Despite hopes and fears that brain research would eliminate subjectivity and replace folk psychology with a neuroscientific worldview, that cultural shift has not occurred. Based on nine months of fieldwork in a psychopharmacological laboratory studying hallucinogens since the 1990s, the paper examines how subjective experience remains central as both an epistemic object and a practical problem. In neuroimaging studies seeking neural correlates of drug-induced altered states, test subjects' introspective accounts are crucial. Researchers' own firsthand knowledge of the drugs' effects, though absent from publications, is key to conducting experiments. The psychedelic experience often draws scientists into the field and shapes their self-image and way of life, showing the persistence of the subjective in contemporary neuropsychopharmacology.
William James defended personal consciousness throughout his career, declaring in his 1890 "Principles of Psychology" that psychology is the scientific study of states of consciousness and that the thinker is the thought. While writing that work, he investigated a dynamic psychology of the subconscious, which became central to his 1902 Gifford Lectures, "The Varieties of Religious Experience." This represented his clearest statement on his developing tripartite metaphysics of pragmatism, pluralism, and radical empiricism, asking whether a science of consciousness is possible.
John C. Lilly, a neurophysiologist whose papers are held at Stanford University, wrote a classified paper in the late 1950s proposing that his research on sensory isolation, brain electrostimulation, and brain mapping could enable 'push-button' control over human behavior and even 'master-slave controls directly of one brain over another.' Though he aligned this work with Cold War military aims, Lilly later became a counterculture guru, arguing that the same techniques—psychedelics and isolation tanks—could be used for personal liberation rather than brainwashing. This article examines the relationship between brainwashing science and psychedelic mind alteration, showing how paranoid ideas about mind control shaped Lilly's research trajectory.