ARGUMENTS
BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE
Although these two hooks on marihuana and LSDl appear
to be scholarly, imposing and beyond the reach of anyone who is merely
literate and interested in the subject of drugs, I hope many people will
look into them and find out how much they have to reveal about our
society. For me, in a way, the books were a source of reassurance. Some–
times I have felt that psychiatrists or social scientists are America's unas–
sailable priests, pursued by a nervous, gullible middle class for advice
and consolation-which are offered for a sound, stable fee and in
language cloudy enough to threaten no one and nothing very im–
portant. Now I know that there are indeed limits, very definite limits
to what even psychiatrists can get away with. They complain in both
books that their legitimate desire to study, use-even to recommend–
drugs is decisively thwarted by a public that is not about to sanction
pot or acid as "therapeutic agents," or even "harmless" sources of
pleasure, no matter how "rationally" their value is urged.
It
seems that
doctors can also push their luck too far-if they take themselves so
seriously that they actually believe they are strictly interested in learning
how the brain works and the mind gets along.
In both
The Marihuana Papers
and
The Use of LSD in Psycho–
therapy and Alcoholism
voices of "reason" and of "science" (medical
and social science alike) are bravely raised in an effort to give the
reader historical, neurophysiological and psychiatric information about
1 THE USE OF LSD IN PSYCHOTHERAPY AND ALCOHOLISM.
Ed. Harold Abramson. Bobbs Merrill. $17.50.
THE MARIHUANA PAPERS. Ed. David Solomon. Bobbs Merrill. $10.00.
