Psychopharmacology reshaped the relationship between art and psychiatry, repositioning the origins of art therapy within evolving clinical practices and discourses on mind-altering drugs. The article traces the use of psychotropic drugs in connection with psychopathology of art in the early twentieth century, then focuses on two post-Second World War experiments with psilocybin by psychiatrist Alfred Bader and pharmacologist Roland Fischer. These examples show how consciousness became central to discussions of mental health, as psychotherapists increasingly framed art brut and modernist aesthetics in neurobiological terms to define madness as a social disease.
C.G. Jung's ideas significantly shaped how death and dying were understood and treated in the United States between 1960 and 1980. This article examines how psy practitioners in thanatology, palliative care, suicide studies, and near-death studies adopted Jung's concepts. After tracing Jung's 'Americanisation' in the 1950s and the reception of his commentaries on death alongside The Tibetan Book of the Dead, the author analyzes four examples: a psychiatric comparison of Jung's near-death experience account with William James' mystical states; LSD therapies provoking symbolic dying processes; studies of suicide survivors; and parapsychological investigations of near-death experiences. Jung's work proved pivotal, linking psychology to terminal illness approaches and positive or transpersonal psychology, and must be understood alongside the broader reception of James' psychology of religion.