D-lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD 25), first synthesized in 1938, is a synthetic amide that induces psychic states where subjects become aware of repressed memories and unconscious material while remaining conscious. In a one-year preliminary study of 36 psychoneurotic patients, the drug shows promise for treating psychoneuroses and related mental illnesses.
LSD was used at Powick Hospital from 1952, but its dramatic psychic effects—hallucinations and sensory hyperacuity—proved therapeutically unimportant. The drug's main value was its ability to bring repressed childhood traumas into consciousness, such as parental rejection, hostility, sexual assaults, and the loneliness and fear caused by inhalant anaesthetics in a hospital setting. These memories were recovered and abreacted with great emotional release. LSD was uniquely effective at retrieving deeply repressed material; small doses could yield in one or two sessions what would otherwise require months of analysis.