Expanding Mindscapes
Dyck, Erika 1975-, Elcock, Chris
The MIT Press eBooks June 29, 2023 DOI: 10.7551/mitpress/14417.001.0001 via OpenAlex
Summary
AI-generated from the abstractA collection of essays explores the global history of psychedelics beyond North America, covering their discovery, use, and cultural impact in the twentieth century. Topics include LSD psychotherapy in communist Czechoslovakia, early LSD-25 applications in South America, and ayahuasca's intersection with modernism in China. The authors examine how colonial empires and U.S. influence shaped local reception of psychedelics in botanical and pharmaceutical contexts, and address underexplored themes such as gender, agriculture, parapsychology, anarchism, and technological innovations.
Study at a glance
| Characteristics | Historical analysis Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Historiography Globe Colonialism History Communism |
| Citations | 4 |
| Key finding | The collection argues that the history of psychedelics is global and diverse, extending well beyond the United States and Canada, and involves interactions with colonialism, communism, and local cultural movements. |
Abstract
The first collection of its kind to explore the diverse and global history of psychedelics as they appealed to several generations of researchers and thinkers. Expanding Mindscapes offers a fascinatingly fluid and diverse history of psychedelics that stretches around the globe. While much of the literature to date has focused on the history of these drugs in the United States and Canada, editors Erika Dyck and Chris Elcock deliberately move away from these places in this collection to reveal a longer and more global history of psychedelics, which chronicles their discovery, use, and cultural impact in the twentieth century. The authors in this collection explore everything from LSD psychotherapy in communist Czechoslovakia to the first applications of LSD-25 in South America to the intersection of modernism and ayahuasca in China. Along the way, they also consider how psychedelic experiments generated their own cultural expressions, where the specter of the United States may have loomed large and where colonial empires exerted influence on the local reception of psychedelics in botanical and pharmaceutical pursuits. Breaking new ground by adopting perspectives that are currently lacking in the historiography of psychedelics, this collection adds to the burgeoning field by offering important discussions on underexplored topics such as gender, agriculture, parapsychology, anarchism, and technological innovations.