Matthew Oram, The Trials of Psychedelic Therapy: LSD Psychotherapy in America

A recent resurgence of interest in psychedelics—evident in popular culture, decriminalization efforts, and a wave of clinical studies—forms the backdrop for Matthew Oram's book, which traces the history of LSD psychotherapy research in post-World War II America. Oram focuses not on 1960s drug culture but on the fraught relationship between experimental therapies and state-regulated medical research. His account examines tensions between fringe and orthodox medicine, showing how LSD once promised to bridge cognitive therapy and psychiatric drug treatment. The book offers a nuanced contribution to the historical literature on clinical medicine, drug regulation, and the mind sciences.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Psychedelics are back in vogue. In popular culture, political legislation, and scientific research, we appear to be witnessing an early twenty-first century renaissance of the heady acid days of the 1960s. The success of Michael Pollan’s 2018 New York Times bestseller, How to Change Your Mind, the decriminalization of psilocybin-containing mushrooms in Denver in 2019, followed by all plant entheogens in Oakland the same year, alongside a surge of papers and pilot studies into psychedelic-assisted therapeutics throughout the 2010s, all indicate a relaxing of attitudes after half a century of alarmist proscription of hallucinogens. It is in this context that Matthew Oram has published The Trials of Psychedelic Therapy: LSD Psychotherapy in America. In this meticulous account Oram traces the history of medical research into the use of Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) in the treatment of mental disorders in post World War II America. However, as Oram emphasizes in his introduction, this is not another addition to the profusion of books on 1960s drug culture. The double meaning in the title hints at the deeper concern at the heart of the book: the problematic relationship between experimental and non-orthodox therapeutics and institutionalized, state regulated medical research. Tensions between fringe and orthodoxy in modern medicine have been a persistent feature of health and healing in the western world from at least the mid-nineteenth century. Oram’s examination of such tensions in the mid-twentieth century, when LSD offered medical researchers the tantalizing prospect of bridging the divide between cognitive therapy and psychiatric drug treatment, represents a nuanced and refreshing intervention in the historical literature on clinical medicine, drug regulation, and the mind sciences.