Available via license: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Content may be subject to copyright.
This is a section of doi:10.7551/mitpress/14417.001.0001
Expanding Mindscapes
A Global History of Psychedelics
Edited by: Erika Dyck, Chris Elcock
Citation:
Expanding Mindscapes: A Global History of Psychedelics
Edited by:
DOI:
ISBN (electronic):
Publisher:
Published:
Erika Dyck, Chris Elcock
The MIT Press
2023
10.7551/mitpress/14417.001.0001
9780262376891
The open access edition of this book was made possible by
generous funding and support from MIT Press Direct to Open
Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/chapter-pdf/2184965/c008600_9780262376891.pdf by guest on 29 November 2023
Roger Heim (1900–1979) was a French biologist and a professor of mycol-
ogy at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle (MNHN) in Paris. He
directed this old and prestigious academic institution, following in the foot-
steps of famous biologists like Georges- Louis Leclerc, Comte deBuon, and
Georges Cuvier. During the 1950s, at a time when his brilliant career was
already underway, his research took a new turn when he became actively
involved in the discovery of Mexican hallucinogenic mushrooms among
Western researchers.
In doing so, he helped pave the way for groundbreaking research in the
modern psychedelic history. Of course, archeological evidence indicates that
Amerindians had known hallucinogenic mushrooms in ill- known practices
deep into pre- Columbian times,
1
but Western scientic investigations are
recent, notwithstanding some references in sixteenth- century Spanish manu-
scripts2 and in some ethnographic observations published in Eu rope in the
1920s and 1930s. e famous Harvard ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schul-
tes (1915–2001) had also collected samples in 1938 and 1939.3 In any event,
rec ords that reveal the intentional use of psilocybin mushrooms in Eu rope
do not appear until the second half of the twentieth century; what traces of
interest were shown in this topic before this time were isolated to a handful
of erudite scientists with a limited audience.
4
On the other hand, there is evi-
dence of psilocybin mushrooms in nineteenth- and early- twentieth- century
Eu ro pean medical lit er a ture
5
that describes cases of involuntary intoxication
and shows that nobody understood their psychoactive eects.
11 “I AM A SCIENTIST!” ROGER
HEIM’S INTERDISCIPLINARY AND
TRANSNATIONAL RESEARCH ON
HALLUCINOGENIC MUSHROOMS
(AND THE PROB LEM OF DIVINATION)
Vincent Verroust
Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/chapter-pdf/2184965/c008600_9780262376891.pdf by guest on 29 November 2023
262 Chapter 11
e year 1953 marks the critical starting point for con temporary scientic
investigations into Mexican mushrooms through the work of Robert Gor-
don Wasson (1898–1986) and Valentina Pavlovna Wasson (1901–1958), a
banker and a pediatrician, respectively. Both of them were passionate about
mushrooms. While their story is usually depicted as in de pen dent scholars
forging a new path, their friendship and collaboration with Heim is little
known. Heim’s correspondence, housed at the MNHN, reveals that Gordon
Wasson and Roger Heim became friends in the late 1940s via correspon-
dence and met in person in Paris in the spring of 1950. Subsequently, the two
traveled around France in 1952, including one trip with Valentina, as they were
preparing their seminal monograph Mushrooms, Rus sia and History, which
was published in 1957in two splendid volumes.6 In fact, Heim diligently
copyedited their book, and their close friendship and intellectual anity
is also reected in their dedications in their respective works.
7
Beginning
in 1956, Heim joined the Wassons on several expeditions to visit vari ous
Indigenous peoples in Mexico in an attempt to nd traces of mushroom
consumption.
Following this early work discovering the existence and uses of halluci-
nogenic mushrooms, Heim went on to collaborate with Albert Hofmann,
the anthropologist Guy Stresser- Péan (1913–2009) and the psychiatrist Jean
Delay (1907–1987). From the 1950s onward, his career took an unexpected
turn, building bridges with the humanities, medicine, and visual arts. Heim’s
work thus deserves to be analyzed along interdisciplinary and transnational
lines. Recent historical scholarship reveals how the psychopharmacological
study of serotoninergic hallucinogens spilled out of the lab and into ground-
breaking collaborations. is is apparent in Milana Aronov’s work of on LSD
as a source of creativity8 and Erika Dyck’s history of the inuence of LSD on
architecture in psychiatric hospitals.9
e global history of psychedelics calls into question the specic nature
of the psychic eects triggered by the serotoninergic hallucinogens, which
can vary quite dramatically according to the context and from one user to
another. By way of hypothesis, intimate experiences with psychedelics within
the scientic realm have led to specic knowledge, such as the end of the
psychotomimetic paradigm and Humphry Osmond’s coining of the word
Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/chapter-pdf/2184965/c008600_9780262376891.pdf by guest on 29 November 2023
263 “I Am a Scientist!”
“psychedelic,” which helped move toward a therapeutic understanding of
LSD and mescaline in psychiatry.
10
e Czech pharmacologist Stephen Szára
likewise defended the heuristic value of personal familiarity with psychedel-
ics, as did the Italian theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli, who pointed to the
inuence of his LSD experiences on his scientic work.11
Roger Heim’s career is a case in point. I wish to focus on one par tic u-
lar episode: his appraisal of their use in divination. In conjunction with his
appreciation for their psychic eects, and according to the anthropological,
psychiatric, and experimental perspectives that emerged through his col-
laborations, Heim developed an interest in the practice of divination, and in
so doing, he operated on the scientic fringe. I wish to show that although
he attempted to incorporate allusions to extrasensory perception into his
own research, which is evidenced by the archives and hinted at in his inter-
disciplinary understanding of hallucinogenic mushrooms, it caused him a
great deal of unease. How did he negotiate between his interest in paranor-
mal phenomena and the rigorously rational imperatives of Western science?
From this perspective, it is illuminating to dwell on the research happening
in France in the 1950s and 1960s and how it is related to scientism and
rationalism.
ROGER HEIM’S ACADEMIC TRAINING
Beginning in his youth, Heim was fascinated by the natu ral sciences, and as
early as 1920, he spent time at the MNHN’s cryptogam (botanical organ-
isms that reproduce by spores, without owers or seeds) laboratory. However,
his father made it clear that he would only settle for his son getting an engi-
neering degree, and that same year Heim entered the École Centrale, one of
the country’s oldest and most prestigious institutions (grandes écoles), as well
as an elite school where he received advanced training in applied industrial
science. He received his engineering degree in 1923 before immediately
returning to his initial passion and completing his degree in natu ral science
in 1924. He did his military ser vice at the MNHN’s organic chemistry labo-
ratory, and later in the biochemistry laboratory of L’institut Pasteur in Paris,
while si mul ta neously training in mycology. He defended his dissertation
Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/chapter-pdf/2184965/c008600_9780262376891.pdf by guest on 29 November 2023
264 Chapter 11
on the Inocybe genus of fungi in 1931, reecting his developing interest in
mushroom classication, tropical mycology, and phytopathology. Soon, he
made a name for himself by publishing high- impact papers on the topic.
After World War II,12 he joined the Académie des Sciences in 1946, after
which he began conducting eldwork around the globe before taking assum-
ing the position of director of the MNHN in 1951. Over the course of his
career, he was the recipient of several academic distinctions and honorary
degrees.
Heim’s training reveals that his main area of interest was the biology
of organisms, based on a naturalistic approach to the living world. What
this survey of Heim’s education and career overlooks is his general interest
in psy chol ogy (and parapsychology in par tic u lar), which came to the fore
Figure11.1
Roger Heim with a culture of
Psilocybe mexicana
at the cryptogamy laboratory of the MNHN in
Paris, c. 1958. Reproduced with the permission of the MNHN.
Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/chapter-pdf/2184965/c008600_9780262376891.pdf by guest on 29 November 2023
265 “I Am a Scientist!”
only after his rst contact with hallucinogenic mushrooms.
13
ere is no
indication that Heim was interested in paranormal phenomena when he
began collaborating with the Wassons— neither in his publications, nor in
his personal papers, nor in any other archival source. Given his rigorous sci-
entic training, it is quite likely that he would have had, at least initially, an
unfavorable opinion of the issue. Indeed, theories based on metapsychic phe-
nomena, such as animal magnetism and somnambulism, had already been
discredited by French science and medicine in the eigh teenth century. While
research on psychic phenomena in France was temporarily part of the eld
of psy chol ogy during the last two de cades of the nineteenth century, the so-
called occult sciences were far aeld from the perspectives of most scientists,
were too busy defending their positivistic methodologies.
14
Hence, scientic
research into paranormal phenomena in France quickly waned at the turn
of the century and was abandoned permanently just before World War II.15
When Heim was a student, these phenomena had thus been banished to the
domain of occultists and spiritualists, as well as the Institut Métapsychique
International, created in 1919, which was not part of academia.
When the fty- something Heim rst heard about Mexican psychotro-
pic mushrooms, he was the respected director of the MNHN and brilliant
biologist, known around the world for his exemplary, naturalistic eldwork.
is placed him in a very prominent and public position, and given the intel-
lectual context of the time, it is hard to imagine him taking up the study of
paranormal phenomena.
THE DISCOVERY OF MUSHROOM- BASED AMERINDIAN
DIVINATORY PRACTICES
In 1953, the Wassons began their ethnographic eldwork in Mexico and
collected four types of samples that they shipped to the MNHN for analy sis
and classication. It was through them that Heim learned about the use of
hallucinogenic mushrooms in divination. In 1956, he acknowledged this
aspect of mushroom use at the French Académie des Sciences in a note stating
that these mushrooms were indeed “divinatory.”16
Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/chapter-pdf/2184965/c008600_9780262376891.pdf by guest on 29 November 2023
266 Chapter 11
e Wassons rst witnessed a mushroom velada in the Mazatec village of
Huautla de Jimenez in northern Oaxaca, Mexico in August1953. To justify
their request for such a ceremony and to be able to observe it as ethnogra-
phers, they asked the curandero Aurelio Carreras for some news about their
son Peter, who had stayed in the US. ey believed that he was in Boston,
where he worked, but under the inuence, Aurelio told them that he was
in New York, that he was in a bad way, and that the army was going to send
him to Germany. He also predicted that a family member would be aicted
by a serious condition later that year.
e Wassons had no trou ble admitting that they doubted Aurelio’s divi-
natory powers, most notably because Peter was exempted from the draft.
Upon returning to the US, they were surprised to learn that their son was
indeed in New York (and not Boston) at the time that Aurelio made his
prediction. Peter told them that he was heartbroken, which led to a major
emotional crisis, which caused him to join the army. He was to be shipped
o to Japan, but after receiving basic combat training, he was stationed in
Germany. A few months later, to every one’s shock, a young cousin of Gordon
Wasson died of a heart attack. Aurelio’s account had come to pass. In Mush-
rooms, Rus sia and History, where this story appears, the Wassons remained
uncertain about what they had experienced: “We rec ord, as in duty we are
bound to do, but without further comment, these strange sequelae to our
Huautla visit.”
17
e comment without further elaboration suggests that the
Wassons were aware of their reputations and remained cautious. After all,
they were trying to introduce a new eld of study— ethnomycology— and
were intent on legitimizing this new eld in academia.
Nothing indicates that Gordon Wasson and Heim discussed this divina-
tory event in their correspondence, but it is pos si ble that they talked about
it during their joint expedition in July and August1956.
18
Heim too had
under gone a bemushroomed prediction, via the soon- to-be famous curan-
dera María Sabina, which he acknowledged on French tele vi sion in 1966.19
Appearing on the show Entrée libre, Heim said: “Wasson and myself have
experienced, quite by chance, the predictions of María Sabina . . . and I
have to say that she made predictions for both of us, and we had no reason
Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/chapter-pdf/2184965/c008600_9780262376891.pdf by guest on 29 November 2023
267 “I Am a Scientist!”
to believe them, and they both turned out to be accurate.” In 1970, Heim
briey discussed this again at a meeting or ga nized by Sandoz,20 during a
debate on “social chemical substances,” where participants discussed the
reasons for some Indigenous peoples to use the intoxicating mushrooms—in
this case for divination. Heim had this to say:
So— and this a scientist talking to you— I have to say that I’ve been impressed
by the divinatory meaning of the predictions made by the shaman as she was
under the inuence of the mushroom. I would just like to tell you that, to
my friend Wasson and to myself, the curandera María Sabina, in Mexico, in a
small Mazatec village, after ingesting the mushrooms, predicted two events that
both of us could never have guessed. . . . During this extraordinary experience
that we witnessed, María told us with precision: ‘OK, in Paris, this is about
to happen which concerns you, and for you, there is this other thing in New
York.’ It was a double prediction that was really unthinkable for both of us. I
say this to you because it turned out to be accurate and she told us that a lot
of Mexicans were coming over to consult with her hoping that she will answer
some of their questions.
Unfortunately, Heim does not provide the details about these predic-
tions. In Les champignons hallucinogènes du Mexique (1958), he makes no
mention of it, but in the conclusion, he adds:
María Sabina’s rituals would only be distinguished in detail from the formulas
of many other ceremonies where exorcism is integral, where occultism is abso-
lute, if an essentially objective, tangible, and controllable ele ment had not long
been introduced into these esoteric practices ( unless they had spurred them):
the exacting power of certain hallucinogenic mushrooms.21
His word choices are worth dwelling on: “occultism,” “exorcism,” and
“esoteric,” which Heim uses to refer to Mazatec “ceremonies,” are certainly
clumsy. To be sure, these words are drawn from the nineteenth- century
realms of mediums and spiritualism rather than from anthropology— the
comparative scientic study of di er ent peoples— which had experienced
academic renewal in the 1930s and 1940s and which accepted magic and
science as both integral to many human socie ties and distinguished between
Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/chapter-pdf/2184965/c008600_9780262376891.pdf by guest on 29 November 2023
268 Chapter 11
notions of magic and superstition.22 His choice of these words in this context
indicates that Heim had made inroads into the world of magic. At the same
time, his statement reects the strong inuence of the twentieth- century
positivist and scientist traditions.
In the excerpt quoted here, it is noteworthy that Heim underscored the
eects of psilocybin on the psyche, which scientists were beginning to study
in this context. He added that “it is striking that the divinatory characteristics
of the totem are indeed based on the true hallucinatory eects of the teonaná-
catl, perfectly distinguished, precisely experienced by the Indians.” Heim
emphasized the adjective “true.” Was this a hypallage? Was he implicitly
suggesting “true divinatory characteristics” being inherent in the mushroom
through this gure of speech? is hypothesis does not seem far- fetched.
Another hint suggests that it was during his rst trip to Huautla that Heim
experienced María Sabina’s prophetic abilities, as this excerpt indicates: “All
these di er ent kinds of staging, like many others, could have been the result
of total occultism or a partially subconscious form of self- suggestion. at
is not the case. at some of the facts turned out to be real was a decisive
and powerfully convincing factor, revealing that the Indian sorcerers were
sincere actors in part.” 23
What were those facts? Heim does not say. On the one hand, the French
translation of the Wassons’ 1953 eldwork appears in the text, as does Aure-
lio Carreras’s prediction about Peter and their ill family member. On the
other hand, it is the only mention of a successful prediction provided in
the book that was veried by the scientists’ personal experiences. Moreover,
Heim mentions “facts,” plural. In light of a spoken anecdote related much
later, rst on tele vi sion and then in the journal Entretiens de Rueil, it seems
that during his rst visit, María Sabina oered Heim a prediction that turned
out to be true. He found this troubling, for it was inconceivable to Heim,
the rationalist, that the predictions of a native soothsayer could shake his
certainties. If Heim had no trou ble recognizing the accuracy of the ecological
knowledge of the Indigenous people he met in his many travels around the
world, as well as the eectiveness of their medicines,24 it was a real surprise
to him that María Sabina forced him to question his own logic.
Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/chapter-pdf/2184965/c008600_9780262376891.pdf by guest on 29 November 2023
269 “I Am a Scientist!”
Figure11.2
Sketch of María Sabina by Roger Heim on July 9, 1956. Reproduced with the permission of the
Société des amis du Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle
.
Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/chapter-pdf/2184965/c008600_9780262376891.pdf by guest on 29 November 2023
270 Chapter 11
ACADEMIC DISTANCE IN THE FIRST WRITINGS
ON MEXICAN MUSHROOMS
Heim’s and Gordon Wasson’s letters oer a win dow into their collaboration
on their joint study, Les champignons hallucinogènes du Mexique (1958). Was-
son wrote the sections dealing with historical sources, ethnographic observa-
tions, and archeological data, many of which were translated from his and
Valentina’s Mushrooms, Rus sia, and History. Heim, as the main author of the
volume, described the collected species and took charge of the study of their
taxonomic, embryological, and cultivational features. e chapter written
by Heim in this study is an exhaustive account of his mycological research
on those species, with a few basic incursions into the realm of ethnobiology.
Heim also co wrote chapters, with Albert Hofmann and other scientists
at Sandoz, on the pharmacology of psilocybin, as well as the drug’s eects
on the psyche, which begins with an account of his self- experimentations in
Paris and Mexico. Here, he described the visual phenomena, physiological
symptoms, mood changes, “joyous clairvoyance of the mind,” and “excep-
tional well- being” that he experienced the day after the sessions.25 He also
discussed reports by other mushroom experimenters like the Wassons’, but
also the mescaline experiences of Aldous Huxley, the neurologist Silas Weir
Mitchell, and the poet Henri Michaux, as well as Hofmann’s experiments
with LSD.
Indigenous discourses on the eects of the mushrooms did not appear in
this psychopharmacological study, framed by Western subjective experiences
and ways of knowing. Heim omitted describing his impressions about the
feelings of knowledge gained through revelations, which he had previously
associated with Mexican practices, about which he had previously written
in a note on divinatory mushrooms at the Académie des Sciences in 1956. In
the 1958 volume, this analy sis of the “rst experiences resulting from the
ingestion of Mexican agaric hallucinogens” was followed by a psychophysi-
ological and clinical study of psilocybin conducted by a team of psychia-
trists at the Sainte- Anne Hospital in Paris. Here, these French psychiatrists
described psilocybin’s somatic, psychic, and electroencephalographic eects
on normal subjects and mental patients. Of course, there were no mentions
Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/chapter-pdf/2184965/c008600_9780262376891.pdf by guest on 29 November 2023
271 “I Am a Scientist!”
of clairvoyance. e physicians, for their part, describe “delirious construc-
tions” and “reminiscences,” observed “relatively often,” which “made for one
the most in ter est ing aspects of the mechanisms of psilocybin.”26
Speculation notwithstanding, it remains in ter est ing to note that under
the mushroom’s eects, Indigenous Mexicans sought to become aware
of the future, while Eu ro pean subjects tended to experience a recollection
of memories. Even so, Wasson had explic itly referred to the divinatory
power of the mushrooms in his account of his rst Mazatec ritual. Heim
also appears to acknowledge this feature of the mushroom in wandering
innuendoes in the last pages of his conclusion. Even if representing just a
tiny portion of the book, the topic of the divinatory power of mushrooms
was impossible to ignore.
A MORE OPEN FORM OF CORRESPONDENCE
In the spring of 1959, Heim received an invitation from the American jour-
nalist Martin Ebon, on behalf of the Parapsychology Foundation, to par-
ticipate in the international conference on parapsychology scheduled for the
next year in Saint- Paul- de- Vence entitled “Pharmacology and Parapsychol-
ogy.” Heim could not make it, but he wrote to Hofmann soon afterward
to see whether he might consider attending. Hofmann replied by asking
if the Parapsychology Foundation was “a seriously scientic society.” is
organ ization, which Hofmann seemed to perceive as pseudoscientic, would
certainly have threatened their reputations if they had responded favorably
to the invitation.
Indeed, parapsychology was still considered a controversial and quite
unstable discipline at the time of this exchange. In the US, Joseph Rhine
(1895–1980) and his wife, Louisa Rhine, both at Duke University, pio-
neered the use of quantitative methods for the study of extrasensory per-
ception (ESP) and became staunch defenders of the eld from the 1930s
onward. Joseph Rhine also founded the Parapsychological Association in
1957, and in New York City, the Irish spiritualist and medium EileenJ. Gar-
rett had created the Parapsychology Foundation, which or ga nized the Vence
Congress, a few years earlier. Garrett also worked toward the legitimization
Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/chapter-pdf/2184965/c008600_9780262376891.pdf by guest on 29 November 2023
272 Chapter 11
of parapsychology as an academic discipline, especially by lending herself to
numerous laboratory experiments as a subject.
In the 1960s, Heim corresponded with Roberto Cavanna, an Italian bio-
chemist from the Instituto Superiore di Sanita in Rome, whose letters were
often accompanied by a few sentences from his fellow countryman Emilio
Servadio. e latter, who received his PhD in legal theory from the Univer-
sity of Genoa, was the founder of the Italian Psychoanalytic Society and the
Italian Society of Parapsychology. In their letters, Cavanna and Servadio
expressed interest in parapsychology, in conjunction with the mushroom
experiences. e rst letter, dated March31, was an invitation to discuss the
topic over dinner while the two Italians traveled through Paris on their way
to New York, having accepted an invitation to visit from the Parapsychology
Foundation (with “no mushrooms on the menu!” they specied). ey also
suggested that Heim invite the Sainte- Anne Hospital– based psychiatrist Jean
Delay to lunch. Heim responded favorably by dispatching a note to Delay,
where he mentioned the arrival of the two Italians and noted their link with
the Parapsychology Foundation, although Heim himself could not attend.
Heim did not seem embarrassed to broach the subject of parapsychol-
ogy with Delay. Apparently, Cavanna and Servadio were very eager to have
a face- to- face exchange with Heim and were disappointed to miss him; they
also tried to meet him on their return journey. A July11, 1960, letter from
Heim to Cavanna indicates that they had nally met, with Heim expressing
his “ great plea sure” at their acquaintance and adding that it “ will be very
pleasant to continue our contacts around hallucinogenic mushrooms and
the prob lems of Psychopharmacy [sic].”
Heim added that he considered an article published by Servadio that
June in the Italian periodical La Stampa was “the best report that has been
made regarding the discovery of Mexican hallucinogenic mushrooms and
psilocybin.” is article, which ends by referring to María Sabina’s ability
to “read minds,” came to this conclusion: “Illusion or truth? We can only
say . . . that alongside psychological research and psychiatric studies on psi-
locybin, other studies are underway regarding its pos si ble, and so- far only
hypothesized, ability to ‘trigger’ extra- sensory perceptions.”27 us, if Heim
was indeed troubled by a startling prediction of María Sabina, it is quite
Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/chapter-pdf/2184965/c008600_9780262376891.pdf by guest on 29 November 2023
273 “I Am a Scientist!”
understandable that he approved of this conclusion. In any event, it seems
very likely that these mysterious divinatory phenomena were the topic of
the discussions during Heim’s meeting with the Italians, given their focus
on the potential of psilocybin in experimental parapsychology.
e 1960 correspondence between Cavanna and Heim also reveals that
Garrett, a close associate to Aldous Huxley and Humphry Osmond,28 car-
ried out experiments under the eects of eight milligrams of psilocybin by
the sublingual route, which occurred on July19in Nice, in the presence of
Cavanna and Servadio. During this session, however, Garrett allegedly spoke
about Roger Heim and his life on several occasions, although she did not
know anything about him— a form divination, in short. Cavanna quickly
sent Heim the transcript of the experience “to examine it together.” But
Heim watered down his enthusiasm by replying that he had read it “with
interest,” but as far as he was concerned, “the observations of Mrs.Garrett
seemed very approximate and imprecise.” He added: “However, there is no
doubt that this report deserves attention.”
Heim’s correspondence with Cavanna and Servadio also includes an
undated document they had sent him for feedback, entitled “Headlines of
a Preliminary Investigation on Human Volunteers (Two ‘Sensitives’ and
Two ‘Normal’) in Order to Study the Pos si ble Occurrence of ESP Phenom-
ena under the Inuence of Psychopharmaca.” In a letter dated March12,
1962, Cavanna expressed his interest in sending Heim this draft protocol
designed to test the possibility of psilocybin- induced ESP. is was likely a
preliminary reection that would later form the basis of Cavanna and Ser-
vadio’s book ESP Experiments with LSD-25 and Psilocybin: A Methodological
Approach, published in 1964 by the Parapsychology Foundation.29
In this book, the two Italian authors clearly expressed their gratitude
to Heim. Other psychedelic scientists were thanked as well, including the
Canadian psychiatrist Abram Hoer, Albert Hofmann and the pharmacolo-
gist Ernst Rothlin from Sandoz Laboratories in Switzerland, the Italian phi los-
o pher Francesco Sirugo, the German psychologist Inge Strauch, the American
psychologist Robert Sommer, “the late Aldous Huxley,” and, nally Eileen
Garrett herself.30 From the perspective of the global history of psychedelics,
reference to these gures is in ter est ing because it documents the intellectual
Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/chapter-pdf/2184965/c008600_9780262376891.pdf by guest on 29 November 2023
274 Chapter 11
exchanges and aspects of this research. ese acknowl edgments can be
understood as part of an attempt to legitimize parapsychology and as proof
of correspondence and collaboration with respected authorities. Around that
time, research into ESP and psychedelics were already underway in North
Amer i ca,31 such as seen in the work of Stanley Krippner, who published
studies on the electroencephalography of ESP in 1969.
32
e 1960s were
indeed a decisive time for parapsychology. After much eort, the Parapsy-
chological Association became aliated with the American Association for
the Advancement of Science in 1969, thus consolidating a precarious legiti-
macy in the face of a large number of detractors.
Another letter that stands out in Heim’s massive trove of correspondence
conrmed his conviction that divinatory power is real. He was respond-
ing to a letter that he had received after a report on Mexican mushrooms
appeared in the Christmas 1965 issue of the prominent women’s magazine
Marie France. A female reader asked him if María Sabina could read minds,
to which Heim took the trou ble of answering “that one cannot speak exactly
of transmission of thought but of a sense of inexplicable forecast . . . a sense
of divination.” His responding letter concludes somewhat apologetically: “I
have to give up a rigorous explanation but, although I am a scientist, even
I have to admit my interest in this observation.”33
Here, a marked tension can be seen between Heim’s scientic status and
the recognition of inexplicable and seemingly unexplainable facts. is left
little room to admit his interest in parapsychology. How could he not have
feared for his reputation—he, who directed the Muséum national d’Histoire
naturelle and who sat at the Académie des sciences? France, which had seen the
development of the occult sciences at the turn of the eigh teenth century, as
well as debates regarding its legitimacy, did not lead to formalization of the
controversial discipline.34
A VERY SPECIAL CASE AMONG THE VOLUNTEERS
OFFILMED MUSHROOM EXPERIENCES
Given the importance of the discovery of the divinatory mushrooms of
Mexico for Heim, he soon considered making a documentary lm on the
Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/chapter-pdf/2184965/c008600_9780262376891.pdf by guest on 29 November 2023
275 “I Am a Scientist!”
subject. He teamed up with the videographer and physician Pierre éve-
nard as the proj ect’s scientic advisor. In 1963, this materialized in a lm
called Les champignons hallucinogènes du Mexique, which from the outset
has remained somewhat secretive, having been screened on only a very few
occasions.35 e lm deals with archaeological, historical, ethnographic,
biological and, of course, psychological aspects of the mushroom experience.
Beginning back in 1959, Heim and évenard had lmed the reactions of
four volunteers who agreed to ingest mushrooms cultivated at the MNHN,
in an attempt to investigate the psychological dimension of the experience.
e diversity of the reactions underlined the deeply subjective character
of the experiences and their relation to “the psychic individuality of the
experimenter.” ey lmed follow-up interviews four years later to mea sure
any long- lasting consequences. One of the volunteers, Miss Michaux (her
rst name is not known), an advertising designer, experienced two mush-
room experiments. During the second, she expressed a desire to draw, in
response to which Heim observed noticeable changes in her artistic style,
which became more rened. Four years from this experience, Heim asked
her a follow-up question: “Miss, I would like to ask you if, after your experi-
ments with the hallucinogenic mushrooms . . . are you changed? Are you
now di er ent from the prior Miss Michaux?” Here, Heim was interested in
any personality changes that may have been caused by the drug. A little later
in the interview, it became apparent that the changes in the designer’s artistic
style had persisted, though Heim was much more interested in any global
changes that may have happened to her. When he hesitantly mentioned,
in an unclear formulation, “the acquisition of a possibility of analy sis,” she
immediately answered:
I absolutely have the impression of having acquired a new lucidity, which was
unknown to me before and which allows me to let myself be guided when I
have an impor tant decision to make. Moreover, I sometimes have some intu-
itions, which are quite surprising, I can give you an example. e other day, I
called my mother, at her place, the phone was ringing, she did not answer. It
was puzzling. And when I hung up, I was immediately positive that she was in
a par tic u lar place. A place moreover she rarely ever went to. I called that place,
and I spoke to her on the phone! To her amazement and mine too!
Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/chapter-pdf/2184965/c008600_9780262376891.pdf by guest on 29 November 2023
276 Chapter 11
It is striking that such an unusual anecdote appeared in the documentary.
Heim seemed to balk at the possibility of using the word divination, pre-
ferring the more cautious and abstract phrase “possibility of analy sis.” He
remarked as follows:
is is really most in ter est ing. Because, it seems to me that we can compare
these impressions which you have now, with those which, in a way, ordered,
among the curanderos and the curanderas of Mexico, the shamans, that sort
of . . . well, of religion, during which questions were put to them, night sessions
where . . . the clients came by and said: ‘well here someone has stolen my mule,
where can it be and who stole it?’ And I was able to see for myself during the
sessions that I underwent, several nights with María Sabina and other curand-
eras, the rather astonishing value of some of their predictions!
Heim then asked Michaux about the possibility of applying “this kind
of instinct of premonition” to “a better knowledge of faces.” She replied that
she “ really has the feeling of having acquired a power” that allowed her, when
she “sees someone, to guess what his temperament is, what his character is.”
After this short back- and- forth, the documentary focused on the drawings
made by Miss Michaux after her second experience.
ese lmed experiences were recounted in Heim’s second volume on
hallucinogenic fungi, Nouvelles investigations sur les champignons halluci-
nogènes, published in 1967.36 e section devoted to Michaux rst reects
on imagery, with reproductions of her drawings. She refers to “the mark
left in her” by the mushrooms, long after her experiences: “My power of
prediction has been exacerbated, a sort of intuitive vision of certain facts
has imposed itself; I have acquired a predictive lucidity of certain realities
that I would have previously been unable to suspect.” Heim concluded the
passage about Michaux’s experience by asking a question, followed by a
remarkable apophasis:
Power of transmission of thought? Aptitude for divination? We will not go
down that road, nor will we refer to in detail the observations that made her
suddenly pick up the phone, for example, because she was seized with the
certainty that her mother was in a precise place, where she rarely went to, but
where she was indeed, quite surprised to get this call. . . .
37
Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/chapter-pdf/2184965/c008600_9780262376891.pdf by guest on 29 November 2023
277 “I Am a Scientist!”
Heim mentioned this astonishing anecdote while perhaps distancing
himself from a personal interest in such an unusual phenomenon, as evi-
denced by his use of a trailing o ellipsis. On the book’s last page, he returned
to the issue: “In fact, although the spiritualism of the 19th century— and
earlier manifestations of course— does not resist explanation through an
objective psychophysiology, it does not follow that some of the older para-
psychological data, specic to paranormal phenomena, do not deserve to be
reexamined and interpreted under a di er ent light.”38
CONCLUSION
Roger Heim agreed that it was legitimate that science should dismiss “spiri-
tualism,” but he nevertheless pleaded for a reexamination of “paranormal
phenomena.” In his 1966 tele vi sion appearance, he explained María Sabina’s
predictions accordingly:
ese men and women, exposed like mediums to the eects of these mushrooms,
had a kind of foreknowledge, it seems, I dare not pronounce the word divina-
tion, because I am a scientist! [emphasis added] But foreknowledge, foresight, in
response to certain questions put to them . . . ese women, accustomed to being
in an ecstatic state under the inuence of the mushroom, have an imagination
which overows, in a way, a sort of subconscious which reappears, a contact with
the visitor which is exacerbated, and which leads to revelations which do seem
quite extraordinary sometimes. . . . I won’t go any further in my conclusions. But
I still consider that this sense . . . multiplied . . . exacerbated . . . of the power of
analy sis and even going beyond through irrational and subconscious ele ments,
cannot be absolutely eliminated a priori. at is a fact.39
“I am a scientist!” he added, once again emphasizing the tension between
his academic position and his acknowl edgment of the existence of divinatory
phenomena. On several occasions during the interview, Heim visibly felt
compelled to acknowledge the unbelievable, courageously underscoring the
limits of his rationality, tested by his own lived experience.
e fact that he revealed the accuracy of María Sabina’s predictions only
orally, and that they were only later transcribed in this televised interview,
Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/chapter-pdf/2184965/c008600_9780262376891.pdf by guest on 29 November 2023
278 Chapter 11
certainly revealed his reluctance to bring up the subject to his peers: for
example, he never broached the topic in his pre sen ta tions at the Académie
des Sciences. But in 1964, during a phytochemistry conference in Nouméa,
in the former French colony of New Caledonia— a distant location to be
sure!—he made the following statement about the “provinces of knowledge”
attainable through the study of psilocybin: “One of them corresponds to
psychopathology and psychiatric therapy. . . . e other belongs to a dual
sector that scientists are perhaps wrong to brand as contemptible or at least
far removed from the limits of objective sciences: that of parapsychology
and of divination.”40
He ended his talk by mentioning the possibility of understanding the
eects of drugs like psilocybin as a way to “make inroads into the most
intimate mechanisms of our perceptions and reections”; that is, as a tool
of scientic exploration. is brief defense of parapsychology can also be
found in a 1969 column that he published in a supplement of the Revue de
mycologie.41
e topic of divinatory power accessed through the ingestion of mush-
rooms represents only a very small ele ment of the titanic research that Heim
devoted to hallucinogenic mushrooms. However, even though he proved
to be elusive or cautious in his publications, he did not ignore the subject
altogether— a testimony to his intellectual integrity. Faced with his own and
others’ bemushroomed encounters with divination, Heim seems to have
responded to the “rationalist commitment” dened by the French phi los-
o pher Gaston Bachelard, a commitment that involves ghting dogmatism
by accepting the unknown, and according to which reason can be specied
only in its relation to the real ity it encounters.
42
Heim was indeed a scientist.
NOTES
1. See ValentinaP. Wasson and R. Gordon Wasson, Mushrooms, Rus sia and History (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1957); and R. Gordon Wasson, e Wondrous Mushroom: Mycolatry in
Mesoamerica, Ethno- Mycological Studies 7 (New York: McGraw- Hill, 1980).
2. For a review of the sources and the analy sis of the Western reception of the peyote cactus
and psilocybin mushrooms, see Samir Boumediene, La colonisation du savoir, Une histoire
des plantes médicinales du «Nouveau Monde» (1492–1750), Vaulx- en- Velin, les Editions des
mondes à faire, 2016.
Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/chapter-pdf/2184965/c008600_9780262376891.pdf by guest on 29 November 2023
279 “I Am a Scientist!”
3. Richard Evans Schultes, “e Identication of Teonacátl, a Narcotic Basidiomycete of the
Aztecs,” Botanical Museum Leaets of Harvard 7, no.3, (February21, 1939): 37–54, and
“Teonacátl: e Narcotic Mushroom of the Aztecs,” American Anthropologist 42 (1940):
429–443.
4. See, for example, B.P. Reko, “De los Nombres Botanicos Aztecos,” El Mexico Antiguo 1, no.5
(February1919):113–117; W.E. Saord, “Narcotic Plants and Stimulants of the Ancient
Americans,” Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 1916, 387; C.G.
Santesson, “Einige Mexikanische Rauschdrogen,” Archiv für Botanik 29A, no.12 (1939): 1–9.
5. See, for example, London Medical and Physical Journal. John Souter, 1816. 451; A.E. Verrill,
“A Recent Case of Mushroom Intoxication,” Science 40, no.1029 (September18, 1914):
408–410.
6. Wasson and Wasson, Mushrooms, Rus sia and History.
7. ere a great deal of praise for Roger Heim in the preface of Mushrooms, Rus sia and History.
R. Gordon Wasson’s e Wondrous Mushroom, published in 1980, is incidentally dedicated
to his “loyal collaborator” and his “valiant friend,” who is described further as a “beloved
friend.” Heim, for his part, states in the preface of Les champignons hallucinogènes du Mexique
(1958) that it had been a “ great plea sure . . . for several years . . . to have been able to share
ideas and documents with Mr.and Ms. Wasson” regarding “the folkloric aspect manifest in
the relations between mushrooms and primitive populations.”
8. Milana Aronov, “(Micro-) ‘Psychedelic’ Experiences: From the 1960s Creativity at the Work-
place to the 21st Century Neuro- Newspeak,” Ethnologie française 49, no.4 (2019): 701–718.
9. Erika Dyck. “Spaced- out in Saskatchewan: Modernism, Anti- Psychiatry, and Deinstitution-
alization, 1950–1968,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 84, no.4 (2010): 640–666.
10. Erika Dyck, Psychedelic Psychiatry— LSD from Clinic to Campus, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2008.
11. See Stephen Szára, “Are Hallucinogens Psychoheuristic?” NIDA Research Monograph 146
(1994): 33–51; Carlo Rovelli and Sophie Lem, Écrits vagabonds (Paris: Flammarion, 2019).
12. It is worth mentioning that Roger Heim was part of the French Re sis tance and that he was
betrayed and deported to Buchenwald, and subsequently to Mauthausen and Gusen. In the
concentration camps, he carried on his scientic reections and gave conferences to his fellow
inmates. He was saved by the US Army on May6, 1945, in a state of extreme fatigue.
13. Although Heim self- experimented with y agaric in 1923, which indicates a brief interest
in psychopharmacology. See Roger Heim, “Analyse de quelques expériences personnelles
produites par l’ingestion des Agarics hallucinogènes du Mexique,” in Comptes rendus heb-
domadaires des séances de l’Académie des sciences, Gauthier- Villars., Paris, Académie des Sci-
ences, 245 (1957): 597–603.
14. See Peter Schötter, “Scientisme, sur l’histoire d’un concept dicile,” Revue de synthèse, no.134
(2013): 89–113.
Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/chapter-pdf/2184965/c008600_9780262376891.pdf by guest on 29 November 2023
280 Chapter 11
15. Marmin Nicolas, “Métapsychique et psychologie en France (1880–1940),” Revue d’Histoire
des Sciences Humaines 4, no.1 (2001): 145–171.
16. Roger Heim, “Ethnomycologie— les champignons divinatoires utilisés dans les rites des
Indiens Mazatèques, recueillis au cours de leur premier voyage au Mexique, en 1953, par
Mme Valentina Pavlovna Wasson et M.R. Gordon Wasson,” Comptes- Rendus Des Séances de
l’Académie Des Sciences t. 242 (February): 965–68.
17. Wasson and Wasson, Mushrooms, Rus sia and History. e fact that Peter traveled to Germany
rather than Japan is mentioned in the French translation of this excerpt published in Les
champignons hallucinogènes du Mexique the following year.
18. Heim went to Mexico three times to study hallucinogenic mushrooms—1956, 1959, and 1961.
19. Jean Lallier, “Champignons et hallucinations,” Entrée libre, Oce national de radiodiusion
télévision française, 1966.
20. Collectif, Entretiens De Rueil / Les Cahiers Sandoz— Ivresse chimique et crise de civilisation,
Rueil- Malmaison, Laboratoire Sandoz, 1970.
21. Roger Heim, and R. Gordon Wasson, Les Champignons Hallucinogènes du Mexique: Études Eth-
nologiques, Taxinomiques, Biologiques, Physiologiques et Chimiques, 7, VI. Archives Du Muséum
National d’histoire Naturelle (Paris: Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, 1958), 317.
22. Although the paradigm understanding the succession of magic, religion, and science was no
longer dominant in anthropology in the rst half of the twentieth century, the condemnation
of magic as superstition remained the dominant framework for the interpretation of a number
of anthropologists, ranging from Edward Tylor to Lucien Lévy- Bruhl. At the end of the 1940s,
Claude Levi- Strauss took part in a renewal of the analy sis of magic through his own brand of
structuralism, which made it pos si ble to consider the shamanic complex on the one hand and
the symbolic ecacy of magic on the other. See, for instance, Claude Lévi- Strauss, “Le sorcier
et sa magie,” Les Temps Modernes 4, no.41 (March1949), 385–406. Fi nally, it should be noted
that while Lévi- Strauss and Heim had the opportunity to meet at the Académie des Sciences,
nothing indicates that they were aware of their respective work in the early 1950s.
23. Roger Heim, and R. Gordon Wasson, Les Champignons Hallucinogènes du Mexique: Études
Ethnologiques, Taxinomiques, Biologiques, Physiologiques et Chimiques, 7, VI. Archives Du
Muséum National d’histoire Naturelle (Paris: Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, 1958),
318.
24. Roger Heim, Un naturaliste autour du monde (Paris: Editions Albin Michel, 1955). See, for
example, “Malagasy medicine is as good as ours, by its results. It is made of observations,
experiments, traditions and arts, like ours,” 130.
25. Roger Heim, and R. Gordon Wasson, Les Champignons Hallucinogènes du Mexique: Études Eth-
nologiques, Taxinomiques, Biologiques, Physiologiques et Chimiques, 7, VI. Archives Du Muséum
National d’histoire Naturelle (Paris: Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, 1958), 275.
26. Heim and Wasson, Les Champignons Hallucinogènes du Mexique, 305.
Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/chapter-pdf/2184965/c008600_9780262376891.pdf by guest on 29 November 2023
281 “I Am a Scientist!”
27. Press clipping in box number 5 of the Roger Heim archive at the Bibliothèque centrale du
Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle.
28. Cynthia Carson Bisbee etal., Psychedelic Prophets: e Letters of Aldous Huxley and Humphry
Osmond (Montreal, Kingston, London, and Chicago: McGill- Queen’s University Press, 2018).
29. Roberto Cavanna and Emilio Servadio, ESP Experiments with LSD-25 and Psilocybin: A
Methodological Approach (Parapsychology Foundation, 2010).
30. e list is in alphabetical order right up to Huxley, who died as the book was published. is
is not a reection of the importance of Huxley’s involvement in the research proj ect on Italian
parapsychologists, but it does conrm that he was involved, likely through oral discussions
during their meetings.
31. For a review of the parapsychological scholarship on the eects of hallucinogens, see David
Luke, Otherworlds: Psychedelics and Exceptional Human Experience (London: Muswell Hill
Press, 2017).
32. See, for instance, S. Krippner, and M. Ullman, “Telepathic Perception in the Dream State:
Conrmatory Study Using EEG- EOG Techniques,” Perceptual and Motor Skills, 29, no.3
(1969), 29, 915–918. In his book Song of the Siren: A Parapsychological Odyssey, Krippner
mentions a key event that sparked his interest in parapsychology: a personal episode of clair-
voyance during a psychedelic session hosted by Timothy Leary. See S. Krippner, Song of the
Siren: A Parapsychological Odyssey (New York: Harper & Row, 1975).
33. Correspondence of Roger Heim, January1966, box number 5 of the Heim archive, Biblio-
thèque centrale du Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris, France
34. Bertrand Méheust, Somnambulisme et Médiumnité, tome 2: Le choc des sciences psychiques (Le
Plessis- Robinson, France: Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond, 2003).
35. I had the privilege of attending a screening of this lm during the Paris mushroom exhibition
on October14, 1999. I found it in the audiovisual section of the MNHN in October2017—
and they were unaware that they had a copy—in the form of two Betacam tapes, which I had
digitized.
36. Roger Heim, Nouvelles investigations sur les champignons hallucinogènes, Archives du Muséum
national d’Histoire naturelle, 7ème série 9 (1967).
37. Roger Heim, Nouvelles investigations, 207.
38. Roger Heim, Nouvelles investigations, 218.
39. Lallier, “Champignons et hallucinations.”Author’s translation.
40. Roger Heim, “Histoire de la découverte des champignons hallucinogènes du Mexique,”
Noumea, Editions du Centre national de la recherche scientique. Author’s translation.
41. Roger Heim, “Réexions sur le pouvoir des champignons hallucinogènes,” Revue de mycologie
33, no.4 (1969), 322. Author’s translation.
42. See Gaston Bachelard, Le nouvel esprit scientique (Paris: PUF (1934) 1960), 10.
Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/chapter-pdf/2184965/c008600_9780262376891.pdf by guest on 29 November 2023
282 Chapter 11
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary Sources
Heim, Roger. Analyse de quelques expériences personnelles produites par l’ingestion des Agarics hal-
lucinogènes du Mexique. Paris: Gauthier- Villars, Académie des Sciences, 1957.
Heim, Roger. “Les champignons divinatoires utilises dans les rites des Indiens Mazateques, recueil-
lis au cours de leur premier voyage au Mexique, en 1953, par Mme Wasson, Valentina Pavlovna et
Wasson, Mr Gordon.” Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaires des Seances de l’Academie des Sciences 242,
no.8 (1956): 965–968.
Heim, Roger. Histoire de la découverte des champignons hallucinogènes du Mexique. Noumea, Edi-
tions du Centre national de la recherche scientique, 1966.
Heim, Roger. Un naturaliste autour du monde. Paris: Editions Albin Michel, 1955.
Heim, Roger. “Nouvelles investigations sur les champignons hallucinogènes.” Archives du Muséum
national d’Histoire naturelle, 7ème série 9 (1967): 1–218.
Heim, Roger. “Réexions sur le pouvoir des champignons hallucinogènes.” Revue de mycologie
33, no.4 (1969).
Heim, Roger, and R. Gordon Wasson. “Les champignons hallucinogènes du Mexique- Etudes eth-
nologiques, taxinomiques, biologiques, physiologiques et chimiques.” Archives du Muséum national
d’Histoire naturelle, 7ème série 6 (1958): 1–445.
Roger Heim archive. Correspondence of Roger Heim, boxes 1 to 5. Bibliothèque centrale du
Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris, France.
évenard, Pierre, dir. 1964. Les champignons hallucinogènes du Mexique. Film. Documentaire
scientique. Fondation Singer-Polignac.
Wasson, Valentina Pavlovna, and R. Gordon Wasson. Mushrooms: Russia and History. New York:
Pantheon Books, 1957.
Secondary Sources
Aronov, Milana. “(Micro-) ‘Psychedelic’ Experiences: From the 1960s Creativity at the Workplace
to the 21st Century Neuro- Newspeak.” Ethnologie française 49, no.4 (2019): 701–718.
Bachelard, Gaston. “Le nouvel esprit scientique.” LibrairieF. Alcan, Paris, 1934.
Bisbee, Cynthia, Paul Bisbee, Erika Dyck, Patrick Farrell, James Sexton and James Spisak, eds.
Psychedelic Prophets: e Letters of Aldous Huxley and Humphry Osmond. Kingston (Ontario) and
Montreal (Quebec): McGill- Queen’s University Press, 2018.
Boumediene, Samir. La colonisation du savoir. Une histoire des plantes médicinales du «Nouveau
Monde» (1492–1750). Vaulx- en- Velin, Éditions des Mondes à faire. 2016.
Cavanna, Roberto, and Emilio Servadio. ESP Experiments with LSD 25 and Psilocybin: A Method-
ological Approach, no.5. Parapsychology Foundation, New York, 1964.
Collectif, 1970, Entretiens De Rueil / Les Cahiers Sandoz—Ivresse chimique et crise de civilisation,
Rueil-Malmaison, France, Laboratoire Sandoz.
Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/chapter-pdf/2184965/c008600_9780262376891.pdf by guest on 29 November 2023
283 “I Am a Scientist!”
Dyck, Erika. Psychedelic Psychiatry: LSD from Clinic to Campus. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity Press, 2008.
Dyck, Erika. “Spaced- out in Saskatchewan: Modernism, Anti- Psychiatry, and Deinstitutionaliza-
tion, 1950–1968.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 84, no.4 (2010): 640–666.
Krippner, Stanley. Song of the Siren: A Parapsychological Odyssey. Harper & Row, New York, 1977.
Krippner, Stanley, and Montague Ullman. “Telepathic Perception in the Dream State: Conr-
matory Study Using EEG- EOG Monitoring Techniques.” Perceptual and Motor Skills 29, no.3
(1969): 915–918.
Lallier, Jean. 1966. “Champignons et hallucinations.” Entrée libre. Oce national de radiodiu-
sion télévision française.
Lévi- Strauss, Claude. Le sorcier et sa magie. Imprimerie Chantenay, Paris, 1949.
Luke, David. Otherworlds: Psychedelics and Exceptional Human Experience. London: Aeon Books,
2019.
Marmin, Nicolas. “Métapsychique et psychologie en France (1880–1940).” Revue d’Histoire des
Sciences Humaines 1 (2001): 145–171.
Méheust, Bertrand. Somnambulisme et Médiumnité, tome 2: Le choc des sciences psychiques. Le
Plessis- Robinson, France: Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond, 2003.
Reko, Blas Pablo. De los nombres botánicos aztecas. H. Beyer, Mexico, 1919.
Rovelli, Carlo, and Sophie Lem. Écrits vagabonds. Paris: Flammarion, 2019.
Saord, William Edwin. Narcotic Plants and Stimulants of the Ancient Americans. Annual Report
of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington D C, 1916, 387.
Santesson, C.G. “Einige Mexikanische Rauschdrogen.” Archiv für Botanik 29, no.12 (1939): 1–9.
Schöttler, Peter. “Scientisme sur L’histoire D’un Concept Dicile.” Revue de synthèse 134, no.1
(2013): 89–113.
Schultes, Richard Evans. “e Identication of Teonacátl, a Narcotic Basidiomycete of the Aztecs.”
Botanical Museum Leaets of Harvard 7, no.3 (February1939): 37–54.
Schultes, Richard Evans. “Teonanácatl: e Narcotic Mushroom of the Aztecs.” American Anthro-
pologist 42, no.3 (1940): 429–443.
Szára, Stephen. “Are Hallucinogens Psychoheuristic?” NIDA Research Monograph 146 (1994): 33–51.
Verrill, A.E. “A Recent Case of Mushroom Intoxication.” Science 40, no.1029 (September18,
1914): 408–410.
Wasson, Robert Gordon. e Wondrous Mushroom: Mycolatry in Mesoamerica. New York: McGraw-
Hill, 1980.
Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/chapter-pdf/2184965/c008600_9780262376891.pdf by guest on 29 November 2023
Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/chapter-pdf/2184965/c008600_9780262376891.pdf by guest on 29 November 2023
© 2023 Mas sa chu setts Institute of Technology
is work is subject to a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND license.
is license applies only to the work in full and not to any components included with permis
-
sion. Subject to such license, all rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used to train
articial intelligence systems without permission in writing from the MIT Press.
e MIT Press would like to thank the anonymous peer reviewers who provided comments
on drafts of this book. e generous work of academic experts is essential for establishing the
authority and quality of our publications. We acknowledge with gratitude the contributions
of these other wise uncredited readers.
is book was set in Adobe Garamond and Berthold Akzidenz Grotesk by Westchester
Publishing Services.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Dyck, Erika, editor. | Elcock, Chris, editor.
Title: Expanding mindscapes : a global history of psychedelics / edited by
Erika Dyck and Chris Elcock.
Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : e MIT Press, [2023] | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identiers: LCCN 2022059916 (print) | LCCN 2022059917 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780262546935 (print) | ISBN 9780262376907 (epub) |
ISBN 9780262376891 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Hallucinogenic drugs—History—20th century. |
LSD (Drug)—History—20th century.
Classication: LCC RM324.8 .E97 2023 (print) | LCC RM324.8 (ebook) |
DDC 615.7/883—dc23/eng/20230601
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022059916
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022059917
MIT Press Direct
Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/chapter-pdf/2184965/c008600_9780262376891.pdf by guest on 29 November 2023
