Timothy Leary's mid-career shift: clean break or inflection point?

Summary

Timothy Leary, despite his iconic counterculture image, maintained deeper ties to psychology than commonly believed. A fresh look at his entire career reveals his psychedelic explorations were an evolution, not a clean break from the field. This continuity suggests his contributions merit greater recognition in psychology's history, showcasing his lasting intellectual impact.

Abstract

The psychologist Timothy Leary (1920-1996), an iconic cultural figure in the United States in the 1960s and afterward, has received comparatively scant attention in the history of psychology. This may be due to perceptions that, after a major career shift centering around his experimentation with psychedelic substances and his subsequent dismissal from Harvard in 1963, Leary parted company with the field. While there are several good reasons to adopt this view, examination of his entire career as well as his intellectual ancestry reveals unacknowledged continuities, suggesting that a more prominent place be accorded to him in the history of psychology, as well as to the challenges he poses.

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