What is bad is sex, but sex is the only force that
can reunite my parts, give me unity, stick the flesh
onto the skeleton. Dancing is also sex. It doesn't
seem to be bad; it's what gives me life. But it
lacks an essential factor and an indispensable
catalyst —
God. How can God be brought into this
mess? Where has God been all this time?
The same happened with God as with the skel-
eton. He was originally within me, grew with me,
moved with me. The skeleton then disappeared,
had an external, metallic skeleton, with the
and I
wings of a jeweled butterfly. I had to find support
somewhere, and I got dry inside. I became en-
cysted in the butterfly. Its wings were like those
of a bat, and its joints made an unpleasant and
unharmonious metallic crack-crack. It is the same
with God. He came out of me. He became a re-
mote god, killed by the sadism of a maid, who
told me in fine detail how He was crucified,
crowned with thorns. I cried as she told me, and
as she was stimulated by my crying, she made
even more vivid the descriptions of the perfora-
tion of His side and the tearing of the skin in the
mouth of the Christ Child. (I don't know whether
it was due to my confusion or to the way in
which I heard this story that I thought thai it was

Jesus as a child that had been crucified.) Perhaps
my believing Him a small boy made crying and
feeling sorry for Him easier. Then came school.
And God now sat on a cloud, in a distant sky,
and wore a beard. And the eye within the triangle.
The eye that persecuted Cain. We were told about
thisbearded God on the cloud, that this is not how
He really was, and we weren't told anything else
about Him. But much was said about the eye in
the triangle. It was the eye of God, the most im-
portant, alive and active part, which was always
present, seeing us, watching us, the part that told
each of us how wicked we were and repeated it
second after second. And God, with His eye, was
a menace.
Then my mother's God. It had much of Allah
and a lot of class consciousness. Everything that
happened was God's will. Whatever one did would
not affect the way God had set things up. There-
fore, there was no reason to be affected, or an-
noyed, and no reason to seek. There was no way
of changing anything or doing anything. All was
predetermined by God, and destiny reigned over
everything. To rebel was a waste of time. More-
over, Jesus was not God. This was something to
satisfy the imagination of the people. But a "cul-
tivated" person didn't have to believe in Jesus'
divinity. Christ was not for the aristocrats, who
were bom mystics, who believed in God and felt
God from the time of their bu^. Christ was a
means of explaining God to the people, the vulgar
and stupid ones who needed religious precepts to
behave like human beings, or would otherwise lose
control and be in constant revolution. Yet my
mother, who did not believe in Christ, did believe
in about a half-dozen virgins and a long list of
saints.
Then came the processions in southern Italy.
We also at home, but ours were
had processions
beautiful, with many flowers and were followed
by fireworks. They were grand parties, when ev-
erybody rejoiced; delicious food was cooked in
all the houses, and special pastry was made which
was eaten only on the occasion of certain feasts.
Not in southern Italy. Nobody was gay there.
Those in the procession suffered and the on-
lookers, too. They wore hoods. Hooded old men
dressed in black sang sad songs out of tune. And
the people looked, tightly pressed against each
other, and cried. Women knelt down on the street,
others screamed hysterically, and not a few of
them fainted. This was a vindictive God, who
demanded blood for the blood He had shed. He
received all that shouting and theatrical suffering.
These events fasdnated me and caused me repug-
nance at the same time. God, my God, was not
in them. He was outside myself. Not a God of
love any more, but a butcher-God wanting vic-
tims, and I didn't want to be one of them.
Then came the Swiss-clock God. I had to study,
had to eat apples, had to go to Mass. Children's
Mass, at eight-fifteen in the morning. Not in the
afternoon, for this was laziness. Nobody asked me
whether I wanted to go to Mass. After my First
Communion, I had to ask for Communion
every
Sunday. I was asked, "Are you going to church?"
and this was an order more than a question, the
way I was asked, "Did you brush your teeth?"
(I hated it at this time.)
Then, distance.
An indefinite discomfort
Doubts. Preoccupation, always. But God was
very far away. God, lost. A wish to return. Now
and then. Communion. But then doubt again, in-
difference, and search. At last, God was buried.
It doesn't interest me. I don't see why I should
have to. And then came the symptoms. I cannot
enter a church. In the church is the eye. Really,
the eye is everywhere, watches and accuses the

children who don't behave.
All this was written on the day following that of

the harmaline experience, and the text shows the im-
portance of this effort. This is not the only instance
in which the process of expressing in written form the
content of a drug session is almost as significant as
the session itself. What is repressed is so repressed
that associations and feelings, if not images, may be
^forgotten" if they are not told. In this mstance, it is
particularly understandable that this might tend to
happen, as the session involved the discovery of al-
most intolerable which made her feel
guilt. It is this
at the beginning of her writing that she was going
crazy or titat she was dead. Yet this feeling changed
as she became aware of guilt as such, of the eye of
God that had persecuted her all through her life and
now lay buried in her unconscious. Yet this is a very
fragmentary report, she says, and it took her about
a month before she attempted to recapture more of the
experience. Some of this is contained in the following
paragraphs, which constitute a valuable document for
the psychology of religion:
After the ingestion of harmaline, I decided-

first
ly felt the God to justify death. Useless
need of
death, unnecessary death of those who die in tiie
wars, of those whose lives are left incomplete. I
believe that I can now see more clearly. I needed
to justify death in general and not just that of
those who died in war. And I think that, as I had
to justify death, what I finally had to justify is
the absurdity of a liuMted, finite life, where death
is implied.
I shall try to remember my thoughts after the
second harmaline experience. The only death
which could be justified was that of Christ. Each
one of us was responsible for making His death
something justifiable and not just one more useless
death. That is, the sacrifice of God's son was not
justified in itself. Every one of us could kill Oirist
—
once more or resurrect Him. And hence Com-
munion. This was a conscious, voluntary act show-
ing one's readiness to justify the death of Christ
justify it through profound respect and love to-
ward everything that lives, for in every living
being there lies a divine essence. This was a way
of partaking of a universal harmony. It was also
a way of resurrecting the Christ in the depths of
each one of us. But diere was also a more human
side in my longing for Communion. This was a
longing to be united in brotherhood to other beings
who professed this same love of Christ toward
living beings. It was a way of feeling less alone, a
way to belong in a group without any loss of
individuality.
Asthese lines show, a basic concern of the patient

after the second drug experience is that of accepting
the inevitability of her own death. Only at one point
during the session proper was she accepting it, as
she felt herself that red sensuous woman who danced
across the dangerous street. She "doesn't care" about
the dead and allows her own death, in an attitude of
seeing that "that's the way it is." She doesn't oppose
—
death as she doesn't oppose life she is definitely
sexual and takes delight in every movement of her
dance. In not opposing life or death, in allowing them
to be, beyond good and evil, she transcends life and
death. By letting them be, she becomes their embodi-
ment, as her dance is the embodiment of her inner
music. Yet aside from this moment, she is the battle-
ground of Eros and Thanatos. Her death wish answers
the demand of a God for whom sex is evil, that re-
vengeful God, thirsty for blood, at the processions in
southern Italy, whom she had buried in her mind and
avoided in churches. Yet she needs him, and she must
suffer his condemnation: "I need God, and I am all
sex." Not only did she feel guilty after the session, but
she became frigid and on occasion experienced during
sexual intercourse the same anxiety that she used to
feel in the street.
The patient's oneiric life became very rich in the
"
months that followed the session, and her dreams pre-

sented symbols first contemplated with harmaline or
their equivalents. One of the dreams reiterates the
ideas of dance, dark skin, and dissociation into two
persons that were part of the previous two experi-
ences and which reflects her present sexual guilt: "I
was two persons at the same time. One, naked, was a
Negro woman dancing, while the other watched in
horror."
The following dream shows a connection between
the sexual impulse and the tiger theme: "I was by a
swimming pool, letting myself be tanned by the sun.
My friend Alfredo appeared. Then I saw myself cov-
ered by a sort of tiger skin. Under that I wore a biki-
ni. He uncovered me. I said, 'No, Alfredo, cover me.'
*Why?' 'Because this way I look more naked.'
The patient's free association also underwent a
marked change during this period. Not only did she
display a greater prominence of sexual matter in her
thoughts, as in her dreams, but sexuality extended into
her memories, too, and for the first time she became
aware of a sexual aspect in her relationship with her
father. The scene in her first harmaline session when
she kissed her father on the mouth was a clue, which,
like a magnet, attracted unexamined memories. "I
loved my mother, and more than that," she once said,
"but my father was mine. He used to tell me that when
I was older we would go to Paris all by ourselves. He
kept his promise. I have the feeling that we were a
couple. We had a world of our own that we shared."
Yet the attachment and unconditional acceptance that
she expressed with regard to her father were in poi-
gnant contrast with the facts she remembered, which
presented the father as a very violent, arbitrary man
and suggested him as the source of her own uncon*
scious (now half-conscious) persecutor. The hostility
which she did not consciously experience or express
did speak through her dreams of that time, as it por-
trayed in the following scene:
"I dreamt about my father. It was in a basement
full of corpses. They were deformed, mutilated, killed
at war. This was something related to Warsaw. The
resistance of the ghetto. I walked over them, stepping
on them. I felt pleasure in their tortured condition. I
picked up a severed head and knew that it was my
father's. I felt that it was all right that he was dead."
Shortly after the time of this dream (four months
after her second harmaline experience), the patient
underwent another session, ^ and now, for the first time,
her feeling of guilt turned into resentment, frustration,
and sadness in confronting her father. The following
is one of the more expressive passages in my notes:
Doctor. What makes you cry?

Patient. I don't know. Everything.
I could cry for
days and days. I am not wicked. I have been
very lonely. I would have liked to have a little
brother or sister. I was never allowed to play
with anybody. My mother used to take me to
my granny's to play with my cousins, but al-
ways on the quiet and for a short time, because
my father would hit me and raise hell with her
if he knew. He didn't dare hit her, though. He
knew she was like a wild animal that could

literally kill him. I don't blame her at all. I
loved my eranny so much! But this brute of an
old man did not let me visit her. I had to lie,
and Iving was bad. And later he was surprised
that I couldn't stand other children. They were
strange creatures; they knew games whose exis-
tence I didn't even suspect. Perhaps I didn't
even conceive that there were games for chil-
dren! I hate this old man! He made her suffer
so, so much! And how good my mother was to
me! She was not bom to be caged, and this
old man fussed and fussed and fussed! About
stupid details. Why couldn't I visit my granny?
It was not that he didn't like them. I think he
felt jealous. He wanted me all for himself.
Doctor. And you gave him that exclusiveness?
3 On this occasion, 100 mg. of mescaline were added to 500
mg. of harmaline.
Patient. Later, yes. But I don't think I did. I had

no choice. War was at its peak, and I had no
choice but to be with them. But it was he who
took me everywhere. My mother didn't any
more. Perhaps she preferred not to, to avoid
fights. And these were always my fault. He
wouldn't let me drink water. Once he knew I
had drunk some, and he got angry with her. It
was my fault, but I had to drink water! He
shouted so much that I wanted to leave the
house . . .
He had so much life, so much energy, and

all of it went into idiocies. He didn't pursue
what he liked most, which was mathematics.
He is like a great absurdity. He has caused me
—
much harm, without being evil that is what's
sad.
It would not be possible to give a complete picture of

the patient's inner life and evolution without taking
considerably more space, but what has been presented
shows the progressive unfolding of insight brought
about by successive sessions and the nature of the
process that would eventually lead to a cure. The
action of harmaline here could very aptly be regarded
as "mind-manifesting" in that, like a developer on
photographic film, it successively made the patient
aware of her fear of destruction, her death wish be-
hind that fear, and the reasons for which she was
hating herself. One of these was sexual guilt deriving
from incestuous fantasies, but this, too, revealed itself
as a by-product of a very frustrating relationship with
her father, her need to win his love by all means, and
her unconscious surrender in the face of his jealousy
and possessiveness. More deeply lay her own hostiUty,
unsuspected by her but projected on crocodilian ag-
gressors and sustaining a basic feeling of personal
evilness.
Amonth after the last session, I left the country, but
the patient continued a self-analytic process which led
her to ever-increasing clarity. A
year later. I received
a letter from which I quote the following paragraphs:
Four days ago I went out and walked in the
streets. Why? don't know. What happened?
I A
beautiful day, and it was silly to stay at home. I
wanted to go out and I did. That is all. Simple,
wonderful, and absurd; after all the searching,
suffering, theories, and associations. A beautiful
day, and no more. I went out with my daughter.
This helped a lot. Holding the carriage gives me
some security. Furthermore, I am concerned with
her and not with phantoms. I am happy and afraid
at the same time. I feel that I have acquired some-
thing precious and fragile that can be spoiled or
evaporate at any moment. It is like having a new
tool and not knowing what to do with it. I have
gone out every day, each time a bit farther. But
the world already seems to me very small. And
furthermore, it is not a matter of walking, walk-
ing, and walking. I need some place to go. And
now as I write, I don't know what that place
might be.
I have fulfilled all my projects. (Do you re-
member? teaching, earning money to pay for my
own study.) My marriage is still a wonder of
non-communication. At this moment, John looks
at me as one might look at a time bomb. When
I told him that I was going out by myself, he
congratulated me dryly and then warned me to be
very careful, because I would develop other symp-
toms. In truth, I have had another symptom for
—
some time a severe headache in half of my
head. But this is very clear: I have it only when
I suppress my anger. And I prefer the headaches
to the phobia. I don't dare express my annoy-
ances because I feel my temper is too violent.
In spite of my symptom being over, I feel as
needful of therapy as ever. Not only do I fear a
relapse, but I am afraid of being normal (if any-
body can ever be called that). Now I know that
I can achieve what I want, for the barriers that I
placed in my way have vanished. But I don't
know what I want, and I am afraid of knowing. I
a

suspect that it is something bad. How
exciting! (I
notice that I am writing to myself.) I thought that
I did want to do something bad, but as soon as
I had the thought, the "bad" thing turned mto
something funny, childish.
This is turning into a written analytic session.
A frustrating one, too. I would like to tell you
other things: How
happy I am in spite of my
doubts and fears, how well I feel in spite of oc-
casional depressions, headaches, and stupid prob-
lems, how close I felt to you when I went out the
first time — I almost phoned you to tell you.
Four more years have elapsed now, showing that

the patient's symptomatic improvement was not a
transient state. Her problems at the time of this letter
are still those evidenced in her harmaline sessions —
difficulty in expressing her anger and a doubt of the
—
goodness of her spontaneity ^but these seem but a
shadow of her repression of hostiUty and her guilt
feelings at earlier stages in her treatment. She even-
:ually experienced further improvement as she realized
that her inability to express anger was related to an
idealized image of herself as a "good," loving person,
and she had been enslaved to this image instead of
daring to be herself, whatever her present limitations,
rhe process of healing cannot be considered complete,
>ut she is now much closer to the nature of that
tiger which served her as a guide in the first harmaline
experience, spontaneous and powerful, graceful and
knowing in the mysteries of life. Her evolution shows
the distance and effort that can mediate between the
presentation of any archetype in fantasy and its em-
bodiment, between the harmony and beauty conceived
and experienced as a projection in a dreamlike se-
quence and that experienced in everyday life. Some
elaboration seems to He between the two, in order that
given abstract insight obtained in the symbolic do-
nain may be recognized in the particulars of action,
JO that the "heaven" of a harmaline session may be
eventually translated into earthly terms.
The panorama of session reports in this chapter should,
I feel, give a fair idea of the specific domain of experi-
ences that harmaline is instrumental in opening up. To
speak of archetypes is relevant, but this does not cover
the complete range of reactions to the drug. Some
of them, as case reports show, may be quite "personal."
But something links these "personal" experiences oi
reminiscence, fantasy, or insight with those of the
"mythical" type: instinct. The most frequent themes
—
appearing in the content of harmaline visions tigerj
—
and Negroes are highly expressive images of the in-
stinctual, basic, and natural level of our existence, ii
both its aggressive and its sexual connotations. The
mythical type of vision is one in which the instinctua
forces are in order, and flow, we might say, in ac-
cordance with the cosmic design. The resulting picture
is one of beauty, for each element finds its place in the
whole, which is only enriched by conflict and destruc
tion.
In the non-mythical types of visions, aggression an<
sex appear as questionable or disruptive, and this
understandably, is more likely to happen the mor
the individual brings himself and his personal life int(
the scenario of visions. Only a person who is free fron
fear and guilt can see in his own life and circumstance
the same glow of the myth of fairy tale, in whic
every object suggests a hidden significance and stand
in its own right like a jewel. To this end, the abstrac
myth of a remote hero is like a blueprint, a map;
it is like a medium that conveys a certain attitude ths
can be carried over into the contemplation of

events. Needless to say, none of the patients cited
this chapter has fully attained such a goal.
I want to end this chapter by pointing out thai
useful as pure harmaline can be in psychotherapy, th
therapist employing the drug should always keep i
mind the fact that some individuals are rattier unsus
ceptible to its psychological effects. As was mentione
earlier, some of them may have no more than a phy
sical reaction to the drug, an unpleasant state
malaise, somnolence, and vomiting that is most prob
ably the result of a conversion reaction.
Early in our work with harmaline, we formed the
mpression that these "untoward reactions" (consist-
ng of a lack of psychological effects and the presence
of physical distress) were most likely to occur in indi-
viduals who feel comparatively ill-at-ease in their ani-
mal level of existence, which it is the drug's virtue to
lay bare. If it were true that a poor or unpleasant
reaction was the consequence of a desperate though
unconscious attempt to inhibit that which harmaline
stimulates, it would be conceivable that this might be
obviated by another drug.
First I thought of mescaline, both in view of the
condition of self-acceptance which it can bring about
and the fact that one of the admixtures in the native
Amazonian ayahuasca drink has been proved to con-
tain DMT. 4 Small doses of mescaline indeed proved
to increase productivity and diminish the unpleasant-
ness that the experience has for some subjects. Yet
mescaline has effects of its own, which may not be
desirable in a given case. MDA, on the other hand,
proved to have the properties of an ideal admixture.
The feeling-enhancing quality of MDA facilitates the
decoding of visual imagery into direct experience; its
amphetamine-like quality serves to counteract the
somnolence induced by pure harmahne, and its stimu-
lation of the drive toward interpersonal contact and
communication opposes the tendency to withdraw that
leads some subjects into a dreamlike state, the content
of which they cannot recapture.
The effects of the drug combination seem to be
more than a summation of their properties in isolation,
however. In the first place, the duration of the harma-
line-MDA experience is much longer, averaging twelve
hours. Qualitatively, there can be differences that I
will not go into, since their chnical importance is slight.
Yet there is one particular type of reaction which,
uncommon as it is, deserves special mention, both as
a warnin g and a reassurance. This is a state of con-
^F. A.Hochstein and A. M. Paradies, "Alkaloids of

Caapi and Prestonia Amazonicum," Journal of the
Janisteria
American Chemical Society 79: 5735 (1957). DMT: N,N-
iimethyl tryptamine.
fusion and great excitement in which a person may
talk to dream companions and thrash around — even
risking getting bruised against the walls or furniture.
It would seem that the aggression that usually emerges
in harmaline experiences in the symbolic guise of ani-
mals or other fantasies is here released in a physical
way, though still in a fantasy world of delirium. I have
seen this occur twice (in about thirty sessions), the
reaction being followed in both instances by amnesia.
Alarming as these sessions were at the time, however,
they proved to be extremely beneficial to the patients
for reasons which can only be a matter of speculation.
In one instance, the patient was a shy and inhibited
young woman who, early in her session, started scream-
ing at her absent mother all that she had withheld from
expressing and from feeling toward her. Soon her
speech became confused, and interaction with her was
almost impossible. She kept playing the parts of some
dialogue, which was increasingly hard to follow because
of her mumbling. Still, it was obvious that the direct,
energetic person that she became at that moment was
the opposite of her shy and depressed ordinary self.
When she recovered, she was somewhat bruised from
rolling on the floor, but her voice and style of move-
ment had changed, retaining some of the assertiveness
that she lacked in life, but had displayed in her in-
toxicated state. Not only was this change enduring, but
it carried over into her feelings and decisions. In this
particular case, the patient had experienced moments

of exceptional freedom under the effects of LSD in a
non-therapeutic setting, and this freedom had not car-
ried over into her life. On this occasion, though, when
she did not even remember what she had felt and said,
her temporary loss of control proved to be a life-
changing catharsis.
The other case was similar in essence: that of a
frigid woman with mildly compulsive character style,
who rolled about and talked for hours without remem-
bering her experience, but who came out of her session
greatly refreshed and with a capacity for sensuous
enjoyment unknown to her before.
In mentioning these two experiences, I want to share
a sense of trust with which I have been left after the

initial —
worry a trust which, I believe, may be bene-
ficial for other patients to be surrounded with in sim-
ilar situations. We psychiatrists are prone to ût great
faith in the value of verbal expression and tend to
underrate the value of motoric expression as displayed
by these patients, calling it ]ust psychomotor excite-
ment. Though pure instances of this, like the above,
are rare, I think they are important to know of, be-
cause of the light they shed on the non-verbal dimen-
sion of every drug experience, if not every therapeutic
session.
CHAPTER V
IBOGAINE:
FANTASY AND REALITY
Ibogaine is one of the twelve alkaloids obtained from

the root of the plant Tabernanthe iboga found in West
Africa. From vague reports as to its local use in the
Congo, it was believed to be mainly a stimulant, and
it is as such that it is mentioned in De Ropp's Drugs
and the Mind. It is a stimulant, too, that iboga extract

was introduced into French medicine several decades
ago.i
In July 1966 I presented, at the conference on
psychedelic substances organized in San Francisco by
Richard Baker (Roshi) for the University of Cali-
fornia, a report on my initial work with the alkaloid
as an adjunct to psychotherapy, which described the
hallucinogenic effects of the higher doses of ibogaine.
Since then, it has been used in a similar context by an
increasing number of psychiatrists, mostly in South
America.
For the writing of the present account, I have
examined notes from forty therapeutic sessions with
thirty patients, in which I used either ibogaine or total
iboga extract, plus ten sessions with a different group,
in which I used iboga extract in conjunction with one
or another amphetamine. In my general statements,
iGershon's finding that ibogaine is an inhibitor of MAO

(monoamine oxidase) explains its classic use and shows that
it was the first antidepressant of this kind in official medicine,
much before the advent of iproniazide, Tofranil, and so on.

171
I am also drawing upon a wider experience not doc-
umented by notes which I could use for statistics. This
is partly direct experience with additional patients and
partly information amassed in clinical meetings with
my colleagues at the University of Chile. I estimate the
total number of treatments which I have either wit-
nessed or known indirectly to be approximately one
hundred.
As to physical effects, neither ibogaine nor the
harmala alkaloids cause dilation of the pupils or a
rise in blood pressure, as is the case with the LSD-like
hallucinogens or the amphetamine derivatives MDA
and MMDA. Ibogaine also resembles harmaline in
that it elicits a disturbance in body balance and vom-
iting more often than any other mind-affecting chem-
ical aside from alcohol.
In view of the high incidence of these symptoms, it
is advisable to administer the drug when the patient
has an empty stomach, and not to use more than 4

mg. per kilogram of body weight on a first session,
I find that the optimal dosage may range from 3 to
5 mg. per kilogram, depending on the individual's sen-
sitivity to the drug. 2 Dramamine may also be used as
a preventive for vomiting, either in a first session or
thereafter, if the subject is already known to react
with vomiting.
Acomfortable couch or bed must be considered part
of the setting for the treatment, for most patients want
to lie down during the first few hours, or even through-
out most of their session, and feel nauseated when they
get up or move. However, others feel the desire to
move or even dance at some point in the session (35
2 With such dosages taken orally in a gelatin capsule, the
symptoms become manifest about forty-five to sixty minutes
after ingestion. These may extend from eight to twelve hours,
and some patients have reported subjective after-effects even
twenty-four (20 per cent), thirty-six (15 per cent), or more
(5 per cent) hours later. Yet even in such instances, the patient
is usually able to function normally after six to eight hours
from the beginning of the effects. In the majority of instances,
I have ended the therapeutic session in seven hours or less,
leaving the patient in congenial company.
Ibogaine: Fantasy and Reality 173
per cent in my data), and this may prove a very sig-

nificant aspect of their experience — as will be elabor-
rated upon later. For this reason, some degree of space
to move about is desirable.
Proceeding to the subjective domain, one finds some
^milarity bêen the content of experiences elicited
with ibogaine and those typical of harmaline, although
it is in this sphere, too, that the specificity of each be-
comes most noticeable. In broad terms, it can be said
that archetypal contents and animals are prominent
among the visions produced by both, and the actions
involved in the plot of dreamlike sequences frequently
involve destruction or sexuality.
In spite of the similarity pointed out between ibogaine
and harmaHne, there are specificities of tiie former that
give it a place of its own in psychotherapy. Ibogaine
elicits a less purely visual-symbolic experience than
harmaline. With no drug have I witnessed such fre-
quent explosions of rage as with this particular one.
Aggressicm is a frequent theme in harmaline experi-
ences, but there it is portrayed only in visual symbols.
TMA, which has been reported to release hostility, is
in my experience characterized by a delusional state
where hostility is expressed more as paranoid thoughts
than as actual feeling. With ibogaine, anger is not
directed (I would say transferred, in ttie psychoana-
lytic sense) to the present situation but, rather, to
persons or situations in the patient's past, toward whom
and by which it was originally aroused. This is in
accord with tiie general tendency for the person under
ibogaine to become concerned with childhood remini-
scences and fantasies.
The salience of animals, primitiyes, sexual themes,
and aggression in ibogaine and harmaline experiences
would justify regarding them as drugs that bring out
the instinctual side of the psyche. This stressing of
man-theânimal contrasts widi the effect of the airy or
ethereal "psychedelics," which bring out man-the-god
or man-tiie-<levil, and with man-centered drugs like
MDA orMMDA, which lead the person to focus on
his individuality and relationship with pthers.
Aside from differences in the quality of the ibogaine
experience, there are differences in content: a less
purely archetypal content, more childhood imagery, and
certain themes that appear to be specific to the mental
state evoked by the alkaloid —^notably fantasies of
fountains, tubes, and marshy creatures. The reader
will appreciate this specificity throughout the clinical
illustrations on the following pages.
The first case report that I am presenting consists of
the description of a complete sesaon. The variety
of episodes in it may serve as a condensed panorama of
the drug's possible types of effects and lead us to
a consideration of how these may be pertinent to psy-
chotherapy.
The subject of this illustration is a physician in psy-
chiatric training whose interest in a therapeutic en-
counter arose out of a sense of lack of contact with
others and of not givmg his whole being to his love
life, his work, or his (kîngs in general. "I feel that
much in me is automatic and that what I do is worth-
less," he said. "I would like my contact with others
to be more from center to center.'*
In preparation for the session with ibogaine, he had
undergone four Gest^dt therapy sessions and complied
with tiie request for a written autobiography. Forty-
five minutes after the ingestion, he reported a great
relaxation and a desire to lie down. He did so, folding
his arms and legs and closing his eyes, while he listened
to a record that he had brought with him. Every note
in the music was dear and forceful in a way he had
never heard before.
When he opened his eyes, he was surprised by the
beauty and richness in detail of objects in the room,
which he had not noticed before. Looking at photo-
graphs in the Family of Man book, which lay next to
tiie couch, he had insights both into the significance of
the scenes and into his own attitudes. After this, he
felt like lying again, and when he closed his
down
eyes he had a fantasy of his father making faces as if
in a game, with a contented smile. He commented that
this is how the expression of his father must have ap-
peared to him as a small boy. But then the expression
turned into a contortion of great rage. He visualized
a naked woman with round hips hiding her face with

her arms, and then his father, dso naked, falling upon
her to penetrate her. He sensed controlled rage in the
woman, whom he now identified as his mother.
I chose this sequence as a starting point for a the-
rapeutic procedure and asked the subject to have these
characters talks to each odier. This is a means of
bringing out the latent content of the images, so that
it becomes conscious and explicit. "What does she
say?"-—"Go away-"—"What does he feel?" He could

not ima^ne that. "Maybe perplexity," he suggested.
This was an appropriate moment to take another step
in the same direction, that is, to unfold and bring into
the spheres of feeling and action the meaning that is
packed in the fantasy. "Be your fatiier, now," I said.
^Become him to the best of your dramatic ability and
hear what she has said to you." He now found him-
self able to impersonate his father and felt, not per-
plexity, but great sorrow, suffering, and anger in the
face of rejection. He wrote down on the following day:
*I see my motiier as hard, with no affection and afraid,
and I no longer regard my father as that insensitive
being who hurts her with his love affairs, but as some-
body who wants to open the gate of her love without
succeeding. Yet I feel compassion toward my mother."
There followed a fantasy of being licked by a lion,
and then a lioness bit his genitals off, leaving him as
a lifeless doll. At this point, he left the couch, walked
around, went into the garden, where everything looked
to him "as if it existed for tiie first time." He went
back to the room, put Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring
on the record player, and with tiie very first notes felt
drawn to move, specifically his hands.
This is how he later describes the experience: "I
gradually surrendered to the rhythm so that I soon
found myself dancing like someone possessed. I felt
balanced, expressive, and above all, myself. At one
point, I saw myself in the mirror and noticed a con-
ventional movement of the hands which did not stem
from the music. I rejected it at once. When one side
of the record was over, I turned it over and went on
dancing. I felt no fatigue, and movement gave me great
pleasure."
After the dancing, I proposed that we work on a
dream, which I shall not describe, though it was im-
portant in giving him a greater sense of his own worth.
Following the dream, he looked at family photographs
that he had brought along with him and which helped
to clarify more of his relationship to his father and
mother. Four hours after the initial symptoms occurred,
he felt that much of the eflfect of the ibogaine had worn
off. He talked to some friends who came over. "Some
faces I saw as very beautiful and expressive," he re-
ported later. "Others I saw as distant, fearful, and
these did not show their beauty, but hid it behind the
fear." This perceptiveness of tide masks people wear,
as he puts it, went on through the next day.
After the session, the subject felt that the experience
had been valuable to him in several ways. After a
month, he pointed out different aspects of his life in
which he sensed improvement To one of these he re-
fers in the following terms:
Afineness of perception, a revelation of the

true or genuine— a knowledge that there are false
and incomplete things in the world, human atti-
tudes that are not whole, experiences that are
watered down, works that are half-works. I now
feel the need to go beyond this. And I acknow-
ledge aggression as a means of going beyond.
This may be the place to mention that, in spite of

the subject's wish to imdergo the experience, he could
have been described as a contented, easygoing, passive
viscerotonic, but now presents himself as more striving,
active, and firm.
Another benefit of the session he reports is a clari-
fication of his family relationships. He now felt that
he could see his parents as they really are; he became
aware of how "castrating" the relationship with his
mother had been.
As a third gain from the experience, he cites the
knowledge or awareness of the body as a means of
Ibogaine: Fantasy and Reality 1 77
it became apparent to him in the danc-

expression, as
ing. "Itwas important for me to know," he says, "that
there are movements of mine that are not mine but
borrowed, used in view of ends, but not emanating
from an inner being." This awareness of a distinction
between that which stems from his "inner being" and
that which is not really his seems to be the same as
that of the difference between what is genuine or not
in other domains, and which is the source of his new
longmg for greater depth in experience, action, and re-
lationships. It is also related to what he regards as an-
other area of progress, which is an enduring awareness
of "masks" — ^*'an awareness of how faces are manip-
ulated, and how behind the masks there is fear."

Finally, the subject has discovered both a lack in
his experience of the religious and the fact that what
he uscii to regard as his religious problems were only
imaginary.
To this it must be added that the subject had been
a devout and rather proselytizing Catholic, raised in a
religious school, and a member of several religious
organizations. To persons who knew him well, and to
myself, much of his religiosity seemed conventional, and
some problems which he labeled "religious" involved
the decision of accepting or rejecting a dogmatic reli-
gious authority, It is noteworthy that his insight into
tiie distinction between such concepts of religion and
religious experience proper was not brought about by
the discussion of his life and problems, but spontane-
ously elicited while looking at the photographs in the
Family of Man collection, where he found one of a
Buddhist monk praying witii true devotion and another
of a man kneeling out of idolatrous respect for the
religious authority.
ITie session that I have briefly recounted shows a
variety of situations which have been sources of in-
sight and therapeutic benefit: relaxing, dancing, look-
ing at objects and people, looking at photographs,
acting out fantasies, working on a dream, a guided
reverie. All these are possible domains for self-unfold-
ing and discovery or for more elaborate psychothera-
peutic procedures. In the case of this particular person,
—
we find that it is of his contact with the external world
that we can more appropriately speak in terms of self-
mifolding, 5d/-expression, ê//-discovery. In fact, his
basic experience was, in dancing, that of his own style
and his own movements; looking at external objects
or persons led him to a discovery of the truth of thmgs
by means of the use of his own eyes, whose function-
ing he had, in a way, been holding in abeyance. The
fantasy, however, had a different experiential quality.
The sexual scene where his mother rejects his father,
or that of the castrating lioness, or the dream sequence,
which I have omitted for the sake of brevity, express
his psychopathology rather than his sanity and his frag-
mented personality rather than his "self/' Whereas
life may be the best psychotherapist in the moments
when it is flowing at its natural, undistorted rh3rthm,
this is not the case in those moments when the person's
sub-selves are in conflict. It is here that the psycho-
therapist finds his proper element. Here, his function
like tiiat of the Eskimo shaman — îs that of finding lost
souls. Accordingly, it is with the darker sides of the

ibogayie experiences that most of this chapter will deal.
Yet before moving mto that domain, we must con-
sider the most typical form of the ibogaine peak ex-
perience, which is precisely the kind that the subject
in the illustration above did not display. Whereas in
his case — ^probably due to his being an extrovert — ît
was his contact with the external world that was per-
meated with peak-experience characteristics, for others
it is the symbolic medium of imagery that reflects such
a quality, assuming forms of great beauty and signifi-

cance or the half-veiled meaningfulness of myth. This
is the realm of archetypal experience, if we take the
expression in its more common meaning, which stresses
the visual medium of representation. Particularly from
my experience in working with ibogaine, thou^, I
think that the essence of an archetype is not the visual
symbol but the experience that the latter conveys, and
this experience may just as well find a motoric form
of expression (dance, rituals) and be projected upon
the perception of the external world. This was the case
in owe patient's perception of things, "as if they had
just been created," his feeling of communication with

the selfhood of other persons beyond their masks, and,
in looking at photographs, his proneness to see each
gesture as a symbol and embodiment of a transcendent
intention or, on the contrary, as remarkable for its
meaninglessness. Whatever the validity of speaking of
archetvpal perception, movement, thinking, or relating,
as well as archetypal imagining, the latter is a distinct
psychological event which has been part of the experi-
ence, either fleetingly or throughout much of the ses-
sion, of about half the persons that took ibogaine. The
following are quotations from a retrospective account
given by one such subject:
I see BLUE, blue, blue. I am on the floor, but

with the body upright. I can rotate easily all the
way round in a sitting position. All is blue . . .
blue •Everything is beautiful. I extend my arm

. .
and as I turn I draw a circle around me. I am

sitting on the floor, and I draw a white circle
around me in this turquoise-blue atmosphere in
which I float. I then draw with my hand a smaller
white circle while I look upward. I am entirely
surrounded by this blue atmosphere in which I see
a white circle around me and a smaller circle
above . . . White, too. This atmosphere is dense.
I try to look through my upper circle ... a peri-
scope? What is there? A
ray of clear light is be-
ing formed in this dense blue atmosphere. It is
becoming a shaft of light. I look, look through
my white circle, look, and more light is coming
into this tube, more white li^t, more and more,
with blindmg and filling force, and always more.
And more, and more. I look througji that ray of
white light and / know that He is there, He, and
. . and that light, that tube, that immense white
.
ray beyond is blue, blue, BLUE! (And this is a

different blue from that of the first time.) This is
a pure, clean blue, transparent, eternal, infinite,
serene, that goes upward, that is the ALL! White-
blue that is distance with no physics, enormity
with no measure, Universe devoid of laws.
It was
God. was God. God. God.
It
This was unexpected. I wept. I weep now and
every time I remember. I withdraw to remember
and weep.
Nothingness again. I feel fullness in relaxation
as after a great pain. I am on the floor again and
I hear tiie music from the radio with fast rhythms.
Now it is my that responds, not my mind
body
or spirit. I feel I am a puppy. I am surrounded
by other puppies and play with them. I hear their
sweet barking. Then I believe I am a cat no! . . .
I am a pony! I gallop. Now I am something like

a tiger . . like ... I am a panther!
. black A
panSier! I defend myself, I back up I breathe
forcefully with a panther's breathhig, feline's
breathing! I move as a panther, my eyes are a
panther's, and I can see my whiskers. I growl,
and I bite. I react as a panther that defends itself
and attacks.
Now I hear drums. I dance. My joints are gears,
hinges, nuts. I can be a knee, a bolt, I can be any-
thing, almost everything. And get lost again in
that chaos of nothingness and sensations tiiat re-
late to abstract ideas with vague and changmg
forms, where there is the intuition of the truth of
everjrtihing and an Order which one is about to
discover.
And toward the end of the s^sion, four hours later:
Again into nothingness. Tiredness. I am on my

knees on the floor, my hands on the rug, my head
hanging. I feel the wave coming again, the dizzi-
ness taking possession of me. I press into the floor
... I am on a lid ... a great wheel that is also
a lid, and I must open it! I strain to the limit to
make it turn, grabbing tiie spokes. The lid turns,
gyrates. Suddenly I find myself under it, on a big
wheel with spokes and spaces between. There is
a thick axle at the center which seems to unite it
to the lid, and also goes further under the wheel
I am on. How
have I fallen in here? I cannot
explain. I did not realize when I feU ... I must
get out of here. ... I must get out! Going up is
impossible. It must be down. Through the bars I
see a deep darkness. It must be down. Through
that tube of emptiness ... It doesn't matter ... I
must get out of here, away from this wheel that
is suspended m
this tunnel with no walls. Perhaps
through the mechanism of the axle ... I know
that tiEis wheel can go up and down. Desperately,
I seek among the parts of the mechanism. I hear
the doctor's voice telling me: ''You be the axle.'^
Surprise. I begm to feel like the axle. Steely, hajrd,
turning, turning, turning, with a noise. I am the
axlp for hours, hours . . . There is no time, bemg
the axle. I turn and make a noise. I turn, I turn,
I turn ... I feel that I am lifting my right-hand
axle, which turns. I rise slowly to the limit of
stretching —
always an axle. My
hand then moves
forward. I have a dagger in my hand, and I am
going to I am going to kill! I step forward
kill!
to kill. am going to loll a ... a ... a ..
I .
a mummy! How horrible it is! It is a mummified

corpse of a woman, dry, with a brown leather-
like skm, and she has a bandage over her eyes!
and she has a smile that is gruesome and sweet,
as if she were having sweet dreams or listening
ironically to what is going on. I sink my dagger
into her twice. I feel that she rips like leather. I
feel dirty, absurd ...
These excerpts are raou^ to show several of the

motifs that are characteristic of ibogaine imagery: light
(and particularly its white and blue colors), animals
(and more specifically the feline ones), rotating motion
and circular shapes, and the tube. The latter, in the
present context, appears to be linked to the image of
darkness, downward movement and enclosure, consti-
tuting a complex that is the polar opposite of that of
the beam of white light from above, and tiie sense of
freedom implicit in &e beguming scenes. Later on in
this chapter, I shall explain in great detail how the
—
image of the tube may play an important role in ibo-
gaine sessions, and had I had more experience in this
matter at the time, I would have waited for the com-
pletion of the descent which the patient was already
envisaging, and probably encouraged him to fall into
the darkness. Yet the outcome of this particular epi-
—
sode ^the sudden outburst of aggression taMng place
at the end — also illustrates a frequent trait of ibogaine
experiences, and I suspect a partial therapeutic break-
through. Such hostility might be understood as the polar
opposite to the feeling of enclosure in the previous
imare, which I have often seen as its antecedent in
other instances — either in the form of imagery, as a
feeling of restraint, lack of freedom, heavy apatiiy, or
as a physical sensation of being held in and limited in
the body. I feel drawn to interpret such experiences as
an inward-turning and paralysis of the aggressive poten-
tial in the personality, which, once directed toward its
natural target outside, leads to feelings of relief, free-
dom, and power. In this instance, however, the patient's
guilt after stabbing the munmiy with his knife is far
from such relief and tells us that he has withdrawn
again, still not feeling free vis-^-vis this female presence
in his inner world.
One might wonder what relevance an experience as
impersonal as this one mav have to the therapeutic
endeavor, and more generally to a person's feelings or
behavior "in the worid/' In the present instance, the
subject feels no doubt:
In my daily life, I kept discovering such im-

portant little details. Everything that I said had a
transcendence, a simple and true reality, an im-
portance in terms of sincerity that it has even to-
day and will continue to have tomorrow. I did
not react in the normal way to things, but ma
way that was . emotional? No sensitive. I did
. .
not talk vaguely, but directly to the point, and

made wise decisions.
This first repercussion of the session might be under-

stood as a carry-over of an archetypal mode of per-
caption into everyday life — ^not in the literal sense of

hallucinating, but in tihe sense of seeing ordinary words
and actions as instances of more universal meanings.
Even five months later, he thought that his judgments
of personal situations, aesthetic matters, and everyday
issues felt to him "more whole" than before.
Another effect of the session was on his mood. His
description of it was "spiritual tranquillity." He had
been prone to feeling rushed most of the time, anxious
about the expending of time and effort; now he speaks
of "a peacefulness at the certainty that the whole
world, of which I am a spectator and a part, is ex-
perientially within myself, and is not something remote
or mysterious."
^ his relation to others, the after-effect was one of
increased empathy, resulting from his own enhanced
introspection. Four months after the session he says:
'I saw that I had so many parts, and to each there was
a litfle whole. And I saw that the rest of the people

were the same. There was^ such intensity of human
contact in those days! I saw myself in every attitude of
others toward what interested them. I did not identify
with them as a whole, but I understood them from
within."
I have not seen that an experience of archetypal
content necessarily brings about the consequences that
this particular one did. Both ibogaine and harmaline
may elicit mythical, dreamlike sequences that are con-
templated with littie emotional involvement, the out-
come of such sessions being no different from what we
might expect from exposure to a film of similar content.
The experience described above, though, differed from
the passive contemplation of a film in the definite par-
ticipation of the subject in each of the scenes. He was
the recipient of the li^t, it was he who turned into
animals or mechanical parts, and whUe he saw himself
on the circular lid and tried to open it he actually
pressed with his hands on the floor. Not only was he
experiencing himself as an actor in his fantasy, but
reacting to tihie events with intense feelings and engaged
in continuous motion with his body.
Just as the impact of a work of art will depend on
more than our sense perceptions, requiring some
measure of empathy, just as a novel would be mean-
ingless to us unless we could identify with its charac-
ters, by stepping into Aeir shoes or unplicitly recogniz-
ing them as parts of our inner theater, the same may
be said of fantasy productions. Whether these appear
to the person as uninteresting and meaningless produc-
tions of his brain, interesting hieroglyphs, or revelations
will probably depend on the degree of his contact with
his unconscious life in general, and with the handling
of a session. But I think that this can also be subjected
to some pharmacological regulation, and I sh^ discuss
later the association of ibogaine with feeling-enhancing
drugs.
In commenting on his session, the patient later said
that it was a surprise to him in view of his romantic
expectations. Instead of an experience of integration
into the "cosmic order or the race," *the simple and
primordial, elemental and telluric," and, in short, the
mysterious, he found "a world of my own, personal,
sincere, simple, which perhaps coincides to some ex-
tent with all my life experiences, which are not as
numerous as I would have liked, but are mine. Yes. It
was a mixture of disenchantment and wonder. Wonder!
The bluebird is in your home."
On the whole, I thmk that this is a significant report
in that it informs us of the importance of an experience
with virtually no personal content. This may seem a

statement in contradiction to that of the patient, who
claims to have discovered the richness of his own
world. We may put it differently and say that the only
personal element in the subject's experience is that of
himself as the contamer of all his feelings, the source
of all his unages and actions. But these feelings, images,
and actions are not those of his previous conscious life.
To anybody watching his movements, they would have
appeared more like those of a ritual than those of
practicality, just as his feelings are in Ae domam of the
religious or aesthetic, and his imaginings in that of the
mythical rather than the personal. And just as his ex-
perience was of intrinsic value to him at the time, its
consequence appears to be in the nature of an en-
—
hancement of those aesthetic, religious, and mythical

overtones in everyday reality, and a heightening of
inspiration which carries for him a sense of intrinsic
satisfaction.
Only toward the end of the session, in the last se^
quence quoted, do we see conflict, and we may sense
a personal reality behind the veil of the symbolic mur-
der scene. The fact that this was the last fantasy epi-
sode in the session suggests that more personal and
psychopathological material might have followed but
was repressed, and this we cannot know. I do know
from other instances, thou^, that a peak experience
does not necessarily imply the transcendence of chronic
personal conflicts. It may merely indicate that these
are not aroused by the real or imaginary situation which
is the subject's focus of attention.
I think that it may be useful in this connection to
consider a peak experience in terms of its completeness,
and not just its quality. Just as I have spoken of arche-
typal visual experiences which are incomplete in that
the subject does not feel involved in the symbolic ac-
tion, so there are others where the motor element may
predominate, with slight ideational concomitants, or-
—
with other drugs more than with ibogaine ^feelings
may be dissociated from either action or understand-
ing. In the present instance, I think that the incomplete-
ness of the session is to be seen in the domain of re-
lating. Just as the extroverted patient of our previous
illustration experienced moments of fulfillment in con-
tact with others (even photographs of others) and ob-
jects, the introverted subject in this session expressed
himself best in imagery and movement not in the per-
ception of the external world or hi contact. Even in
his imagery tiiere is a predominance of elements, ob-
jects, and animals over human beings. When other per-
sons appear (omitted from the quotation), they are
vague, unknown, semi-mythical and practically unre-
lated to him in the plot of his fantasy, except at the
very end, in the stabbing of the mummy with the dag-
ger. Aside from the anger and subsequent feeling of
dirtiness in this scene, interpersonal feelings are absent
from his session, whereas in a complete peak experi-
—
1 86 The Healino Journey
ence I would expect feelings of love as weU as those
of beauty and holiness.
At the time of this session, I was still too unfamiliar
with the use of ibogaine to take the initiative in pre-
senting to the patient the challenge of relationship,
bringing out the (presumably) avoided issues and his
psychopathology. This is what I have since done in my
practice, however, and I think that the exploration of
conflict can not only lead to more enduring change
but in no way detracts from the contribution of a peak
experience.
The following instance shows how a state of sub-
jective enjoyment and relative integration may be in-
terrupted by a shift in attention toward a conflicting
issue, as the patient confronts painful emotions, only
to be resumed with greater fullness after a problem
has been successfully lived out.
This illustration is from the account of a twenty-
three-year-old woman of a seemingly mild, subdued,
and dependent character, who consulted parfly in com-
pliance with her husband's wishes, and also in the hope
of achieving a more fluent expression of her feelings
and thoughts. Her diflficulty in communicating had be-
come apparent to her as a source of unhappiness in
her marriage, and I could assume from interviews with
her husband that her life with him must have been a
source of intense frustration. She did not say so during
the two appointments prior to the session with iboga
not out of a lack of sincerity, it seemed to me, but a
lack of awareness of her feelings.
In approxhnately the thh-d hour of the patienf s ses-
sion, she entered a pleasurable state of absorption in
a world of imagery:
was snowing. This was no ordinary snowfall.

It
The snowflakes were larger, and one could see
their component particles. These were very fine
fibers with irregular edges, covered with mnumer-
able little diamonds. The snowflakes danced and
played. In the midst of this snow-feast I saw my-
self as a beautiful young woman, naked, with very
white skin and long blond hair. I danced along
—
with the snowflakes in what seemed a contest of

agility. I ran after them laughing, trying to catch
them, and when I did, I pressed them against my
face. Everything was bathed in a golden ligjit. It
conveyed a feeling of freedom, beauty, and joy,
A great peace enveloped me.
This may be enough as a Ktmple of a peak experi-

ence being lived in the symbolic domain of visual
imagery. The dominant feeling and impulse content
(as is frequently the case in ibogaine peak experiences)
is conveyed by the images of dance and light. It be^
came clear to the patient that the woman dancing was
herself, and she enjoyed feeling so full of life, beauti-
ful, and free. Then she felt the urge to dance herself,
ratiier than merely watching ment^ pictures, but, sig-
nificantly, this she was not able to do. She felt weak
and nauseated and went back to lying down.
From my experience of tiie drug, I have the impres-
sion that its effect is closely linked with the domain
of action and, particularly, physical movement. Much of
the imagery may suggest this (dancing, beating
of drums), but the experiences tiiat have impressed me
as most fulfilling and complete have involved actual
participation of tiie body. (It is worthy of note that the
iboga root is eaten by dancers in Gabon.)
The purely visual quality of the experience described
above, plus die sudden malaise that she felt when at-
tempting to enact with her physical self the dance that
she was enjoying in her imagination, suggest to me
what could be an "encapsulated" peak experience
one that cannot be brou^t to bear in more than one
field of experience, and which can be sustained only
at the expense of avoiding certain feelings, issues, or
areas of awareness. This is not to say that such an ex-
perience is of no value; on the contrary, such avoid-
ances may be used as a strategy in the elicitation of
peak experiences in meditation techniques, where im-
mobility and even the stiUness of thinking are sought.
But once the higher feelings or understandings have
been achieved, the issue becomes that of bringing them
down to earth, translating them into the terms of ac-
tion —
and living and a cracial step in this process seems
to me to be the simple awareness and functioning of
the body. In several instances of ibogaine therapy, I
have seen the transition into a higher state of integra-
tion accompanied by a "remembering" of the body and
its sensations after a period of absorption in fantasy,
or by a sudden opening up of the channels of move-
ment. The present case was no exception. Suspectmg
that the incompleteness of the patient's experience was
related to her holding back her feelings for her hus-
band, I suggested working on a dream into which we ^
had looked the previous day. Here is the patient's ac-

count of this episode:
While I danced with a handsome and virile

man, I saw my husband turned into a weak, fai
man with han^gred cheeks, laughing in a fem-
inine way. I went beyond the original dream and
described how, seeing this horrible change, I
turned away and walked with my partner into the
next room. We danced, and later he took me
home. We said goodbye at the door. As I walked
into the living room, I met my husband, who still
looked as u^y as before. At first I locked myself
up in room, but die doctor instructed me to
my
face him, and I told him how ugly and weak I
found him.
I suddenly found myself beating up a cushion
that represented Peter. My hand flew! With what i
pleasure I hit him! I screamed at him, too, scold-

ing him and telling him that if he did not change I
would rather not see him any more.
What relief I felt after havmg shouted! I felt so
ligjit afterward. I felt happy to know that I had
the right to defend myself, for I had some worth
of my own. I did not need to lean on somebody
as I had done before. It had been horrible to
crawl at the feet of tiie others. (I imitated this
crawling with my hands.) I was no longer useless,
I had such force, and life did not seem ridiculous
to me any longer. It was a gift. (I thanked the
doctor for having told me that before. He handed
me a mirror.) I saw myself as very beautiful, so

much of a child still. [She had earlier in the ses-
sion seen herself as old and ugly.} I was a flower
which had just opened to the world, with a radiant
gaze and fresh skin. The disdainful line in my
mouth had disappeared. My body was agile, fuU
of life. For the first time, I loved myself.
It may be noticed that the terms in which she de-

scribes herself are very much the same as those she
had previously used in describing her self-image: beau-
tiful, young, fresh, full of life. But to see these qualities
in her very flesh or in the mirror took more than con-
templatmg Aem in her essential nature. This entailed
"coming out" into her body, becoming present in her
actions, and this meant having the coura^ to break
the bondage of the submissive personality pattern
which her body had been serving tfarougjiout her life.
The change in her was obvious to her husband and
close acquaintances, and even after one year, a friend
of hers described her much in her own words: **Since
the treatment, she is like a flower open to the world."
In her marriage, she was patient while there was a need
for her to be so, until her husband's cure about a year
later. But now this was not the self-denying and com-
pulsive ^'patience" of non-communicating, but one
grounded on self-acceptance and understanding love.
The three sessions illustrated thus far have in com-
mon what can be understood as an unusual and spon-
taneous expression of the person's "self," which takes
place in the form of actions, dance, feelings, percep-
tions, or judgments. In stating this, I am staying close
to the persons' descriptions of their experiences and
their own use of the word "self," rather than speculat-
ing on what this self (or the source of such am ex-
perience) might be. The subject of our first illustration
stressed that he was looking at pictures or at other
persons with his own eyes, and he realized tiiat it was
not himself that was present in his daily, automatic way
of perceiving things or using his body. Our second sub-
ject, too, was left with a taste of his own world and
'the certainty that the whole world, of which I am a
spectator and a part, is experientially in myself, and
is not something remote or m3rsterioiis." Lastly, the
woman in the third illustration also felt, as she saw
the beautiful girl dancing among the snowflakes, that
she was the image of her real s^; she wondered at
*the richness of life that there is in myself' and ended
—
up by loving herself ^not with what we usually caU
self-love, which means no more than living for a men-
tal audience —
but with warm appreciation for herself.
In contrast to such experiences of relatively spon-
—
taneous unfolding of the self ^that colter of gravity
in psychological functioning where the individual feels
complete, and his impulses are not in contradiction
—
with one another ^there is a greater number of sessions
in which the patienf s self-expression needs coaxing,
or in which self-expression is virtually impossible before
conflicting aspects of the personality are recondied.
Two devices which I find useful as openings far
self-expr^sion (as well as starting points for more
elaborate procedures) are the presentation of poten-
tially significant photographs and the evocation of
dreams or creation of imaginary sequences. In both
situations, the potential of ibogaine is somewhat differ-
ent from that of other drugs. Under the effect of LSD-
like hallucinogens, photographs are either seen with
distortions that may point to the individual's projections,
or, in peak experiences, diey permit the translation of
the ongoing state of mind into a particular kind of re-
lationship with the person contemplated (e.g., "I could
see my mother's essence, for the first time, and love
her beyond her difl&cult personality. Just as she was
not responsible for her body, I saw that she was help-
less against her own psychological make-up, which had
harmed me so much. But this was not herself, really,
that I was seemg now.")

WTith MMDA,there is litfle mterest m
lookmg at
external objects in conflicting states, when physical
sensations, unages, or intense feelings dominate
the
picture, and where the Now is all-important Yet in the
peak experience of MMDA,
all stimuli are welcomed
as part of the Now, and in this case the
experience of
looking at photographs is also one of developing ways
of relating to others that are in accordance with the
ongoing state of mind. The diflFerence with I^D here
lies in the realistic perception of others with MMDA,
both in terms of less projective elements (no distor-
tions) and less bypassing of their circumstantial reality.
With ibopaine, the situation is more comparable to
that of MMDA, where tiiere is increased insigiit and
emotional response, and occasional clues to the reliv-
ing of childhood events. I find directiveness to be more
accepted with ibogaine, and this permits manipulation
of the apperceptive phantoms whenever the experience
is not that of an unmasked self seeing others behind
their masks.
The potential of ibogaine in working with imagery
and dreams may be seen from the following instances,
where both this and the use of photograplS are illus-
trated in detail.
I shall begin this account from the point at which I
suggested to the patient (a thirty-six-year-old artist)
that we might work on a dream he had reported to me
the previous week. This was one in which he sat at
the table in his parents' home while they seemed to be
present in a distant comer of the room. He felt some-
thing between his teeth, which he started pullinp out
in the form of white threads, but gradually they be-
came little greenish creatures. At this poin^ he woke
up horrified.
In the session he sets out to re-experience the dream,
and it turns out that, after pulling out fibrous and
gelatinous threads and living things, nothing further
happens. Yet he feels that there is more to come out.
When instructed to become the threads and experience
the dream from that point of view, he soon feels that
he is turning into a white worm with dark hairs. The
worm then turns into another thread, half white and
half green, out of which grow feet and which develops
into a small, rodent-like green animal.
At this point, he is again perceiving images in front
of him as in the dream and feels that he cannot iden-
tify with them. The rodent now becomes a duck with
a long beak, and then a heron. "Become that heron,"
I say at this point. "Feel what it is feeling."
^
"I enter the bird," he reports. "I see wings at the
sides of that head that is becoming mine; I begin tc
fly over the wide and tranquU sea. The sky is of pure
unclouded blue, and the sun sheds a white light along
the line of the horizon."
This dreamlike sequence continues with his going
through the sun and finding a huge white sphere on the
other side of it. At this point, I suggest tiiat we ret
to the original dream.
Again he pulls threads from his mouth. As he is
pulling out green ones, a whitish fluid begins to gusl
out, brushing away the little animals. He feels surprisedj
that there are so few of them and that they seem sc
harmless, so he thinks that there may be more of them
left.
At this point, I see the subject open his mouth more
and more as he gradually sits more erect and stretches
his arms and hands as if to embrace something in front
of him. This is how he later describes this episode.
"The gushing fluid now wets the hand with which I
was trying to pick the little creatures out of my mouth,
and now I gradually extend the hand without avoiding
the wetting. The fluid becomes whiter and more abun-
dant. I stretch Mid I open my mouth further and
further. The milky torrent has strengtii and pressure*
I place my hands in it so that they may be washed."
(Given something he said about this washing at the
time of the experience, I associated the process to that
expressed in Hercules' cleaning the Augean stables
with the waters of tiie Alpheus and Peneus rivers.)
"Let us wash Jacob, now," I suggested At this point,
Jacob visualized a naked body whose head he did not
see. He directed the flow of milky sap toward that
body, and it went throu^ it, washing the hollow of
the head, thougji, he was surprised to find, not his own
head, but his mother's. (In brief, this face appeared
to be a mask, which he removed to find his mother's
real face.) As he continued the washing, the mother
opened her eyes and began to rise. She left the earth
and floated higher and higher into a luminous area
above. "This was very strange to me," wrote tiie
patient later, "since I did not believe there was a
heaven to rise to." At this point in the experience, he

noticed a diagonal discontinuity between the area where
the mother was and where he stood, on &e earth. This
was a transparent brownish-yellow plane, which he
perceived as endowed with visceral vitality and which
gradually evolved into a sphere. On this sphere, a
throne now appeared and on it sat the owner of the
earth. He was a domineering character. The subject
approached and became him. This seemed to us to be
a lo^cal ending, and the dream sequence did stop at
tills point. Yet there is no feeling that matches the ex-
plicit content of the fantasy. The subject later reported
that he was, in fact, surprised at feeling neither happy
nor sad.
As be seen, the subject went throu^ this fan-
will
tasy once more about four hours later, and this time
the outcome was different. The success of this second
att^npt was probably prepared by the insights and feel-
ings stemming from the contemplation of family pho-
tographs.
After looVing at a photograph of his parents in their
youth, he was impressed by one m
which they are seen
together after several years of marriage. **What a re-
markable change!" he wrote later in reference to this
part of the session. ^'Mother had become an mtensely
suffering and tortured being. The looks of both of
fhem are turned inward, and their expressions are very
sad. Father is tense, his lips pressed together. His nose
conveys violence. Hardheaded and irritable. What a
difference between this and the brilliance of his gftance
m the 1910 photo!''
After he had described his parents' expressions, I
suggested that he have them talk to each other. This
was very hard for hun, since, as he was now aware,
he felt tfiat he would be criticized by his mother for
his sharing his view of her with a stranger. Yet "Mother"
finally spoke:
"I know that this is a marriage of convenience^ yet
why you so violent to me? Why do you shout and
are
insult me?"
**I must do that because I am very weak," said
^Father." The patient now realized how isolated his

parents are from each other and how ri^d they are.
"This is not how I saw them in the LSD experience,"
he remarked. "They ahnost don't look human, but like
statues/'
"Maybe you do see them as monuments," I said
"In themoment that I hear that," he wrote later,
"I am filledwith the characteristic glow of clarity. I
have reached the bottom. I see to what extent I am
still building monuments or funeral edifices to my
parents."
Wereturned to the dialogue.
Mother said, "Why have you been so mean to me?
Can't you give me some love?" Father answered, "I
cannot love because I feel excluded from your world,
your friends."
And now the subject had another insight. He rea-
lized that thiswas himself speaking to his lover. Stimu-
lated to imaê her as present and to talk to her out
of this feeling, he said, "You are a whore and a
stranger. I don't want to love you, because you ^ve
yourself to anyone."
When I suggested that he was still speaking of her
rather than to her, he realized that he was unable to
do so. "She is going to eat me," he said, and as he did
so, he imagined that he had dreamed of many little
animals, because the real ones were beyond his visual
field. These were huge monsters which ate children up,
especially lonely children.
"According to this," he commented, "every woman
who is different from one's mother (who is a *heaven-
ly being') must be a monster it would be better not
to get too close to, since she can eat the *boy.' I don't
know how I escaped being impotent or homosexual."
Presumably, these insights became important when
the patient turned back to the experiencing of his
dream. The feeling was that there had been something
incomplete in the previous contemplation of it.
Here is the new sequence, in the patient's own
words:
Things occurred as before in the first part: the

threads, the greenish creatures, the rat, the bird,
the washing of Jacob's body, and the washing of

my mother's face with closed eyes m the milky
stream. I am aware that this is a sexual act. I go
on washing her face and stay with her until she
rises into &e heigjits. I now turn to the man in
the shadows, who sits domineering and menacing
on his throne. I fly toward him to see what he
will to do me, since I realize that this man is not
myself. As I approach that shadowy height, I see
that the man puffs out his cheeks and contorts his
face as if to frighten me away, moving his arms
like a big gorilla. And then I suddenly realize that
fliese are the contortions of old, toothless
Father. And suddenly, too, as I approach further,
I see that there is no longer any flesh on that face,
but only bone.
I fly closer and closer and finally reach the
great monument. I fly through one of the eye
sockets (the whole proves to be an artificial con-
crete structure) and come out on the other side.
Looking back, I see that the great monument is
nothing but a facade, ruined on the inside. Now
the ruins disappear, and only die seat remains. I
understand that this is the place that Dad left, and
I take it. I am not the owner of the world, but I
have taken my fatiher's place. And I realize that
to be a father is to own the world. A
great wave
of laughter and crying invades me. I laugh and
cry for a long tune. I was free from a great rest-
lessness. I felt beatific. I later wondered: What
place can my father leave me? Is there anything
which I have admired in him? And I recalled that
he was an authority on making fur coats. He was
a master in his craft, and I had always respected
him for that. I felt relieved and thought that I
would pursue a similar pêction as a sculptor,
and that sculpture itself was, at another level, like
an inheritance from my father.
I could open my eyes now and rise from the
bed. I have my place. I cannot be excluded by
anybody, anywhere. I can conquer my fears, I can
go through them.
I have my place.
not even necessary to go or come, forget
It is
or close gjiettos. I have my place within, with^
with whomever it may be.
I do not need to ask for anything because I
have my place. I don't need to go or come, flee,
escape, since I have my place.
Eveiything is part of ME. I AM. It is not fliat
I must sculpt. I will do my work, whatever I care
for, wherever, since, it being part of me, I am not
bound to it in a symbiosis. Neither nor will X Y
pull me toward them, since I am where I really
am.
There is no need to escape from anjrthing,
pleasant, unpleasant, hateful or terrible, whatever
it is, since it is always possible to go beyond, into
—
the most definitive ^that is, within.
I enjoy feeling how it resounds in me: I have
my place, I have my place, / have my place.
The therapeutic benefit of the session is clear enou^

from the patient's words. I can only add that this state
of mind persisted.
We can recognize in this session several elements
mentioned earlier in this chapter as frequent traits of
ibogaine experiences, and here they show their place
in the therapeutic process: the animals (the devouring
monsters or the gorilla-like father), symbolizing the
instinctive forces, sexual hnagery ("washing^ the
mother), the fli^t toward the li^t (the bkd approach-
mg the white ligjit of the sun and the ascent of the
mother to a luminous area), feelings of resentment,
loneliness, exclusion ("I feel excluded from your
world"; '"You are a whore and a stranger"), and, par-
ticularly, tiie Oedipal situation m
which tiie sexual and
aggressive urges are embedded.
If we compare the patient's first dream, resulting in
a feeling of incompleteness, witii the second sequence,
which ended m
tiie tears of "arrival," we see that the
first is tiie blueprint, the second the real
building, a
two-dimensional event as compared to a three-dimen-
sional one. The first raises the issue of the subject's

relating to his mother and then taking the place of his
father, but his life is still not in it; the challenge is not
accepted. In contrast to these rather indiflferent images,
those of the second dream are loaded with an instinc-
tual charge, for which the patient must take responsibi-
lity by making the unfolding scene the result of a real
decision. It is his doing. In particular, among the main
differences between the two scenes are the recognition
of a sexual element in the washing of the mothers face
with tiie milky sap, and the menacing attitude of the
father as tiie subject approaches (in spite of which,
he does).
I think that we may safely assume that the difference
between the first and second attempts was brought
about by the discussion of the photographs, since tibis
was the point at which the feelings titat dominate the
dream entered the patient's awareness and became
really felt. Here was his first intimation of his father's
supposed brutality, experienced from both his mother's
point of view (a victim) and from his father's (hostile
because of a feeling of rejection).
With his own feeling of rejection now activated, with
a recognition of his own want in his father's wanting
his mother's love, and with his aggressivity somewhat
released, he was ready for the symbolic action that
signified and proved his acceptance of his instinctual
iMlity. With this action, he literally undid the repres-
sive process to which he had subjected himself since
childhood in face of his "mounmental" parents. Now
he is not split into a "father" and a "mother," frag-
ments of his personality which reject each other, but
he accepts his striving to be a man and sees himself
as a father with a wife and children in the external
world.
It can be seen in retrospect that, in his previous posi-
tion of self-rejection, he was identifying with a para-
sitic mother-image and being this motiier who "ex-
cludes" the man (father and son) instead of living his
life from inside out. Laying out the attitudes of "f atiier"
and "mother" was the starting point for the process of
becoming one with his own feelings, regardless of the
198 The Healino Journey
historical reality of his parents. For this reason, we
might say that the former process was in the nature
of an analytical phase which made the synthesis in the
dream sequence possible.
I have stated elsewhere that therapy with ibogaine
is most suited to the exploration of the past, in
con-
trast with MMDA, which is most adequate for the
clarification of the present. This is true to such an ex-
tent that one mipht even sav that, in contrast with the
dictum of "I and Thou, Here and Now" ^that com-
—
pressed description of Gestalt therapv that fits MMDA
—
therapy so well ^that of therapy with ibogaine is typi-
cally one of "He and She, There and Then." The rea-
son is easy to understand, for the effect of MMDA
is
predominantly on the feelings, whereas the reaction to

ibogaine is noteworthy for its emphasis on symbols,
—
and only by means of symbols conceptual or visual
—can we deal with a reality that is not present.
There is a great difference between the domain of
past experience to which MDA facilitates the access
|
^^
and that which is exposed by means of ibogaine.
Whereas with the former it is a matter of events heing
remembered, and perhaps reactions or feelings in the
face of such events, with ibogaine it is a world of
fan-
tasies that the person meets. Parental images evoke^
by means of ibogaine probably correspond to the child's
conception of his parents, which still lies in the un-
conscious of the adult—but these do not necessanly
match the parents' reality. The therapeutic process
such
with ibogaine may be depicted as that of seeing
constructions for what thev are and being freed throu^
confrontation of them. With MDA, on the other hand,
it would seem that reminiscence
of the true events is
the
the confrontation that can implicitly counteract
power of distorted images, since these were based on
could not face
the denial of a reality which the child
at the time. . , . i j
colored
This "seeing things as they are" rather than
prejudice, can also des-
by the bias of imagination or
cribe the view of things at the time of an LSD peak
experience, but this usually applies to the present,
and
fantasy resumes its post as
the sleepmg dragon of
guardian of the path. The patient in our last illustration

had an LSD experience of this kind eight months be-
fore the one with ibogaine, and some of his reflections
on the difference between the two drugs may be of
interest, because of the clearer light they shed on the
nature of the process described in the account above.
Speaking of LSD, he says:
I had the certainty of seeing the world as it is,

for the time; as it has been and will be, inde-
first
pendent of myself. Everything became conspicu-
ous in its finest details and was a harmonious and
intelligible part of a whole. I received it as if it
were paradise and understood that I had lost it in
the windings of my own non-being. I saw my
parents for the first time as they were, beyond
their own myths. I saw them as sad, defeated,
abandoned to their separateness. The experience
with LSD was of a visionary gazing with the eyes
wide open, looking in wonder at the world for the
first time, as it may be seen when free from the
screen of fear.
I felt an urgent need to recover that world, for
I intuitively perceived that my happiness was
there. I understood that I could achieve this only
by working on myself in all honesty, with no fear
or playing at hide-and-seek. Ibogaine, on the other
hand, led me to look at myself, inwards, with eyes
closed. Through an incessant supply of mental
pictures projected on a sort of three-dimensional
screen, it compelled me to meet the monsters of
my inner world face to face, to stay with my fears
to the very end, without the interruptions that
often occur in dreams, and to fight my way be-
yond the phony, illusory threats that I had
erected in myself.
In contrast with LSD, ibogaine made me see
—
my parents ^the central characters of my phantas-
—
magoric scene ^m accordance with the image in
which they were imprisoned in my inner world:
imposing monuments that covered the whole field
200 The Healing Journey ^
of vision. Ibogaine, making it possible for me to
confront these legendary giants, also led me to
an area where open combat with them was pos-
sible. I did fight, and realized that the path of
freedom leads through the ruins of inner fears.
One aspect of the quotation is that the patient be-

lieves that the LSD experience, by showing him the
goal, gave him the drive to fi^t his way through the
ibogaine experience and achieve his aims. LSD is like
a look out of a window into the open; ibogame is
more like an occasion to destroy the old building and <
make room for a new one. It is more of a "work drug" ]
in the sense of facilitating an analytic process on the

unconscious obstacles to life.
I think that this patient has made a good and im-
portant pomt in the distinction which he draws be-
tween the objectivity of 'Hhings as they are" and sub-
jectively tainted experience. Naturally, we cannot per-
ceive "tilings as they are," being restricted to the aware-
ness of our experiences, but ibeso terms point at the
contraposition between two ways of experiencing: one
in which the mind empties itself, so to speak, of pre-
conceptions and grasps reality "as it is," and another
in which the external world becomes a mirror for per-
sonal anticipations, expectations, and desires. Which
of these we may want to regard as "reality"—that of
things out there, as independent as possible of our be-
ing, or tiiat of our own constructs — ^may be a matter
of taste. The "objective" world may seem more sub-
stantial than a world of phantom-like mental images,
but it is not ours. And our phantoms, while we house
them, are what we are. And if this is non-being, so is
the condition of having a receptive void inside.
A decisive step in the imfolding of this patient's ex-
perience was, we may assume, his implicit decision to
"fly" toward the threatening father-figure, for it was
this that led him to the discovery of his own "inner"
father, his male component. The tfureat that the fantasy
conveys bespeaks a barrier built into the subject's
mental functioning, since he would have attained his
psychological integration long before, if it had not been
for a reluctance to open up to certain points of view

or feelings. When the barrier is too great, not even
direction can substitute for the person's incentive in
taking the symbolic leap into the threatening domain.
The images will fade away (as in the following illus-
tration), or the feeling content will slip out of them.
But an external push may at least show the impasse or
result in the conquest of a limited portion of firm
ground from the ocean of the unconscious. This push
may consist in a given direction, reassurance, a C2dl to
pay attention at a point where the unpleasantness of
a process could otherwise incite the subject to look
away. To some extent, this push is provided by the
mere presence of the therapist, which gives the patient
enough security to let go and contact certain domains
of his inner world. Sometimes an active interest on the
part of the therapist in what the patient is experienc-
ing supplements the latter's disinterest at a crucial
point and may rescue hhn from a vicious circle of self-
deprecation and psycholo^cal immobilization. While
the patient in this case felt ready to meet the fantasied
threat and was driven by the wisdom of his unconscious
to do so before waiting for any instructions, the fol-
lowing is a case where persistent directions were needed
to have the patient confront for increasing periods of
tune and familiarize herself with threatening imagery.
This session, involving a thirty-nine-year-old woman,
started with an outburst of rage at her sister, who, she
felt, had not trusted, loved, or understood her. In a
rimilar rage, she then turned on the other members of
her family and finally her husband (in her unagina-
tion), whom she reprimanded in a loud voice. At last,
she exclaimed, "I am free! What a relief I feel!" Next
came a **white light" phase followed by a scene of
panic at being confronted by a tribe of Negroes beat-
ng drums. An over-controlled and over-"civilized"
person, she saw herself with long hair and a primitive
skirt, also beating a drum. Then this scene was inter-
rupted, and the "light scene" began again:
A beam of light comes toward me from above.

It enters throu^ the window of a great belfry. I
see the sky beyond, intensely blue, with white
clouds. Now
another ray of Hght comes from a
high mountain, and as this ray of golden light ad-
vances, the other one (from the belfry) disap-
pears. It disappears completely, and a huge red-
dish-orange-colored sun advances. It illuminates
the desert and the room in which I am. Every-
thing is gradually flooded with reddish light. The
room gets warmer and extremely beaut&l. The
sun embraces me and gives me its light and heat.
I feel like walking, pacing about the room, and
when I stand up I see that I am in a black place,
like a pond of dark water. There is only a piece
of land, where the doctor and myself are.
How terrifyingi Next to us, as if emerging from
the water, a horrible monster appears. It is like
a crocodile split in halL Intensely green. Its eye,
from the side, is that of a brilliant bluish parrot
with a curved beak. And the crocodile's tail is not
really a crocodile's, but black feathers. What ter-
rifies memost are its eyes and the electric-like
movement with which it jumps from one place to
another. Scarcely have I taken refuge when it ap-

pears all of a sudden m
a diflferent place. I scream
and hear the doctor's voice saying, "Face it. Don't
be afraid. Let yourself be attacked." But my fear
is greater than the wish to comply, and I cannot
do so. I close my eyes and see it again appear
and disappear, to reappear once more in a diiSEer-
ent spot ^here— —
^there —
^tac-tac-tac . . . and I
cannot stand the fear. .
Now I am at the crossing of two paths

inside
side
a huge cave. Two enormous animals appear,
green color.
by side. They are of an intense pale
They are plant-like. They seem to be formed of
some kind of cactus. Their skin is granular. Dis-
gustmg. I am unpressed, but not afraid. The doc-
tor says, "Face them." I look at them attentively.
One of them has a huge head like an elephant's
slightly funny —
and from its chest hang twisted
plantlike formations. When it moves, they
quiver.
I find it funny and disgusting.

"Imitate it. Be
that animal," the doctor says. I
can see that I be able to do so. I put my
will not
legs together and try, but I do not succeed. I re-
sist it, I don't want it, I cannot. I tremble. That
is impossible. / ieel that he wants me to dance.
Did he say so, or did I imagine that? I do not
want to dance. I don't feel like it. He insists: "Be
that trembling." I end up trying to obey. I lift my
arms, surrendering to what may come. I start to
tremble and I feel that my two arms are one
flame, and they emit light. An energy that has
come from above moves them, has put them to-
gether, and now they turn and turn as if electri-
fied, beyond my power to $top them . .My .
arms bum. They are fire and continue to turn. I

faU to the floor with my arms still reaching up,
and gradually Aey begjn to slow down and de-
scend, while an infinite peace starts to invade me.
It is silent peace
a sweet, . . .
I feel an understanding without words that I

did not know before. It is consciousness. Great
and deeper than ever before. I understand many
ineffable things. I have not known how to love.
I have lived without living. I see my little mind,
when separate, as a fragment of my I AM. Un-
derstanding, consciousness —
ît is the same thing.
There are no words, but understanding is infinite

in that instant with no time.
Here we have a characteristic sample of the world

of ibogaine, both in its luminous and its dark sides:
the beam of white li^t and the cave with monsters, the
sun and the black pond with the hidden crocodile.
Furthermore, we see how the hellish and heavenly
scenes follow one another: after her initial outburst of
rage (which she describes as bemg like the eruption
of a volcano) comes an episode of light. Feeling full
of joy, she starts beating on the floor with her hands,
and Ae Negroes appear. She cannot sustain for long
the fear of the unknown and the primitive; the image
fades, and while she prepares to rest, she sees the li^t
coming flirough the belfry. Again, at the climax of this
pleasant episode, she feels like moving about, standing
up—and darkness supervenes. This time, the process
does not stop by itself. She looks away; she cannot
resist it. The incompleteness of the process
probably
leads her to another daric scene, as if there were some-
thing for her to assimilate in such darkness. Now the
worst part seems to be over, or she has become som&.
what desensitized to the fear through her repeated at-
tempts to stay with it. Now she can at least look at
the monsters and feel cahn in spite of her disgust
Movement is again what seems to impress her most
of the
(as with the Negroes and the displacements
crocodile).* Visual confrontation appears to have
she can describe the
reached its end by now, since
monster in detail and bear the discomfort TJe aim is
the "monster" its due

now for her to see and give
place in herself, for it must be from her
own r^ty
proceeded. Interestingly, trembling
that the image has
means dancing to her. Obviously, the act of ttembtog
or dancing meets with great resistance m her. She
the trembluig, and I speak of it as
finally gives in to
the moment she does not ex-
a "giving in" because at
perience herself any more as purposefully doing it or
urge. And
enacting it, but as being moved by a real
in the moment at whidi she begins to tremble, we wit-
to that
ness the transition from Ae world of monstere
of light, which now origmates in her own body.
session,
The feelmg of rage at the beginning of the
crocodile with
the primitive, sensuous drumming, the
trembling inonster
electric-like movements, and the
the same instinctual domain that the pa-
all point to
cost of feeling com-
tient has held in abeyance at tiie
plete. It is no wonder that only
now tjat she has
stopped resisting can she also see how her
httle mmd
of her I AM. Dancing-4he spon-
has been only a part
taneity of movement m
which basic agîon and
has beenat
sensuousness are united and reconciled—
wish and greatest taboo.
tiie same time her deepest
8 The images and the "electrical" fed-

brilliant colors in the
ings in her own body convey the same dynamic quahty as the
imagery of movement.
Dancing, too, is what would give her freedom. But
she has not danced, yet. She has only told herself to
do so, believing that it was I who suggested it (i.e.,
projecting her unacknowledged urge into the outside
world as an expectation). The unfinished situation
occurs more than once. About half an hour later, for
instance, I ask her to imitate the animal again, feel-
ing that she has not succeeded in doing so, and this
is how she describes the episode three days later:
I am standing up. The doctor has asked me

something. What was it? To dance? To tremble?
To bring back the rhythm of the Negroes? Or that
I imitate the cactus-animal? I don't know. Perhaps
even then I didn't know. But I see myself stand-
ing in front of a giant drum. Beyond the drum I
see many Negroes moving to a rhythm. They
have thick lips, painted white, and skirts formed
of white strips that hang from a red belt. Their
legs and chests are bare. I beat the drum force-
fully with my right hand, and then with my left.
I have something like wooden hanmiers in my
hands, and I beat with them. I stop drumming to
carry the rhythm with my body. I want to dance.
It does not come out right. I try again, and
cannot. Then I see, among the Negroes, Maria's
white, smiling face. Her expression changes as I
look at her, and she laughs aloud. She mocks me
because I cannot dance. I feel so angry that I
throw the hammer and kill somebody, but I do
not care. Something is interrupted. The doctor
asks me to call the scene back to mind, but I find
myself unable to do so. I sit down, and then I
lie down. The doctor speaks, but I don't remem-
ber what he says. I only know that I cannot
understand, I cannot understand. Something is
going on.
Then I suddenly become aware of having been
sexually aroused for a long time. I say this. The
doctor tells me: "Give in to your desire. Feel it."
And then I feel as if somebody took my legs and
moved them in such a way that it became like a
sexual act. There is no orgasm —
or thousands ît
—
is difficult to explain. But nothing ends. Arousal
continues. Again I see beautiful landscapes, sun-
sets, vegetation, the sea, great expanses of desert,
and the sun as a marvelous iBreball in the back-
ground. I say, "How beautiful!" The doctor has
asked me not to judge whether what I see is
beautiful or ugly, but just describe it. But how
can I not say it, if it is so beautiful? The sensa-
tion of being, the sensation of coarse vibrations
that beat on and sink into my flesh. I feel like
saying a thousand times, "I am I, I am I, I am."
It is everything and too much.
Once more we see here the transition from the dark

underworld of mstinct to the beauty of the earth at
large, the sun, being. But there are differences between
these episodes and the previous ones. She participates
more actively this time, as a drummer, being practical-
ly one with the crowd of dancing Negro_es, actually
beatmg (the floor) with her hands and, at l^st, want-
ing to dance rather than feeling under mstruction to
do so. And she feels murderous rage, too, though this
moment puts an end to the scene. Another difference
gives us a clue to understanding her rigidity
and her
difficulty indancing in particular—her friend (Maria),
who laughs at her for not doing well. It is her pride
that will not unconditionally accept the
spontaneity of
pre-estab-
her movements. These must, according to
lished standards, be perfect, so that there is no room
of action, ani-
for improvisation, unpremeditated flow
she becomes sexuaUy aroused,
mal intuition. Lastly,
any more, but an experience
and this is not a symbol
herself to have and express through
her
that she allows
own body. ^ . j •
î.^
note that the unagery durmg toe
It is interesting to
otherworldly
phase of resolution and integration is not
but rather like a synthesis of the dark wet
any more,
plant and animal world with the
world of pure hgh^
is the ordinary world
sky, and extension. Such synthesis
—though seen with no ordinary eyes. I am reminded
of Blake's
God appears, and God is Light,

To those poor souls who dwell in Night;
But does a Human Form display
To those who dwell in realms of Day,
In a similar fashion, the cosmic "I am" has become a

more earthly "I am I."
The patient has not danced, though, and this sug-
gests that there stillmay be a barrier to her wish and
that the process that we have been following may be
incomplete. In fact, as sometimes happens with in-
complete ibogaine experiences, she went on remi-
niscing the events of the session and visualizing occa-
sional images for about twenty-four hours. At this
point, impersonating a huge saurian with crocodile-
like skin that she has seen, she berates the monster
and screams at the top of her voice:
I am horrible, black, gray, hard!

I live in this horrible underground cave.
I want to be alone. I don't want life around me. I
want to be alone, alone.
A queen, powerful in this solitude,
I am the queen of the darkness.
I aaaam the beeeast!
I want to screech, roar, howl, destroy.
I want to kill, break, pierce, crush, scratch, smash,
shatter, tear, squash.
I am implacablel
I am implacableW
I am implacableUl
I am implacable with myself.
Wherever "monstrous" instinctive energies are being

controlled, an equally powerful monster must be there
to do such controlling, and it is just such a repressive
operation that the person must recognize as her own
doing before she can redirect its power. What in a
previous moment had been mildly experienced by the
patient as a laugh of scorn from her "top dog" (Ma-
ria) has now emerged as the implacable monster it is,
and she has discovered the presence of the monster in
her everyday self.
The results of this session were, as could be ex-
pected, a significant gain in spontaneity and in freedom
to express anger/ The change was visible in the pa-
tient's movements, which became more supple, and in
her facial expression, now more tender and responsive
to feelings. This was the third session she had had with
pharmacological agents, the other two having been with
LSD-25 and MDA. The former, a year before, was an
experience of discovering beauty in the external world
and yet seeing herself as ugly, which dramatically dis-
played her seS-rejection and pointed to the work to be
done m herself. MDA, six months later, led her for
the first time to the "I am F' experience, where she
realized the distinctness of her own feelings and points
of view in contrast to the stereotyped attitudes she had
picked up throughout her lifetime. The session with
ibogaine was the first in which her instinctive life was
touched, and it was after this that the most noticeable
change occurred, according to both the patient's self-
perception and the view of others.
Summing up, we can see the psychological process
throughout the session above as one of a progressive
recognition, acceptance, and expression of impulses.
What had reached consciousness as fleeting and
first
threatening images (suffused with both aggression

and sensuality) became more and more detailed and
led to the idea of dancing, to actual movement, to
sexual arousal, and to the patient's shouting at the
top of her voice. More precisely, we can speak of an
unfolding of repressed instincts side by side with an
unfoldmg or expression of "phantoms"—the "intro-
the
jects," the top-doggish monsters which constitute
clamp that holds down the unpulses. Yet these phan-
toms are nourished by the blood of the repressed. It
patient s
isprecisely in these guardian-monsters that the
the phantoms a
energy is imprisoned, and in giving
eventually the energies they have swal-
voice, it
lowed that speak

is
—
^the patient's impulses — ^herself.
I think that we should not minimize the process of
impulse expression depicted above in our usual con-
cern — the legacy of psychoanalysis — ^with insight, in-
terpretation, and the understanding of psychodynam-
ics. I think that ibogaine can facilitate an openness to
impulse that leads to learning, so that an avenue of
expression remains open thereafter. This may be un-
derstood as a corrective experience in that the patient
has the opportunity to discover that what he feared to
let out is not really threatening or unacceptable.
One of the most clear-cut results that I have seen
after an ibogaine treatment was that of a man with a
homosexual history who had married, but who felt
unrelated to his wife and physically uninterested in her.
Although he expressed "castration feelings" in his ses-
sion, these were left mostly unanalyzed, as was his hy-
pothetical fear of women. Instead of this, when he felt
sexually aroused at one point in the session, he went to
the bathroom and thougjit that he would masturbate.
But when he attempted to do so, he realized that this
would only be a substitute for intercourse and that
what he wanted was a woman. He then imagined that
he had his wife in his arms and started moving as in
—
intercourse ^rigidly first, as in real life, but then with
greater freedom and suppleness. He felt now that his
legs and body were fashioned expressly to serve this
function, and his movement became rhythmical and
musical. As he felt closer to orgasm, he realized how
perfectly bodies are conceived; he became aware of the
exact anatomy of man and woman, and he felt that
the woman was not merely the receptacle of his semen
but for all his being. With his semen, his very being
flowed and flowed into the feminine body that received
him as he underwent the process of a terrible yet
pleasurable disintegration.
This was not a physical orgasm, but what he called
"psychological orgasm," without even an erection.
Nevertheless, it was followed by a sensation of ful-
fillment.
I have described the event with all the detail in the
patient's description, because only this detail conveys
the quality of experience. This episode amounts to no
more than about five minutes in a session of six hours,
in which many issues were covered, but it is signifi-
cant in that this was the first time that he had really let
go in sexual intercourse with his wife, even though in
imagination, and it proved not to be the last, for it was
the beginning of their sexual and emotional closeness.
The patient's experience conveys much more than a
simple episode of sexual arousal and "release of ten-
sion." What he described is much more in the nature
of an archetypal experience of opening up to the
archaic sexual pattern in the species and understand-
ing from within the relationship between the sexes. In
enacting to
patient in
some
the
extent the sexual scene ^just as the
previous example enacted her ritual
—
movements — ^he lent reality to his inspirations and
erased the fears to which he had been conditioned
throughout his life history. The experience seems to
have acted as an opening for further exploration and
development rather than precipitating a drastic change.
The patient, who had traveled a long way to consult
me, returned to his country and wrote after six months:
"I feel closer to my wife. Even the fact of having told
her that I did not love her seems to have contributed
to my feeling of closeness. Things that exasperated me
to the limit don't bother me much now, and I feel
desire for her more often. Our sexual relations are
more complete and more like sharing. I feel freer
in making love, and I am
more. I do not
enjoying it
feel trapped in marriage as before, and I feel that

we have more in common. I think that I know her
better."
I have thus far dealt with processes of spontaneous

self-expression in imagery, word, or action, with their
elicitation by such means as the guided daydream, re-
dreaming of past dreams, photographs, and with ways
of handling different kinds of material through con-
frontation and impersonation; the latter may on occa-
sion (with ibogaine as in the use of Gestalt therapy
without drugs) lead to elaborate play-acting. There is
still one situation that I want to discuss, not only be-
cause I have encountered it in about one out of every

1
three sessions, but because of the particular quality and

importance of these moments. This is the reminiscence
or re-enactment of early life events, which may set in
by association with the ongoing situation, with imag-
ery, photographs, or interpretations of the patient's
behavior.
I have already stated that what ibogaine typically
does is to brin^ about the memory, not of external
events (like MDA), but rather, of inner events or
fantasies.These may be chronic fantasies, like the
parental images, or may be more in the nature of
events in time. This may be seen in the case of a
middle-aged woman who at some point in her session
remembered the following: Her father had come home
with gifts for all the family, and gave her brothers and
sisters what they had asked for beforehand. She had
only said, wanting to be the favorite daughter, "Don't
worry about me. Daddy; don't waste money on me."
In fact, he brought her something less valuable than
—
he had for her sisters a little brooch in the shape of
a dog. The story as told thus far was probably avail-
able to her conscious reminiscence, though she had
not thought abbut the incident since her childhood
days. What she discovered with surprise, though, was
that, frustrated and disappointed with the small gift,
she right then had a fantasy that the little dog (or she,
she could not tell) bit oflE her father's penis and ate it.
Moreover, she now realized that she felt guilty after-
ward, as if the unaginary event had actually taken
place, and that this guilt had permeated her relation-
ship with her father ever since. Those few seconds of
inner life had magically affected her whole life, put-
ting an end to the period of closeness to her father.
Instructed to imagine that she could talk to her fa-
ther now, she told him what had happened. "He"
understood, and again she could feel clean and free.
When she met her father in real life, she felt that she
could love him well again.
This episode not oidy shows us how a mental event
can influence life as much as, or more than, a fact, but
is important in documenting that it is possible, after a
lifetime, to remember a fantasy th^t was probably un-

conscious even at the time when it occurred. The]
nature of this particular fantasy seems to be very]
congruent with that of iboga imagery (the animal bit-
ing off and eating the genitals, the Oedipal situation)
m general and the feelings (anger, resentment, frastra-j
tion) that it tends to elicit, so that we even feel
tempted to interpret this whole aspect of the "iboga
world" as a regressive manifestation. But this I can
only leave as a suggestion.
Whereas, in the last illustration, the patient recog-
nized her fantasy as such, there are instances of ap-
parent reminiscence of an external reality where one
can suspect that a fantasy is being projected onto the
past as pseudo-memory, just as a hallucination is a
pseudo-perception of die present. Whenever I think
that this may be taking place, I deal with the memory
as if it were a piece of imagination, assuming that the
characters in it are projections of the patient's per-
sonality. I therefore ask hun to confront them or im-
personate them until their psychological reality in the
person's present state of mind can be discovered.
Consider the following fragment of a session. The
patient (a young actress consulting because of marital
difficulties) was telling me of a dream in which she
was surprised to find that she had given birth to an elf.
This was a strong and healthy miniature man. When I
asked her to talk as he would, "he" said "You'll call
me Shawn. I am very intelligent. I am going to sing
and I am going to dance. I'll show you, I'U show you."
On repeating this in the elf s voice and remembering
hun physically, she realized that she had always been
wanting to show everyone that she was intelligent and
could do things. Then she noticed that the elf had
the body of her husband and that of a previous boy-
friend, and that she had been trying to live their lives
instead of her own. "I guess that I have always wanted
to be a boy," she said. "I never loved myself very
much."
I suggested at this point that, just as an elf conveys
a feeling of strangeness and uniqueness, of not belong-
ing to the ordinary human world, perhaps she had felt
a comparable strangeness with regard to her parents.
This was evident to her. Her mother had looked upon

her as if she were a little monster and made her feel
like a strange creature. Part of her own feeling of being
from a diflEerent world she traced to the fact that her
parents hardly ever seemed to pick her up in their
arms, as if they were afraid of doing so or did not
know how. So I now suggested that she might try to
feel like a baby again and experience what she might
have felt at that time. For her, this felt like a very
realistic memory: "I went back to about one year,
perhaps more, in my crib. The baby bed had a kind of
railing around it, and I remembered my parents and
relived the scene as if it were here and now, with all
my emotions and movements, colors, li^ht of day,
everything. They were looking into the crib, waving
their hands and playfully saying, 'Gailie, Gailie.' They
didn't touch me, and I wanted them to. They looked
at me like something strange. I found that the elf
—
had really been bom at that time în that I was on
exhibition and didn't feel like another human being. It
seems that love was the thing that was lacking there.
I was also in that baby bed, which was something like
a cage."
Note the "imprisonment" theme in addition to the
feeling of frustration.While she told of these memo-
ries, she suffered. She continually felt that she was
very sick, not like other people, not loved. The most
mtense feeling of lack of love occurred while she was
thinking of her mother. She remembered her coming
into the room, shouting at her, and stamping her feet.
While she, the baby, cried and needed her, she said,
"Stop bothering me. Stop that crying and let me do
the dishes!" I asked her to talk like her, and she did,
imitating her voice and her inflections. This is how she
later remembered the following episode and her feel-
ings:
The doctor asked me to answer her and tell her

what she was doing to me, and how I felt. I an-
swered just as she had screamed at me. He called
my attention to that and asked that I try to an-
swer her as Gail, looking for my own feelings
and expression. I was crying and looking for my
own voice, but it wasn't there. I couldn't find my-
self. He asked me to have my mother take me
and love me. She took me, but I hated her for
not having done it before. I hated her so much at
that moment. I wanted to do her harm and to show
her how I felt. The doctor suggested that I hit
her. I began to pound on a pillow, but I couldn't
do it with much force, because I loved her, too.
I felt guilty because she didn't let me love her. I
realized that she had never taught me how to love.
I realized, too, that it is not only important to
be loved, but to be allowed to love back. The
doctor then asked me to take her and love her.
I took her and loved her and felt better. Still I
felt sad. I asked him what to do with the guilt.
He said, "Accept it." I still felt bad. I was 5one
in that room. I felt bad, bad, bad inside. It
seemed that there was a great empty black hole
inside of me. I didn't tell him of this, because I
felt it to be so bad. While I was sitting in the baby
bed, I continually felt the light, which cast a sharp
shaft from the window into the room and on the
floor. The lidit was warm and filled me in my
loneliness. I played with the light. It was God. I
loved that light and the green plants that I saw
outside the window. The day outside was brilliant
and warm, and Mother so cold and bad-tempered.
Once or twice in talking with Mother, I found my
voice. It was sad, the voice of a little girl asking
for love. The only thing that kept me from suf-
fering was the light.
Once more in this example we can see the peak

experience quality drawing closer in the measure in
which the patient is able to give in to her true feelings.
It is in sorrow ^nd the need for love that she finds
herself (her own voice) and the consolation of the
white light. The image of light as a beam, and the
religious feeling associated with it are too much like
other peak experiences with ibogaine to believe that
this isa real memory. Yet we cannot discard the pos-

sibilitythat the child's experience of light may be a
source of delight and support and constitute the orig-
inal experience at the root of the notion of God as
light-giver.
In spite of the positive element in the quotation
above, it can be seen from it that the patient's situa-
tion was still not resolved. She was still torn by her
ambivalence, not being able to love wholeheartedly.
As in Jacob's case, though, these minutes of analysis
laid the ground for a synthesis in the following hour,
and their fruit was the most noticeable among the nu-
merous changes that she reported during the following
months. This may be appreciated in the following page
of a diary, written by her two weeks later:
if they ever had

I used to ask other people
was ashamed of feelings. I
feelings like I had. I
used to ask Mother whether I was a freak!
"Doesn't anybody love me?*' I said. Why don't
they love me? I didn't love myself either. Where
was Gail? Gail is inside of Gail, but sleeping. She
is just waking up, and it is time. I am a person. I
am like anybody else. I have been living the lives

of others. Afraid to try my own. My mother de^
stroyed my life until this time. She never saw
herself. Maybe that is why she could not see me.
She lived the lives of others. Envy, greed, and
guilt. She is tortured. I am tortured, but I can do
something about it. I must exercise myself, I must
live in the world and use my energies. Only at
certain moments have I realized myself, and only
through other people. I cannot help looking into
and have my own good
living the lives of others. I
one. I think I am freeing myself from my par-
ents. I am not my mother, thank God. I must
respect the lives of others. How
can I take respon-
sibility for others if I don't have any for myself?
am must be me from now
I
on — me. I must be me.
^whatever I may be. I
I
have my own respon-
sibility.
The patient's feeling of completeness and relief had
its sudden onset in the session at a point where she
saw herself climbing on the inside of a vertical tube.
This tube was her own life, she knew, but was bot-
tomless, and where she was bom and downward there
was a black, inky, hazy substance which continued
downward without end. At the suggestion that she
fall down into the tube, she let go of the handles and
began to fall in the inky substance. As she fell, she
saw a spiral in motion, but principally, she says, "/
became myself in falling. The sensation was very
pleasurable and / began to like being me. I felt that
love was possible and that it was a way of living."^
This process of becoming herself and discovering
love was the natural continuation of the contacting of
her own feelings and the finding of her own voice in
the earlier episode —
^her own reality buried under her
identification with mother. As before, becoming her-
self was achieved by means of falling. In the earlier
part of the session, it had been a falling into her
sorrow, her despair, by letting go of her defensive-
ness. Now it was a total letting go of effort, paralleled
and expressed in the image of falling. In the process
of the falling and spiraling, the image ceased to be a
purely visual one, so that her own body woke up and
took part in the event.
The of "entering" an image, becoming it,

process
and in this manner
reassimilating a quality that was
being disowned, is familiar to us from Gestalt therapy
and has a long tradition that antedates psychotherapy
as we now know it. The classical Hindu sculptor, for
instance, would meditate on the god to which he was
to give form, by first summoning his image to mind
and then becoming it. A similar practice, without its
artistic end, is found in the Jewish Kabbalah and in
magical traditions. Gods that are invoked in such prac-
tices are particular functions or processes of the mind,
and so are the images most usually dealt with in
psychotherapy. In the present instance, the tube stands
4 Italics mine.
—
for the whole of the patient's life her own life — and
yet is bottomless and goes beyond. It is certainly a
great event to find such a door to knock at. The
possibility of entering is already awaiting the person
who sees the entrance, which is the synthetic view (if
only a view) of his existence. I have been surprised by
the frequency with which tubes are seen under the
effects of ibogaine, and I want to share my impression
that these generally constitute such an "entrance," so
that they are valuable clues to act upon. We have seen
the tube in two of the cases already reported, but
further illustrations may serve to clarify its signifi-
cance. The following is part of a session where the
patient had been visualizing image after image without
any strong feelings or interest in them. They appeared
rather meaningless and disconnected from one an-
other, and there seemed (to us) to be no definite
pattern or development apparent in their progression.
At one point, tihe subject visualized a drum. This is
very much an image of the ibogaine world, because of
its association with impulse, power, movement, and
perhaps primitiveness. It can also be seen as a varia-
tion on the tube theme, because of its cylindrical shape
and its emptiness. I asked the patient to impersonate
this instrument, and he described how he was be-
coming a large golden drum, only used to beat upon
on great historical occasions. Then the drum rolled
down a hill and ended up becoming a general's cap.
It belonged to a very insignificant man, who put on
airs by acting in a domineering manner. Such an in-
significant man appears to be the opposite of the great
golden drum, suggesting feelings of inadequacy that
the patient is covering up behind a pompous self-
image. It is interesting that the transition from one
image to the other is mediated by a rolling down of
the drum, reminiscent of the falling down through the
tube in the previous example. Letting go of an inflated
self-image wiU naturally feel like a falling into one's
self, or, at least, a falling into an area of insignificance,
darkness, and unpleasantness, in the midst of which the
true self is to be encountered. I now asked the patient
to be the general, and as he was in the process of
becoming this character, he saw a tube with no ending,
lika a train. I ask him to enter the tube, and it be-
came a jet, and tfien a little airplane that flew play-
fully.These are images of energy, and I feel inclined
to understand the sequence as a process of the pa-
tient's contacting his drive-energy through the "fall-
ing" involved in becommg msignificant. The tube marks
the point of transition, an endless hollow. But this
immediately became full of dynamism, first by the
superimposition of the idea of a train in motion, and
then a jet. Jets, spurts (remember the gushing sap),
and beams of light could all be understooi as the tube
coming to life, or as life flowing through its hollow-
ness — ^just as in our first case, where the subject re-
ceived the white light as he looked up the periscope-

like tube he had created. In taking the form of an
airplane, the "jet" energy became individualized, for
it is obvious from the patient's description of its mis-
chievous looping that he was speaking of his own style

of being. In fact, he discovered this by himself. This
flying reflected his real feelings. He flew like a playful
little boy, small and eager to explore, wanting more
and more, and enjoying the display of his own ability.
He did not experience his smallness as insignificance,
as the general did, nor did he have to struggle for
competitive greatness. The energy locked up in his
"drum personality" was now released to a more direct
enjoyment of himself, and instead of the gold that, in
the drum, conveyed greatness to others, he relished his
own feelings in the golden light of the sun.
After some time of enjoying the feeling of freedom
in an open world, he (the airplane) felt the need of
a direction and flew toward the sun. He hesitated as
he drew near, fearing a destruction like that of Icarus.
Nevertheless, he proceeded, entered the sun, and found
paradise behind it.
The airplane, after all, is only a transformation of
the endless tube, which may be the channel for a force,
but not the source itself. The little plane played in
the light of the sun as the sun's child, and though it
had an activity of its own, we might say that its move-
ment toward the sun stemmed from the sun's attrac-
tiion. The plane a portion of energy that wants more
is
of itself, and finds by returning to its source. It
this it
is literally a "vehicle," not the end, and it stands in

face of the sun like the son in face of the father (see
Jacob's case), or like the ego in face of the self.
We have seen two domains of energy as part of the

world of ibogaine: one of light and playfulness, the
other of darkness and greed; a world of the sun, of
spirits and dancing, and another of dark ponds, de-
vouring dragons, castrating dogs, threatening gorillas.
Somewhere in between are images such as that of a
golden lion or a dancing Negro. How do the tube
and the sun relate to the "lower'' domain of ibogaine
experiences, that of animality, rage, and lonely sep-
arateness? I think that the consideration of one further
case will serve to organize and understand better some
of the clues which have been provided by the material
presented thus far.
In brief, it may be said that, for the first four hours,
the thoughts and fantasies of this patient (a thirty-
eight-year-old politician) were predominantly sexual
and aggressive. During this time, two images kept
reappearing with some variations: one, the tube (which
was at first a ring, or an eye), and the other a gorilla-
like antiiropoid. The gorilla was the first vision of all,
and then it appeared to be completely an animal.
Later, the patient recognized the animal's self-impor-
tant and bombastic attitude as his own, and the more
he did, the more the image changed into a more hu-
man one, that of a gigantic and monkey-like man
that he called "the bully." At the end of the fourth
hour, I anticipated that the effect of the drug would
not last more than two hours or so and I saw little
development, if any, in the nature of the patient's ex-
perience for the past hour. In view of this, I decided
to interrupt what seemed to be a changeless meiry-
go-ro\md of imagery by means of a brief administration
of carbon dioxide. I hoped that the inhalation of the
gas would bring about a transient weakening of the
ego functions and a release of heretofore unconscious
material. It happened that the patient could not tol-
erate more than ten inhalations, for he felt that he—
the boastful giant — ^was being shoved up through a
tube so that his head was pressing with tremendous
force against the ceiling, and it would certainly break!
After this moment of impotence and fear of death,
there was a change in the patient's feeling tone and in
the content of his conversation. Not only did he see
more of the bully in himself, wanting to threaten
others in order to feel safe, but also the child under the
bully — a greedy child wanting affection that he did not
dare let others see. Now the giant appeared to him
with a big chest but small legs, and wearing the short
pants of a child. Many reminiscences followed, and
these had a quality of confession, for the patient was
expressing more and more of his weakness, guilt, and
insecurity.
Fearing that the session would be over before reach-
ing a definite goal, I used CO2 once more, and this
time with an even more dramatic consequence, for
the result was a state of ecstasy, the taste of which
remained as the patient's dominant feeling for the rest
of the day: The sun was at the other end of the tube!
The patient spent the following hour in what I can
best describe as an adoration of the sun. Not the
physical sun, which had already set, nor a hallucinated
sun, but whatever it is that is symbolized in it. As I
remember that tinie, as we sat, silent at times, and at
times talking, I picture the sun above our heads almost
as another being in the room, for I, too, was drawn into
the patient's exultation and gratefulness toward the
fountain of life.
I have commented upon how, with both iboga and
harmaline, a given theme can be either experienced or
merely contemplated as a sequence of images with
which the subject scarcely identifies. In this instance,
I believe that we are witnessing the primordial experi-
—
ence—not in the sense of old, but eternal from which
have sprung both the solar myths and the conception
of God as light that still reaches us through the mean-
ing of the word "God" in most languages.
We looked back on his experience throughout the
—
day a compendium of his life. The gorilla in him.
the bully, the one who wanted to be the big man, were
hiding unacceptable weakness and much guilt. Much
of the weakness was that of wanting, needing, and
feeling afraid to expose his needfulness. And most of
his guilt was about sex. Most of the life history that
he had presented to me was the history of his sexual
life, and the theme had run through the whole of his
session. "How can I reconcile sex with the sun?" he
said now, feeling in the presence of two incompatible
worlds, one of pure spirit and the other of the flesh.
But his doubt did not last very long, his change in view
being reflected in the remark that followed: "But the
penis in erection also points toward the sun!" This
was not mere playing with words and ideas, but the
expression of a change in feelings toward sex, which
suddenly became clean and holy in the measure that
it, too, was aiming at the sun — just like the airplane in
the vision discussed before. The light was the ultimate
end or beginning of the sexual urge, and, this being
so, sex was itself luminous.
I find this session interesting because of how it shows
a gradual transmutation of psychological energy, par-
alleled by the opening up of its tubelike channel. It
may be said that, in the beginning, the patient was
a closed tube and even wanted to be like that. At one
point, he pictured a tube stretching beyond his field
of vision and described it with a feeling of dissatisfac-
tion or discontifort at its lack of beginning or end. "A
tube, a tube, a tube, tube, tube ... It never ends!"
And then he commented that a tube with no limits is
nothing, I find this rejection of the tube's "beyond-
ness" noteworthy, because it is precisely a tube's end-
lessness and openness that seem characteristic of
ibogaine peak experiences. But this openness to the
rigid little ego is like death; it is "nothing." Therefore,
the assertive bully kept pushing his head against the
ceiling. The image tells us that the tube's closedness
and the man's rigid defensiveness were the same. The
tube's opening would be the smashing of the man's
head, and that would amount to his death. In f^ct, that
man eventually disappeared.
So what first wanted to go through the tube was
gorilla-like assertiveness, and that could not go through.
The tube cannot be permeable to a form of energy
which, after all, seeks separateness. In identifying with
this phony image of himself, the patient was prevent-
mg the flow of his life. But what is this life that wants
to flow? On several occasions, he saw tubes coming
from underground, or rising from a basement. At some
point, water flowed out from it —
^not gushing, just
barely leaking. "Now, now, now!" he exclaimed in
great excitement. And then "Ouch, ouch, ouch!" The
image changed to that of somebody being crucified,
and then he could not remember any more. Not only
the underground but the context in which these images
are embedded suggest that it was "dark" instincts that
wanted out, for the rest of the visions are of muddy
ponds, crocodiles, Negroes. Then the transformation
occurred by which the darkness and animal life became
light —and not only light, for the sun heats, convey-
ing great energy. In fact, it is the source of all energy
and life. The sun is, quite literally, the father of plants,
animals, and men, and the patient only had to be-
come a child to know this.
The present example shows only an amplification
of what we have seen in many others. When we con-
sider, for instance, Gail's sight of the light coming in
through the window while she lay in her crib ("K
was God"), or how the experience of light followed
each contact of another patient with the animal forces
portrayed in her imagination, or how in Jacob's case
the threads-worms-animals commg out of his mouth
became the bird that flies toward the sun ^m all of —
these instances it would seem that the drive that is
"embodied" in the animals (or the greedy baby) is

the same which, from a different point of view, comes
to be experienced as a flight toward the light and light
itself.
And the shift in point of view is very much that of
"entering the tube": entering life and living it from in-
side rather than being an outside observer of its man-
ifestations; experiencing it as closely as it may be
experienced, identifying with its central axis, with its
inner core; becoming life rather than having it; reach-
ing a state where subject and object are the same, the
thinker and his thoughts, the feeler and his feelings,
body and mind. So the process of entering the tube is no
other than that of entering one^s experience, which is
the object of so many traditional forms of meditation.
Thus have I heard. At one time the Blessed One

was living among the Kurus, at Kammasadamma,
a market town of the Kuru people.
There the Blessed One addressed the monks
thus: "Monks," and they replied to him "Vener-
able Sir." And
the Blessed One spoke as follows:
"This the sole way, monks, for the purifica-
is
tion of beings, for the overcoming of sorrow and
lamentation, for the destroying of pain and grief,
for reaching the right path, for the realization of
Nirvana, namely for four Foundations of Mind-
fulness.
"What are the four? Herein (in his teaching)
a monkdwells practising body-contemplation on
the body, ardent, clearly comprehending, and
mindful, having overcome covetousness and grief
concerning the world; he dwells practising feeling-
contemplation on feelings, ardent, clearly compre-
hending, and mindful, having overcome covetous-
ness and grief concerning the world; he dwells
practising mind-contemplation on the mind, ar-
dent, clearly comprehending, and mindful, having
overcome covetousness and grief concerning the
world; he dwells practising mind-object-contem-
plation on mind-objects, ardent, clearly compre-
hending, and mindful, having overcome covetous-
ness and grief concerning the world." ^
The seeming paradox is that this process of attend-

ing to actuality (in body, feelings, or thoughts) ap-
pears as a downward movement, toward earthly exis-
ience, and yet within the earthliness of its forms is found
^ Maha-Satipatthana'Sutta: 'Twenty-second text of the col-

ection of Long Discourses of the Buddha," from Nyaponika
rhera, The Heart of Buddhist Meditation (London: Rider &
Co., n.d.).
!

a spiritual entity which beams from above. The more
we go into the same thing, the more it turns into some-
thing different. The more we go into reality, the more
"unreal" it becomes. But this is no different from the
process by which science finds a reality which is in-
comprehensible to our senses, and art transfigures the
world of familiar appearances when it reaches for the
essence of things.
INDEX
i
Abramson, Harold, 2 ayahuasca, 119, 167
age regression, 24, 52, 55-57, Ayur Veda, 23
66, 211-12; therapeutic
value of, 24-25 Bach, Johann Sebastian, 7
aggression, 173, 176, 182, 201- Baker, Richard, 171
204; and harmaline, 173; Banisteriopsis, 119
and ibogaine, 173, 182, barbiturates, 1, 4
198, 201-204, 208 being, 6-7, 39
alcohol, 17 benzedrine, 2
alcoholic rehabilitation, 2 Benoit, Hubert, 13
Alexander, F. Matthias, 86 bioenergetics, x
Alles, G.,23 Blake, William, 207
Allport, Gordon, xvii body awareness, importance
altered consicousness states, of, 28-29, 35, 37-38, 52,
1-3 176-77, 188
amnesia, 38, 50, 56, 168
amphetamines, xvi, 1, 171, 172 caapi, 119
amphetamine shock, 2 Camus, Jean-Pierre, 86
anxiety reactions, 8, 50, 58, case histories, 25; with harma-
74, 76, 95, 153, 160 Une, 122-26, 128-35, 136-37,
Apuleius, 37 140-46, 148-65; with ibo-
archetypal experience, 120-21, gaine, 174-78, 179-89, 191-
127-28, 146-47, 149-51, 165- 98, 201-208, 209-10, 210-
66, 178-79, 182-85, 210; 16, 217-19, 219-21; with
and Jung, 120-21; and per- MDA, 26-35, 40-49, 50-59,
sonality integration, 120-21, 61-67; with MMDA, 76-89,
137-38 90-91, 93-94, 96, 97-99,
Aristotle, 15 100-103, 106-108, 109-13,
art forms, frequent evocation 114-16
of, 136-40 catatonia, 8
autobiography, therapeutic centeredness, 18, 21, 79, 82,
use, 26, 45-48, 77-79, 174 85-89
avoidance, 9-11, 18-20 Centro de Estudios de Antro-
227
228 Index
pologia Medica (The Cen- De Ropp, Robert, 171
ter for Studies in Medical '*desensitization,'* 11
Anthropology), xiv desires, imconscious, 97-99,
cerebrotonic, 5 205-207
cerebrotonic ectomorphs, 138 DesoiUe, Robert, x, 139
childhood reminiscences, 24- desymbolization, 109
25, 26-29, 38, 44-45, 173- dianetics, 24
74, 191, 198,211,212-13 disinhibition, 17, 71
Christianity, 14, 15, 20, 154- dissociation, 66, 161
59 dissolution, 75
classicalmyths, 8, 92-93, 135 Divine Comedy (Dante), 9-12
collective unconscious, 119-69 DMT, 167
compulsive character struc- Doors of Perception, The
ture, XV (Huxley), 19
conditioned personality struc- Dostoevski, Feodor, 7
ture, XV dramamine, 172
conflict resolution, 8, 11, 14, dreams, 106; and imagery,
186 74, 90-92, 95, 98, 104, 161-
confrontation, value of, 11-12, 62; re-experiencing in thera-
21,68,89-91,92, 131,186, py, 106-109, 176, 188-89,
210 191-93,211
confrontation with uncon- Drugs and the Mind (De
scious, 9, 12, 138, 144; and Ropp), 171
body-type, 138; with harma- dysfunctional personality
line, 137-38; and integra- patterns, 17
tion, 138
consciousness, importance in
Eckhardt, Meister, 7, 103
therapy, 9-10, 70, 85, 98,
ego-enhancement: and MDA,
138-39, 145,147
60
consciousness expansion, 14
egohood, 60-62
conversion manifestations, 8,
ego loss, 4
166
eidetic displays, 73-74; as
counteractive defenses, 50, 59
feeling substitutes, 74
electroencephalogram, 138
Dabrowski, Kazimierz, 1, 11
Hikes, Joel, xvii
Dante Alighieri, 9-10, 14-15
encounter groups, x
death wish, 160, 163
"encountering," 114-15
defenses, operation of, 38, 50-
Eros, 160
52, 56, 59, 74, 83, 90, 100,
Esalen Institute, x
136, 221. See also denial;
estrangement, 123
repression; substitutive
Ethnopharmacological Search
symbolic expression
for Psychoactive Drugs (ed.
deficiency motivation, 124
Holmstedt), xvii
dehumanization, xiv
expression of feelings, 44, 54,
Delay, Jean, 2
55, 56, 91-94, 105, 135-36
delusions, 8
denial, 11, 50, 54, 74
depersonalization, 3, 75 Family of Man (Steichen),
depression, 8, 36, 64, 77 174, 177
Index 229
fantasy, therapeutic use, 54, on, 120; therapeutic use,
64-67,90, 108, 117, 135-38, 119-69; and visual arche-
140-45, 151-62, 168, 174- typal symbols, 70
77,185,208,212-13 harmaline-MDA, 121, 167
fantasy enhancers, xv-xvi, 73 harmaline-mescaline, 121
Federking, 2 harmaline-TMA, 121
feeling-enhancement reactions, Harvard prison rehabilitation
94-96, 108-109 project, 2
feeling-enhancers, xv-xvi, xvii Heart of Buddhist Meditation,
feeling substitution, 74 the (Thera), 223
forgetting, 38 Hegel, George Wilhelm Frie-
free association, 161 drich, 9
Freud, Sigmund, 38 Hoffer, Abram, 2
frigidity, 160, 168 Hoffman, Franz, xiv
Fromm, Erich, 13 Holmstedt, Bo, xvii
Homer, 76
Gauguin, Paul, 7 Horsley, J. S., 1
Gershon, Samuel, 171 Human Preference Test, 51,
Gestalt psychotherapy, x, 95, 53, 54, 56
99,105,114,174,198,210, Huxley, Aldous, 2, 4, 7, 19
216 hypermnesia, 24, 59, 65
Greeks, 30 hypnosis, 64, 65, 68-69, 71
Grinker, Roy R., 1 hypnotic regression, 24
group therapy, 26, 71; MDA
in, 71 ibogaine, xvii, 3, 4, 25, 73,
guided affective imagery, x 114; and aggression, 173,
guided daydream, 12, 68-69, 182, 201-204, 209; charac-
138-45, 176, 177, 191, 210 teristic imagery, 173-74,
guilt, 44, 66-67, 74, 80, 115, 181, 196, 203, 214-19; and
159-63, 165, 182, 221 childhood reminiscences,
173-74, 198, 211; effects,
habitual patterns, interference 3,171-74,183,198,211;
of,2-3, 82, 88 and hallucinogens, 3; and
hallucinations, 23, 183 impulse expression, 209;
hallucinogens, 2, 3, 4, 24-25 and instinctual forces, 173,
harmaline, xvii, 3, 25, 36, 73, 196, 217; and peak experi-
183, 220; adverse reactions, ences, 185-87, 191, 214,
124-25, 166-67; and col- 221; prevalent themes
lective unconscious, 119-69; evoked by, 173-74, 196,
combined with MDA, 167- 201-203, 206; therapeutic
68; effects, 3, 119-21,123- use, 171-224
27, 146-48, 166-67; and Icarus, 218
feelings of power and free- idealized image, 39, 80-82,
dom, 60; and hallucinogens, 165. See also self-image
3; history, 119-21;and identification, 14, 108-109
peak experiences, 125, 139; identity shifts, 65-66
prevalent themes evoked by, imagery, 120-22, 127-28, 183;
120-21, 128, 130-34, 149; as defense mechanism, 136-
subjective effects, research 38, 163, 168; and dreams.
230 Index
106-17, 161; elicited by marathon sessions, x
psychotropic drugs, 74, 90- Maryland State Psychiatric
92, 95, 98, 104-105; ex- Research Center, xvii
ploration in therapy, 98, masks, use as defense, 34,
104-105, 106-10, 117, 125, 36-37,39,40,177
128-31, 135, 139, 144, 149- meditation, 15, 16, 18-19,
52, 174-78, 191-93, 204- 126, 187, 223
208 Medusa, 92
imaginative representation in mescaline, xi, xvii, 6, 19, 24,
therapy, 12 59, 60, 167
impersonation, 44-46, 109-10, mesomorphic somatotonics,
114, 168, 175, 183-84,203, 138
210, 216-18 MDA (methylenedioxyam-
incomplete therapy, evidence phetamine), xiv, xvii, 3,
of, 49-50, 54-55, 147-48 23-24, 73, 75, 126, 167,
initiation rites, 119, 146-47 172, 173, 198,208,211;
insight, growth of, 14, 16, 79- and age regression, 24-25;
82,85,89, 103, 107,117, as "drug of truth,*' 70;
163, 176-78 effects, 3, 23-25, 35-36, 50,
instinctual forces, images of, 60-61, 70-71, 173; and
166, 173, 197, 204, 206-208 enhanc^nent of ego, 60;
integration, 4, 8-9, 14, 39, 94, and group therapy, 71;
222-23; and archetypal ex- and hallucinogens, 3; and
perience, 121, 137-38; and hypermnesia, 24, 59, 65;
confrontation with uncon- and importance of sensa-
scious, 138, 206-207; and tions, 60-61; therapeutic
dissociation, 66-67; and use, 23-71, 198; toxicity,
MDA, 60; and pathology, 71; verbal reactions, 71
8-9; and peak experiences, MMDA (3-methoxy-4, 5-
18-19, 104 methylene dioxyphenyl iso-
introjection, 208 propylamine), xvii, 3, 4, 23,
iproniazide, 17 In 60,70, 172,173,190-91,
isopropylamines, 73 198; effects, 3-4, 73-76,
94-95, 104-105, 116-17,
Jantz,2 173; and everyday reality,
Johns Hopkins University, xvii 73-76, 83, 92-94; and ex-
Jung, Carl Gustav, 2, 104, ploration of present, 198;
120 and feeling-enhancement,
Kabbalah, 216 73-74; and hallucinogens,
3-4, 73-74; and peak ex-
Laignel-Lavastine, 1 periences, 74-75, 89, 91, 95,
Leuner, Hanscari, x 104, 117, 190-91; and
Lowen, Alexander, x psychosomatic symptoms,
LSD, X, xi, xvii, 4, 13, 24, 60, 74, 95, 100-104, 106; thera-
73, 75, 168, 172, 190, 191, peutic use, 73-117; visual
194, 198-200, 208; and ego imagery, 74, 90-93, 95, 98-
psychoanalytic
loss, 4; in 99, 104-105, 117
treatment, 2; and transcen- Middle Ages, 30
dence, 59-60 Minerva, 93
Index 231
MAO (monoamine oxidase), personality change, 16, 25;

171n and peak experiences,
motor activity, significance of, 17-18,20, 117
61, 169, 183-84, 185, 187, "personalization," 60-61
203-204 Perseus, 92
Myerson, 2 personality types, 4-5, 185-86
myristicine, 23 peyotl, 86
mystery religions, 14 phenylisopropylamines, 3
mystical experiences, sources, phobias, 19, 149-54
16-18 photographs, use in therapy,
mysticism, 14-16, 103-104 53, 56, 62, 65, 93, 174-76,
190, 193, 197, 210
physiological insusceptibility,
narcoanalysis, 1
narcosynthesis, 1
28
pineal gland, 120
Nebru, Jawaharlal, 152
polycyclic indoles, 3
Nicoll, B., 13
prenatal memories, 64'
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm,
projection, 108, 136, 163,
76
165, 190, 191, 212
nitrous oxide, 17
psilocybin, xi, 2
non-psychotomimetics, xv, 3
psychedelics, xv-xvi, xvii; and
nutmeg, 23, 73
behavior change, 2-3 ; "heav-
en and hell" of, 4-5, prop-
Odyssey, The (Homer), 76 erties, xvi-xvii; and self-
Oedipal situation, 196, 212 discovery, 10; spiritual
"original man,** 14
value, 2; therapeutic use,
Osmond, Humphrey, xv, 2, 3 xvi-xvii, 2-3, 13-14
otherness, illusion of, 67 Psychopharmacology, xvii
psychosomatic symptoms, 8,
'*past-life memories," 65-68 74, 95, 100-104, 106, 125
pathology, enhancement of, psychotherapy: goals of, 14,
4-21 35; and psychotropic drugs,
peak experiences, 1, 4-21, 73- 13; and spiritual traditions,
75,79,104,117, 125,139, xii, 13-14
185-86, 190, 198; and psychotic experience, value
Christian grace, 20; dan- of, r
gers, 16-20; as guide, 86- psychotomimetics, xv-xvi
90, 117; incomplete, 89; psychotropic drugs, 1-4; and
and intrinsic values, 4-8; setting, 5; and types of
and personality change, personality, 4-5
16, 20; and personalization, puberty rites, 119
60; stabilization of, 91-95;
therapeutic implications,
16-17,79,85-86 Ramakrishna, 126
Peganum harmala, 119 reactive formations, 8
pentobarbital, xvi reality,confrontation of, 17,
Perennial Philosophy 37, 60-61, 92-94, 99-100
(Huxley), 86 reconditioning, 11
Perls, Fritz, x Renaissance, 30
n
232 Index
repression, 8, 39-40, 49-50, 61, spontaneity, 37, 82, 88, 145,
74-75, 89, 144, 159-60, 197, 147
207, 208 Stokowski, Leopold, 6
resistances, 18-19, 28, 37, Stravinsky, Igor, 175
104, 125-26, 200 substitutive symbolic expres-
reve eveille, x sion, 8, 66-68, 99, 135
Rite of Spring, The (Stravin- super-ego, 100
sky), 175 symbols recurrent, 14-15, 120-
role-playing, 36-37 21, 125, 128, 135-38, 149,
Rolf, Ida, X 166, 220
Romans, 30 symptom substitution, 68
Tabernanthe iboga, 171

safrol,23 telepathine, 119
samadhi, 15 10-methoxy-harmaline, 120
Sandison, 2 Thanatos, 160
scopolamine, xvi Thera, Nyaponika, 223
"screen memories," 65-68; therapeutic intervention, 5,
therapeutic use, 68-69 11-12,28,86,89-91,95,
self-acceptance, 10-11, 14, 35- 101, 105, 108-109, 116-17,
36, 145; and mescaline, 167 126-27,135, 138-39,144,
self-actualization, 124 150, 186, 200-201
self-concept, 14, 39, 51, 80, time regression, 65-66, 173-
123-24. See also self-image 74, 198,211
self-defeating fantasies, 144 TMA (trimethoxyamphet-
self-discovery, 122, 123-24, amine), 121n, 173
178, 184 Tofranil, 171n
selfhood, awareness of, 60-61, "top dog," 100, 208
65-66, 67, 147, 177-78, 189- transcendence, feelings of,
90, 207, 216-17 59-60, 79
self-image, 36-39, 50-51, 189, transformation as goal, 9
208-209, 217. See also self- tryptamines, 2
concept; idealized image Turner, William, 3
self-knowledge, 10, 30, 35, 60,
81-82 unconscious, access to, 2-3,
self-realization, 14 16-17
self-rejection, 11, 95, 144-45
seratonin, 120 Van Gogh, Vincent, 7
shamanism, 1, 86, 119, 135, via activa, 12
147, 178 via contemplativa, 12
Sheldon, W. H., 4 via purgativa, 10, 15; psycho-
sodium amytal, 2 logical disharmony as, 20
somatotonic, 4 via unitiva, 15
South American mythology, Virgil, 11
135 viscerotonic, 4, 176
spiritual traditions, xii, 15-16, Vivaldi, Antonio, 97
18, 20-21; and contempla-
tion, 9; and magic, 15; and Watts, Alan, 14
psychotherapy, 13-14 "Weckanalyse," 2
Index 233
wish-fulfillment fantasies, yage, x, 1 19
144-45 yoga, 15
writing, use in therapy, 40,
93-94, 159 Zen Buddhism, 15
About the Author
Qaudio Naranjo is a Chilean psychiatrist and the au-

thor of several books and monographs on psychology
and meditation. He has studied at Harvard and the
University of Illinois on a Fulbright Scholarship, and
in 1966 went to the University of California at Berkeley
on a Guggenheim Fellowship. In recent years he has
been a major figure at the Esalen Institute and in spir-
itual teaching programs in California.
234
Ballantine Books in Psychology
Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy

Eric Berne, M.D.
Dr. Berne first outlined the prindples of transactional

analysis in this book. Now a classic in the field.
The Structure and Dynamics of Organiza-

tions AND Groups
Eric Berne, M.D.
Based on the principles of transactional analysis, this

book offers a systematic framework for the therapy of
"ailing" groups and organizations. A ^'bold and cre^
ative"' book.
Games Alcoholics Play

Claude Steiner
With a book claims alcohol-

preface by Eric Berne, this
ism is not a disease and tells why treating an alcoholic
as a "sick" man may do him more harm than good.
To order by mail, send $1.95 per book plus

250 per order for handling to Ballantine Cash
Sales, P.O. Box 505, Westminster, Maryland
21157. Please allow three weeks for delivery.
AMERICA'S#1 BESTSELLER
Howto
ibuifWn
Mildred Newman
^& Bernard Berkowitz]
with jean Owen
$1^0
^'Everyone I know who has read it has become a better
person because of it. Read it It will change your life. It\
has certainly changed mine/'^ REX REED

''//rm gloomy, I read it twice a day with a glass of wafer.]
It has never failed to uplift me. A positively inspirationall
jbooJt/^- NEIL SIMON
^ Available at your local bookstore or mail the coupon below ^|

/:t:v ballantine cash sales
^^ P.O. Box 505, Westminster, Maryland 21157
Please send me the following book bargains:
QUANTITY HO. TITLE AMOUNT
- How
24333 to be Your Own Best Friend $1.50.
Allow three weeks fordelivery. Mailing and handling .25

Please enclose check or money order. total"
We are not responsible for orders containing cash*
(PLEASE PRINT CLEARLY)
NAME
ADDRESS •
citv .STATE. .ZIP.
BB 15/74
DRUG EXPERIENCE
THE
THAT CAN OPEN THE DOOR
TO THE MIND'S PRISON CELL...
Psychiatrist Claudio Naranjo details exciting

results from the use of AADA, AAAADA, Harmaline
and Ibogaine— drugs that defy traditional
classification. They act as 'feeling enhancers"
— psychedelic, mind-manifesting drugs— with-
out the disorganizing effects of the hallucino-
gens. The subject (or explorer) can enter deeply
into his feelings, into his true inner self, and yet
retain complete contact with the ouler world.
''A lucid discussion of the two poles of the
drug experience. ..Naranjo's warm, human
qualities and his general discussion of drug use
will warrant recommending this book to the
educated layman. It will broaden the limited
view of drugs generally held" —Library Joumol
'Ihope The Healing Journey will stimulate

other psychiatrists to experiment in this area!'.
—Andrew Weil, author of The Nafurol Mind

The Healing Journey - New Approa - Claudio Naranjo PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Healing Journey - New Approa - Claudio Naranjo PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Ballantine/

"A revolutionary approach 24328/si

New, iches to Consc*

"Because of its unusual clarity, it will be an

After the session, the subject wrote the following:

a lot of money or a kingdom, that my parents will

Claudio Naranjo is a Chilean psychiatrist and

cent years he has been a major figure at the

^available in a Bal/antlne Books edition at your locai bookstore

BALLANTINE BOOKS • NEW YORK

pages 94-111 of the Journal for the Study of Con-

Copyright ©1973 by Claudio Naranjo

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 73-7026

First Printing: January, 1975

Printed in the United States of America

To Franz Hoflfman, Emeritus Professor of Physiology

To all the experimental subjects and patients of

Preface by Stanislav Grof ix

I The Healing Potential of

n MDA, THE Drug of Analysis 23

in MMDA AND THE Eternal Now 73

IV Harmaline and the Collective

About the Author 234

With the increasmg knowledge about the nature and

all the classic psychedelics, his unique contribution is

men seeking reliable information in these fields.

Maryland State Psychiatric Research Center

This book was completed in the earlier part of 1970,

obtain firsthand experience in things; and its lack of

The four pharmacological agents that I discuss in

is that they open

The association between the occurrence of altered

particular state of mind that can be advantageous to

PEAK EXPERIENCE VS. ENHANCEMENT

Apparentiy, psychoactive drugs, from barbiturates

clash of the forces within the personality that the con-

The Healing Potential of Agony and Ecstasy 1

tance, but it is doubtful that such an end may be

1 The Healing Journey

symbols may be as relevant to the therapeutic process

The Healing Potential of Agony and Ecstasy 1

of the healthy aspects of personality rather than the

dinary human life by assimilation to a radically dif-

summit of purgatory: earthly paradise. Paradise, yes,

world of Aristotle; its "circles" are those of the planets,

experience," for instance, only facilitates psychological

— chemical or other ihdA is necessary to bring it

The Healing Potential of Agony and Ecstasy 1

State and those characteristic of the non-ordinary. Yet

1 The Healing Journey

sleep but not overcome or killed, as the ego is shat-

tegration. Once some centeredness has been achieved,

seeing of reality and dispelling of the phantoms of il-

lusion. Others stress attending to the experience of the

MDA (methylenedioxyamphetamine) is an amina-

than a change in the style of mental operation and

is clear that his deep pleasure was in feeling himself,

His associations have taken him from letter "n" to

MDA, the Drug of Analysis 3

Now he clearly evokes his feelmg for this nurse. He

and then came a host of demons, devils of another

my scheme, and were imposed on me. Who did this?"