Freudian Jungian Grofian Steps Toward TH

FREUDIAN, JUNGIAN, GROFIAN — STEPS TOWARD THE
PSYCHEDELIC HUMANITIES
Thomas B. Roberts, Ph.D.

DeKalb, Illinois
ABSTRACT: Stanislav Grof’s map of the mind offers transpersonalists — and further, humanists
and all professions working with the human phenomenon — a new kind of intellectual effort. Just
as Freudian and Jungian psychologies enriched 20th Century intellectual life, Grofian is enriching
the 21st. Grof’s psychedelic-derived theory promotes cultural interpretation, psychocriticism,
curricular enrichment, and new methods of humanistic research. The theory’s four-level map of
the human mind has received moderate attention primarily by confirming other scholars’ global
findings — particularly in religion and mythology — while the theory’s third, perinatal, level
offers rich psychocritical concepts to understand the history and the rhetoric of war, Sartre’s
philosophy, cinema criticism, and interdisciplinary studies. This article challenges humanists to:
(a) use Grof’s theory to enrich their fields, (b) view the Consciousness Explorer as a Twentieth
Century face of Campbell’s hero with a thousand faces, (c) develop current leads to reignite
interest in the humanities and enliven university courses, and by extension, (d) incorporate the
findings of other psychedelic explorers into humanists’ intellectual tasks.
KEYWORDS: transpersonal, humanities, Grof, psychocriticism, psychedelic, consciousness,

philosophy, religion, history, rhetoric, art, mythology, cinema, liberal arts
But the man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the
same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less cocksure, happier but
less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to
understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the
unfathomable Mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend.
— Huxley, The Doors of Perception
In June 2013, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) issued a report
that bemoaned the sorry state of the humanities. While the humanities previously
occupied the peak of academic status, now fewer students were majoring in these
subjects, financial support was waning, departments were shrinking, the humanities
were not getting the scholarly respect that AAAS members thought they deserved.
Pity the poor humanities! Take heart. Rescue is on the way!
As each psychology develops, its ideas enrich the humanities with new
understandings of the human mind and new types of psychocriticism. With the
‘‘Psychedelic Renaissance’’ occurring in medicine and the neurosciences (Sessa,
2017) and becoming recognized in general periodicals (Pollan, 2015; Sifferlin,
2015) and online (Erowid, 2016), it is time for psychedelics to make their
contributions to humanity and disciplines including but beyond the transpersonal.
To pull the AAAS out of its situation, doses of psychedelic ideas would advance
such disciplines into the 21st century with fruitful psychedelic-derived ideas.
troberts38@comcast.net.
Copyright Ó 2017 Transpersonal Institute
The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 2017, Vol. 49, No. 2 0
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Grof’s Map of the Human Mind
The richest psychedelic model that I know of is Stanislav Grof’s four-level map of
our minds (Grof, 1975) and especially its perinatal level. (For biographical
background, see Grof’s website http://www.stanislavgrof.com/ and Wikipedia,
which in this instance offers quite authentic and comprehensive information (en.
wikipedia.org/wiki/StanislavGrof). My reason for mentioning this is not to
summarize the model nor to portray its powerful psychotherapeutic values but
primarily to point out that this theory is culturally fruitful and can help revive the
humanities especially (Roberts, 2013a, b). The examples in this essay are chosen to
make the point that Grofian theory holds riches for the humanities and beyond; my
apologies if I have left off your favorites or your own publications.
Using the Freudian figurative trope of the mind having depth, Grof arranged his map of
the mind into layers going from the shallowest to the deepest: (a) abstract and aesthetic,
perceptions and thoughts, (b) biographical, personal history from birth to the present,
(c) perinatal, prenatal and birth memories — often physical rather than cognitive, and
(d) transpersonal, experiences going beyond self-identity, time, and space.
Microscope to the Mind
The third level, perinatal, is especially rich in scholarly ideas. In skeleton form, the
perinatal level contains four stages that parallel the birth process:
Figure 1. Grof’s cartography of the human mind.
0 The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 2017, Vol. 49, No. 2

BPM ¼ Basic Perinatal Matrix, a complex of emotions and physical
experiences
BPM I ¼ relaxed, satisfied womb experiences, usually blissful
BPM II ¼ being trapped with contractions but with the cervix closed. Poe
drowns in BPM II.
BPM III ¼ cosmic struggle through the birth canal. Most movies and TV shows
center here.
BPM IV ¼ emergence, birth and rebirth
This level is so rich in cosmically powerful emotions and symbolic expressions that
it has produced a whole arm of perinatal Grofian psychocriticism, as discussed
below.
‘‘A Vaster Panoply of Human Experience’’
Psychedelics amplify or magnify one’s awareness of subjective human experiences,

both emotional and cognitive. Using LSD as a sort of microscope to examine the
mind, Grof conducted over 4,000 psychoanalytic sessions and later reviewed
records of several thousand additional sessions; thus, his sampling of the human
mind is immense. In Higher Wisdom, psychiatrists Roger Walsh and Charles Grob
(2005) evaluated Grof’s knowledge of the human mind: ‘‘He has therefore perhaps
seen a vaster panoply of human experience than anyone else in history’’ (p. 119).
Just as the microscope benefited biology and medicine by allowing scientists to
assemble hundreds of individual magnified close-ups into detailed pictures of the
human body — for example, a microscopic atlas of the liver — Grof has pieced
together a psychedelics-based atlas of the human mind. This map also moves our
understanding of the human mind forward by integrating (a) psychedelics’
perceptual richness, (b) the biographical memories of Freudian-psychodynamic
psychology, (c) Rank’s birth ideas, and (d) Jung’s adventures into the collective
unconscious by combining these into one overall model.
Bathyscaph to The Depths of Our Inner Sea
In addition to coining the term, transpersonal, helping to found the Transpersonal

Institute, and serving on the editorial board of The Journal of Transpersonal
Psychology, and as first president of the International Transpersonal Association,
Grof’s psychedelic clinical therapy provided the two forms of psychedelic
psychotherapy, psycholytic and peak-experience. In the former, a moderate dose
brings unconscious materials to consciousness; then the therapist and patient work
through it, taking as many non-dose sessions as necessary. While doing low-dose or
psycholytic LSD clinical research in Prague, he discovered to his own surprise that
some of his patients remembered their own births, and others even had
transpersonal experiences during their therapeutic sessions. His map of the human
mind is derived from these sessions.
Later at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Institute, he and his research team
developed high-dose peak-experience psychedelic psychotherapy and honed the
Grofian Contributions to the Humanities 0

treatment protocol to include the precursors of methods that are used today, for
example at the Johns Hopkins Medical School’s Behavior Pharmacology Research
Unit (Council on Spiritual Practices, 2016): screening, establishing patient-therapist
rapport, music, blindfolds, a relaxed setting, accompanied by a co-therapist team,
and post-session integration.
Grof’s research and his successors’ is proof-of-concept that shows it is possible to

expand the humanities to include experimental research on topics — mind,
meaningfulness, spirituality, sacredness, beauty, mystical experiences, well-being,
altruism, sense of self, ego-transcendence, archetypes, ancestral memories,
creativity, and noetic knowing; thus, humanists can move from arm-chair
speculation to experimentation. In addition to these specific topics, the central
topic of the humanities is the nature of the human mind and its fullest development:
Grof’s map of our minds and his pioneering psychedelic findings detail our view of
the human mind. Has his broad four-level model been useful to scholars?
Four-level Analysis
The movie Pink Floyd: The Wall is especially rich from a four-level perspective
(Roberts, 2013a) and more notably represents a typical psycholytic experience
because it visits all four levels rather than experiencing one grand ego-transcendent
state. The movie presents a day in the life of a bum-tripping musician Floyd ‘‘Pink’’
Pinkerton, who ricochets among his mind’s four Grofian levels. As the camera
zooms in to his eye, the opening lyrics alert us, ‘‘If you wanna find out what’s
behind these cold eyes / You’ll have to claw your way through this / Disguise.’’
(Waters, Appleby, & Scarfe, 1982, unnumbered) With Figure 1 serving as a map,
we are embarking on a psychological four-level adventure into Pink’s mind.
Abstract and Aesthetic Level
(Reality) Context: A largely trashed hotel room and later at a garishly violent
concert. From time to time Pink’s emotions link to the . . .
Autobiographical Level
Done in a visual photographic style, reminiscent of old photographs and home

movies. In powerful animation we see Pink sinking still lower to the . . . . . .
Perinatal Level
‘‘Behind these cold eyes’’ the images and memories take on perinatal intensity,
nightmarish cosmic flavors and mythopoetic themes as powerful archetypical
images dominate, expressed with extraordinary animation. In a BPM III ‘‘trial
scene’’ of the movie’s last few minutes, psychologically extreme animation
adrenalizes its viewers, symbolically elaborates earlier themes, and mixes them

with magnified psychedelicized imagery — intensified sounds, visuals, emotions,
and symbols, ‘‘on acid’’ as the expression goes. In a cataclysmic cathartic finale,
Pink breaks down his psychological barrier by knocking down the wall of cold,
emotional separateness that led him to live a meaningless life as one brick in
society’s many walls. As discussed below, scholars from a variety of humanistic
fields have found Grof’s perinatal ideas fruitful.
Transpersonal Level
The movie ends with a serene BPM IV scene. With light, uplifting music, we see
young children cleaning up after what looks like a combination of the rubble from a
WW II bombing and perhaps debris from a post-concert riot (Roberts 2013a).
An important point in Grof’s theory is that these levels constantly evoke each other
by following emotional themes and imagery in an overall composition similar to
four staffs in vocal music. At any time, one level may be most dominant, but the
others are active too and ready to emerge. The we’re-all-bricks-in-the-wall scene
portrays this: an autobiographical memory of a punishing schoolmaster morphs into
an assembly line of children with BPM II-flavored intensity, which in turn morphs
into a social meat-grinder of archetypical symbolic intensity.
Additional Cine Psychocriticism
Movies, novels, and TV shows frequently yet unintentionally express Grof’s wider
four-level theory, often dwelling on scenes that activate perinatal feelings, notably
the struggles of BPM III. I have found that Grof’s general theory sheds light on
Brainstorm (1986) and Snow White (1990, 2006). Kackar and I analyzed Fight
Club: as its title and violence suggest, a very BPM III movie (2005).
Religious Studies
In The Forgotten Truth: The Primordial Tradition (1976), Huston Smith noted a
correspondence between Grof’s 4-level map of the human mind and ‘‘the outlooks
of tribes, societies, civilizations, and at deepest levels the world’s great religions —
these collective outlooks admit of one overview. What then emerges is a
remarkable unity underlying the surface variety’’ (p. iv). After describing this unity
as the main theme of the book, in an appendix Smith evaluated Grof’s clinical
research in light of his own theory of ‘‘what the mind is.’’ He wrote, ‘‘. . . judged
both by quantity of data encompassed and by the explanatory power of the
hypotheses that make sense of this data, it is the most formidable evidence the
psychedelics have thus far produced’’ (p. 156), and: ‘‘The view of reality that results
is so uncannily like the one that has been outlined in this book that, interlacing
paraphrases of passages from Grof’s article with direct quotations from it, we
present here in summary’’ (p. 170). Smith continued his interlacing for two pages.

In Cleansing the Doors of Perception (2000), Smith updated a collection of his
earlier papers plus some new ones and reiterated his view that the entheogenic uses
of psychedelics enrich our understanding of religion.
Thus, to Grof’s finding that later stages in the LSD sequence conform
sufficiently to the stages of the birth process to warrant our saying that they
[religions] are influenced by those stages, tradition adds: ‘‘influenced by’’ only,
not caused by. (p. 89)
A vast literature — some Grofian, most not — examined relationships between

spiritual development and the entheogenic uses of psychedelics (Roberts & Hruby
1995-2003). The entheogenic field of inquiry is growing with increasing speed
(e.g., Ellens, 2014; Richards, 2015; Roberts, 2012, 2016) and points, even, to future
experimental religious studies.
Mythology
Joseph Campbell, compiling much of the world’s mythology, and Grof, excavating
the human mind, found that their studies independently corroborated each other’s
work. After he received an early manuscript of Grof’s key book Realms of the
Human Unconscious, noted mythologist Joseph Campbell wrote, ‘‘And I have
found so much of my thinking about mythic forms freshly illuminated by the
findings here reported that I am going to try in these last pages to render a
suggestion of the types and depths of consciousness that Dr. Grof has fathomed in
his search of our inward sea.’’ (1972, p. 258). After taking more than three pages
noting parallels between Grof’s perinatal level and images from folk myth and the
world’s religions, he summarized, ‘‘It is these [perinatal stages] that are represented
in myth. As illustrated in the various mythologies of the peoples of the world,
however, the universals have been everywhere localized to the sociopolitical
context’’ (p. 264).
The Hero as Consciousness Explorer
Campbell, of course, is widely known as the author of The Hero with a Thousand
Faces (1949/1973), in which he claimed that a common theme runs through major
legends, myths, and religions. ‘‘The passage of the mythological hero may be over-
ground, incidentally; fundamentally it is inward—into depths where obscure
resistances are overcome, and long lost, forgotten powers are revivified, to be made
available for the transfiguration of the world’’ (p. 29). This could just as well
describe psychedelic journeys.
New Century, New Heroes
Psychedelics in the late 20th century and early 21st century give us another new face
for today’s heroes — The Consciousness Explorer as Hero. Judging from the honor
and excitement they arouse, the heroes in the psychedelic line of consciousness

explorers include Albert Hofmann, Ronald Sandison, R. D. Laing, Stanislav Grof,
Humphry Osmond, Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Ralph Metzner, Aldous Huxley,
Terence McKenna, John Lilly, R. Gordon Wasson, James Fadiman, Walter Pahnke,
Al Hubbard, Ken Kesey, Richard Schultes, Maria Sabina, Jean Houston and Robert
Masters, Sasha and Ann Shulgin, Owsley, Leo Zeff . . . the list goes on and on to
include more of the quick and the dead.
In addition to these elders, we might add many others in today’s laboratories,

hospitals, clinics, universities, and organizations as well as musicians and other
artists. Some in this list are already cultural heroes among psychedelicists, as
shown by their almost legendary-like status. They have, as Campbell described,
traveled ‘‘beneath the floor of the comparatively neat little dwelling that we call our
consciousness’’ and actively explored the ‘‘adventure of the discovery of the self’’
1972 p. 8).
Psychology, religion, mythology, philosophy — when scholars following different

lines of thought converge on the same conclusion their findings are immensely
stronger than when researchers following the same line agree. While Grof’s broad
four-level theory is insightful, another cluster of scholars has found Grof’s third,
perinatal level, especially rich.
Perinatal Level Analysis
Judging by the number of publications, Grof’s third level, the perinatal, has been
the most fruitful for humanists. It reveals a hidden pattern that clarifies our idea of
mind and charts its cultural expressions. Grof’s uses of perinatal interpretation and
others’ uses illustrate the perinatal level’s psychocritcal richness.
Grof’s Perinatal Interpretations
History and the Rhetoric of War. In ‘‘The Perinatal Roots of War,

Revolutions, and Totalitarianism’’ (1977) Grof demonstrated that political and
military leaders use perinatal imagery to whip up their people into warlike moods.
From Alexander the Great to Hitler, perinatal imagery has reached deep into
people’s minds by stirring up unconscious memories of their perinatal experiences.
In Hitler, we see the BPM I of an imaginary past golden age of the Germanic
peoples. Losing World War I, colonies and land lost, and the economic disaster of
the depression activate BPM II’s feelings of constriction and its concomitant desire
for more room (Lebensraum), and, of course, the way out of BPM II is the fighting,
struggle, and war of BPM III in order to get to the birth of the BPM IV of the
glorious 1,000-year Reich.
Ryan (2004) spotted perinatal elements in the Gettysburg Address, and one of my
students wrote an insightful perinatal interpretation of Churchill’s ‘‘Iron Curtain’’
speech. Because the feelings that produce these images come from the deep BPM
unconscious, people who use them may do so completely unaware of their origins.
They just feel right to the speakers and to their publics. During election years, I ask

my Psychedelic Studies class to spot perinatal imagery, thoughts, and feelings in
political rhetoric.
Art Criticism. Grof points to H. R. Giger as a master of BPM II (2015) typically

with powerful machines crushing babies. In LSD Psychotherapy Grof (1980)
presented numerous illustrations by himself and his patients. He is a talented artist;
early in his life, he planned to become a film cartoonist — one of the few ways to
make political comments in Czechoslovakia in those days. In another, Beyond
Death (Grof & Grof, 1980), he and his wife Christina collected images of dying and
transcendence cross culturally; they largely depict BPM’s III and IV. This led to
being chosen as special effects consultants for the death-rebirth scene in the movie
Brainstorm.
Cross-disciplinary Studies. With the humanities and psychedelic theory

sharing their interest in the nature of the human mind, we might expect findings
in one discipline to have implications in others. Psychedelics uncover perinatal
springs that flow into multiple streams of social life. In this quotation, we see
psychology, philosophy, religion, politics, and science flow together (Grof, 1975):
. . . independent of the individual’s cultural and religious background. In my

experience, everyone who has reached these [perinatal] levels develops
convincing insights into the utmost relevance of the spiritual dimensions in the
universal scheme of things. Even hard-core materialists, positively oriented
scientists and skeptics and cynics, and uncompromising atheists and
intellectual crusaders such as Marxist philosophers suddenly became interested
in a spiritual search after they confronted these [perinatal] levels in
themselves. (pp. 97-98)
This statement backs the claim that humans can develop spiritual interests from
psychedelic experiences, and it offers a source of evidence about its credibility;
however, the idea suffers a chilling effect because current laws forbid the best
evidence —psychedelic experience. Likewise, because the scholarly community
nonchalantly dismisses psychedelic-derived ideas, it impoverishes the world of
ideas. Censorship of ideas runs through the legal-academic-social complex.
Others’ Perinatal Interpretations
Other scholars have found perinatal interpretations a fruitful path too. They pop up
in unexpected places. I was surprised one day while singing Martin Luther’s hymn
A Mighty Fortress is Our God. [See Table 1]
Art. In a series that dramatically portray the BPMs, 61 drawings document the
inner psychedelic journey by Sherana Harriette Frances (2001). Her remarkable
drawings range across Grof’s four-level theory, including powerful BPM images,
and, as during therapy sessions, they do not always appear in numerical birth order.
Philosophy. In ‘‘Sartre’s Rite of Passage,’’ Thomas Riedlinger (1982) analyzed

Sartre’s mescaline experience as unresolved BPM II, which flavored his philosophy

TABLE 1
A Grofian Perinatal Interpretation of Luther’s ‘‘A Mighty Fortress is Our God’’
Basic Perinatal Matrix Luther’s Lyrics

Grof’s BPM I—The Good Womb Safe, secure, A mighty fortress is our God, A bulwark never
no worries, relaxed, all needs taken care of failing:
Transition BPM I to BPM II Our helper he amid the flood of mortal ills
prevailing.
BPM II—Contractions For still our ancient foe Doth work seek to work
Trapped in agony, helplessness, hopeless, us woe; His craft and power are great, And
meaningless armed with cruel hate, On earth is not his equal.
BPM III—Through the Birth Canal, Did we in our own strength confide, Our striving
Cosmic Struggle would be losing, Were not the right man on our
Fighting against terrible odds, seeming to side, The man of God’s own choosing. Dost ask
die but being rescued ‘‘from without’’ by who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is he. Lord
magic, an amulet, or phrase, or by a Sabaoth his name. From age to age the same,
supernatural force. Apparent death turns into And he must win the battle.
rebirth. Leaving an old life for a better new And though this world with devils filled, Should
one. threaten to undo us, We will not fear, for God
hath willed His truth to triumph through us. The
prince of darkness grim, We tremble not for
him; his rage we can endure. For, lo. his doom
is sure: One little word shall fell him.
That word above all earthly powers, No thanks
to them abideth; The Spirit and the gifts are
ours Through him who with us sideth. Let
goods and kindred go, this mortal life also; the
body they may kill.
BPM IV—rebirth, safety, success, mystical God’s truth abideth still; His kingdom is forever.
Source: Roberts, T. (2014). Chapter 16 (p. 288). In Ellens, J. H. (Ed.). (2014). Seeking the sacred with
psychoactive substances: Chemical paths to spirituality and to God. (2 vols.). Santa Barbara. CA:
Praeger/ABC-CLIO. With permission
thereafter. A ‘‘cardboard world’’ of meaningless suffering, a sense of being trapped,

a ‘‘no-exit hell’’—these express BPM II emotions and ideas.
Locating Grof’s work in a wider philosophical context, in The Passion of the

Western Mind Tarnas wrote, ‘‘While this perinatal area constituted the critical
threshold for the therapeutic transformation, it also proved to be the pivotal area for
major philosophical and intellectual issues’’ (1993, p. 428).
University students can easily learn Grofian criticism too. In my Psychedelic

Studies class, what seems to me to be the best assignment is to present my
Grofian interpretation of Snow White lecture then have the students use four-
level or perinatal ideas to interpret something on their own. Although they
usually chose a movie or TV show, their life experiences provide other
examples, for example, moving into an apartment and social relationships. In
spite of my initial skepticism, one student used her example of buying a new pair
of ill-fitting shoes to attend an important dance, all with BPM-appropriate
physical feelings and emotions. This assignment turned out to be an excellent
way to teach Grof’s cartography. Some years I have asked them to interpret Edna
St. Vincent Millay’s ‘‘Renascence’’ and on election years the speeches and
images of the candidates.

Supportive Studies —Non-Grofian Psychedelic Scholarship
Evidence for the potential richness of psychedelic humanities comes from non-
Grofian lines of scholarship too. For many scholars, psychedelics inspired them to
expand beyond psychedelics’ intellectual influences to other psychoactive plants
and chemicals, thus opening even wider directions for intellectual inquiry.
Art
As background to Grof and perinatal interests are numerous books on 1960’s poster
art and artists; the San Diego Museum of Art (Tomlinson & Medeiros, 2001) and
the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1987 among others have mounted
displays of poster art. Fewer books treat psychedelics’ general influence on art (e.g.,
Johnson, 2011). General design (Gordon, 2008) and domestic crafts (Jacopetti &
Wainwright, 1974) express psychedelic aesthetics, while the unique form of blotter
art is widespread, ephemeral, and best sampled via the Internet. Taken together,
these exemplify the shallowest of Grof’s four-level theory of the mind, the abstract
and aesthetic level.
Multidisciplinary Studies
In The Psychedelic Policy Quagmire (Ellens & Roberts, 2015) 25 scholars make
the point that future policy decisions must consider psychedelics’ wide range of
scholarly topics and uses and not limit policy concerns to their medical and
psychotherapeutic uses, which dominate current thinking.
Even leaving aside novels and the vast anthropological literature on psychedelics,
in ‘‘Chilling Effects 2: Brief Communiqués from the Psychedelic Intellectual
Frontier,’’ Roberts (2015, pp. 21-23) lists 60 social science articles derived from
psychedelic research, but they are, he claims, ignored by being seldom cited
because of their ‘‘naughty’’ psychedelic origins. Their disciplines and topics
include: general social and historical background, mystical experiences, social
benefits, mind and psychology, religion and religious studies, culture and history,
the arts, business uses and opportunities, psychotherapy, current news, neurosci-
ence and chemistry, and botany.
Women’s Studies
Including both psychedelic and non-psychedelic reports, Sisters of the Extreme:

Women Writing on the Drug Experience (Palmer & Horowitz 2000) stretches from
ancient Greece to the 21st Century. Sisters helps balance the mostly male
anthologies with contributions by Charlotte Bronte, Louisa May Alcott, Anais Nin,
Maya Angelou, Edith Wharton — some hidden voices and many from within the
literary world. Among the early psychedelic authors are pseudonyms Jane Dunlap
(1961) and Constance Newland (1962), both writing under aliases.

Classical Studies
Beyond a strictly Grofian approach but providing supporting intellectual

background, Ruck, Staples, and Heinrich trace the origins and esoteric meanings
of early Greek myths and culture to psychoactive plants—notably mushrooms in
The Apples of Apollo (2001). Moreover, classicists may be jollied (or annoyed) to
hear that the Pythia of Delphi received her inspiration by inhaling psychoactive
gasses emerging from the earth (Piccardi et al., 2008). Hillman’s The Chemical
Muse (2008) identifies drug use as a root of Western civilization.
As ancient history fades into archeology, readings such as Rudgley’s Essential

Substances (1994) and Merlin’s ‘‘Archeological Evidence for the Tradition of
Psychoactive Plant Use in the Old World’’ (2003) include psychedelics and widen
the trail to broader psychoactive domains.
Philosophy
In ‘‘The Psychedelic Influence on Philosophy’’ (2016, unnumbered) Sjöstedt-H

traced psychedelics’ influence through the works of 13 philosophers: Plato, de
Quincey, Davy, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, James, Bergson, Benjamin. Jünger,
Paz, Marcuse, Sartre, and Foucault. ‘‘Outsight,’’ he writes, ‘‘was the greatest thing
that never happened to psychedelics. . . . The objective was,’’ he defines, ‘‘to
collect, as [Humphry] Osmond briefed ‘personal reflections on the experience of
taking mescaline by 50 to 100 notable subjects in philosophy, literature, and
science’ ’’
In ‘‘Is There a Place for Psychedelics in Philosophy’’? Langlitz (2016) claims that
philosophy has gone astray from its original classical purpose of living a good life,
peace of mind, and inner freedom —first as a handmaiden for scholastic
Christianity, now as an abstruse intramural game among academics. Doing a sort
of anthropological fieldwork among psychedelic researchers, he reported, ‘‘the
pharmacologically induced dissolution of the self had taught them how dependent
their sense of selfhood was on neurochemistry, and they associated these ecstatic
states with various forms of detachment — detachment from themselves and from
everyday concerns’’ (p. 381). If philosophers do not want an empirically informed
view of mind, so much the worse for them.
Although not Grofian based, in The Psychedelic Policy Quagmire (Ellens &
Roberts, 2015) Stokkink (2015) ascribes Michael Foucault’s transformation to
psychedelics:
According to the men who accompanied Michael Foucault on his first LSD trip,
the experience was deeply transformative. The result of it was a change in his
approach to his research, shelving hundreds of pages of his History of Sexuality
and effectively starting over from scratch. . . . The famous LSD trip took place
during the transition between his genealogy and his ethics. (p. 178)

Stokkink claims, ‘‘For Foucault his philosophical work is such a practice that
continually redefines what it means to be a subject’’ (pp. 178-9). Stokkink builds a
case that LSD experiences are a powerful method of Foucaultian redefinition.
In support of a wished-for psychedelic agenda for philosophers, Sjöstedt-H (2016)

wrote,
In fact, it [psychedelic experience] often transgresses the phenomenal criteria by

which analysis can take place. But then such novel phenomena can be taken as
an augmentation of the phenomenal toolkit rather than as a mere anomaly to
treat with philosophic disregard.
He quotes Whitehead’s Modes of Thought:
[The] essence of great experience is penetration into the unknown, the

unexperienced . . . If you like to phrase it so, philosophy is mystical. For
mysticism is direct insight into depths as yet unspoken, But the purpose of
philosophy is to rationalize mysticism: not by explaining it away, but by the
introduction of novel verbal characterization, rationally coordinated.
Sjöstedt-H challenges philosophers with a double-dog dare.
Perhaps a philosopher is taking him up on this. In ‘‘Psychedelic Moral

Enhancement’’ Brian Earp proposes that philosophers of ethics examine
psychedelics as a way ‘‘to support the existence of a biochemically assisted means
of improving a higher-level, flexible capacity to modulate one’s moral and
emotional responses across a range of settings’’ (in press, p. 15). His proposal is
supported by evidence from both natural mystical experiences and psychedelic
ones (Roberts, 2013. pp. 37-54).
Literature—Inestimable Value to the Intellectual
Looking back from the second decade of the 21st Century, it seems clear that a
major landmark in the psychedelic humanities occurred in 1954 when Aldous
Huxley published The Doors of Perception. Previous to this, Huxley had seen
psychoactive drugs only as a way for totalitarian governments to control their
populations (Soma in Brave New World, 1932), but in Doors he spotted ideas that
were to become future themes in psychedelia’s scholarly neighborhood – direct
spiritual experience, Eastern philosophies, intensified artistic appreciation, varieties
of perception, recognizing that our minds can function in additional ways,
especially ‘‘Mind at Large — this is an experience of inestimable value to everyone
and especially to the intellectual’’ (1954/1990, p. 73).
Thanks to mescaline, Huxley’s views on psychoactive drugs did a volte-face. In

Brave New World (1932), Huxley portrayed a psychoactive drug —soma — as an
authoritarian government’s method of controlling its citizens. In 1954, Doors
reported his insights that a psychoactive drug —mescaline — could add experience
to give depth to what had previously been only ideas. In his last book, the novel

Island (1962), he described an imaginary drug — moksha — ‘‘Give us this day our
daily faith, but deliver us, dear God, from beliefs’’ (1962, p. 101). Huxley’s
psychedelic colleague and friend Huston Smith reported, ‘‘. . . nothing was more
curious, and to his way of thinking, more important than the role that mind-altering
plants and chemicals have played in human history’’ (2000, p. xv). Do today’s
humanists have the intellectual courage to replicate Huxley’s adventure in ideas?
As an esteemed novelist and essayist, Huxley’s publication primarily reached

literary readers but few in the general population. This happened three years later
when LIFE magazine (1957 circulation 5.7 million) published, ‘‘Seeking the Magic
Mushroom’’ by R. Gordon Wasson (1957, 20 May). Seeking spilled the beans,
‘‘Hundreds of beat and hippie mushroom seekers (including some leading rock
stars, such as Mick Jagger, John Lennon and Peter Townshend) made pilgrimages
to Maria Sabina’s remote Oaxacan village . . .’’ (Horowitz, 1990, p. 131). Perhaps
not to be outdone by LIFE, the next year The Saturday Evening Post (circulation
5.2 million) published Huxley’s ‘‘Drugs that Shape Men’s Minds’’ (Huxley, (1958,
18 October).
Ethnobotany —The Psychedelic Poet Meets the Psychedelic Banker
Mycologist R. Gordon Wasson and his wife Valentina — he a Vice President of J.

P. Morgan & Co. and she a pediatrician from Russia — became interested in why
he was a mycophobe and she a mycophile, as they coined it. One thing led to
another and another and another as they explored why some cultures worldwide
honored mushrooms and others detested them, particularly psychoactive ones.
Brown (1990) lists 97 Wasson publications, mostly by Gordon, as Valentina died in
1986. Just as Huxley spotted humanistic implications of psychedelics, the Wassons
recruited anthropology, biology, and archeology (Riedlinger, 1990). Apparently,
they hinted at medicine too.
Valentina’s article ‘‘I Ate the Sacred Mushrooms’’ in This Week, a Sunday
newspaper supplement (1957, 19 May), portrayed her experiences in Mexico. In an
attached, related commentary on the Wassons’ adventures in Mexico and on their
books, writers Jahn and June Robbins reported that Valentina thought that
psilocybin would prove useful in studying ‘‘psychiatric processes.’’ Although
cautiously not explicitly attributing additional uses to her, the Robbinses added
‘‘alcoholism . . . addiction . . . terminal diseases accompanied by pain . . .[and]
mental diseases’’ (1957, p. 36 ).
Poet-essayist Robert Graves also played a pivotal role in birth of mid-twentieth

century psychedelic scholarship via his correspondence with banker-mycologist R.
Gordon Wasson (Riedlinger, 1990). After a correspondence starting in 1949 about
the speculation that the death of Emperor Claudius may have been caused by
poisonous mushrooms, ‘‘In September 1952 the poet Robert Graves sent the
Wassons an article that mentioned the discovery in 1938 by Dr. Richard Evans
Schultes, of the survival of the use of intoxicating mushrooms among the Indians in
Mexico’’ (Brown 1990, p. 20)

Thus began Wasson’s connection with Schultes at Harvard Botanical Museum and
the Wassons’ several expeditions to Mexico, where he was the first outsider to
participate in a sacred mushroom ceremony. Eventually these resulted in his 1957
article in LIFE magazine — another spark that ignited psychedelic culture but this
time for the wider culture (Wasson, R., 1957, 20 May).
In 1962 Wasson invited poet essayist Graves to accompany him on an expedition to

Mexico, but Graves declined ‘‘I wish I could come with you to Mexico, but can’t.
I’m indispensable here. I wish I were Wm’s age; I’d make mycoenthnology my
trade’’ (O’Prey, 1990, p. 216). The following paragraph reads:
I think the importance of the hallucinogenetic [sic] mushrooms is in informing

people of the full visual and sensory powers of their imagination, so that they
can afterwards use it to better purpose. With me, the experience certainly broke
down a barrier which had been raised in my mind since I was about twelve and
had had a vision of the same ‘knowledge of good and evil’ which the mushroom
gives one. There has been a new dimension (or whatever the word is) to my
poems since that date. I feel that psilocybe should be given once, with full
precautions, at an initiatory rite instead of that dreary episcopal ‘confirmation’ of
the Anglican Church. (p. 216)
Four of Graves’s books contain essays on the possible uses of mushrooms in

ancient Greece and Rome, both psychedelic and poisonous. Food for Centaurs
(1960), Oxford Addresses on Poetry (1962), Difficult Questions, Easy Answers
(1973), and his collected works Between Moon and Moon (O’Prey, 1990).
Anthropology
Largely stimulated by Wasson’s work, the Society for the Study of Consciousness,
a subgroup of the American Anthropology Association (sacaaa.org) studies the vast
range of techniques for altering consciousness, their effects, cultural functions, and
so forth. The anthropological and archeological literature is vast and growing
steadily. Samples are Rudgley’s Essential Substances: A Cultural History of
Intoxicants in Society (1994) and Merlin’s ‘‘Archeological Evidence for the
Tradition of Psychoactive Plant Use in the Old World’’ (2003). Studies of peyote
are both historical and current. Ayahuasca, a two-plant tea from South America, is
an active field spanning psychotherapy, spirituality, art, and other at least half a
dozen related fields.
Chilling Effect vs. Free Inquiry
These examples and others (Devenot, 2015; Roberts 2013a) provide evidence that
psychedelics are the humanities’ once and future muse. Psychedelics intersect with
the curricula of almost all academic majors and those of professional schools. In
my Psychedelic Studies class in the Honors Program at Northern Illinois
University, I had students from across the curricular spectrum including the
humanities, social sciences, arts, business, engineering, and those preparing for

various professional fields. Students enjoyed learning about Grof’s theory,
particularly applying its perinatal sequence to themselves and their lives.
Psychedelic insights excited them about the nature of the human mind and its
fullest development—the absolute transpersonal and humanistic topic.
Current and future courses could insert psychedelic units into their curricula. Whole
courses such as The Implications of Psychedelics for _____ are clearly possible
now, and graduate programs can become more sophisticated someday if they
include psychedelic research methods. I received so many requests from people
who wanted to make psychedelics part of their graduate education, that I placed
‘‘Psychedelics: Hints on Looking for Graduate Programs’’ (c. 2007) on my website.
With over 2,400 hits, it is the most accessed item, and email inquiries add to that.
There are enough possibilities for psychedelic scholarship to form a center for
psychedelic studies at universities or even whole departments. Experimental
humanities are within reach; although, the methods and protocols would have to be
worked out. In fact, like it or not, students are already practicing the psychedelic
humanities.
The point here, although true, is not only that psychedelics have generated
intriguing ideas that people would like to follow up on, but also that current policy,
laws, social attitudes, academic fear, intellectual caution, and public vogue
combine to produce a chilling effect on these ideas and stifle psychedelic methods
of intellectual inquiry. Where psychedelics are concerned, the supposedly free and
open marketplace of ideas is neither free nor open. But it could be if humanists
dare.
Rescuing the Humanities
When we revisit the 2013 AAAS statement about the humanities’ current slump,
the distinctive BPM theme reappears. While the humanities used to occupy the
peak of academic status (BPM I), now fewer students are majoring in these
subjects, financial support is waning, the humanities are not getting the scholarly
respect that AAAS members think they deserve, departments are shrinking (BPM
II). To pull the AAAS out of its BPM II trap, adventures in psychedelic cognition
(BPM III) would energize and activate humanistic scholars. Could BPM-III
exploration lead to a BPM-IV rebirth for the humanities? Do humanists dare?
Huston Smith, Aldous Huxley, Joseph Campbell, Robert Graves — these mid-
twentieth century intellectual lighthouses had their psychedelic lights extinguished.
How? A War on Intellect is collateral damage of the War on Drugs. Now, though,
new lights are beginning to shine. In The Psychedelic Policy Quagmire (Ellens &
Roberts, 2015), twenty-five scholars proposed ways society could benefit from
psychedelics if they can be used skillfully. These included not only their obvious
biochemical insights and psychotherapeutic uses, but also fruitful uses in religion
and wide-ranging scholarship. It is time for a new generation of innovative
humanists to explore psychedelic landscapes of intellectual inquiry.

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Books.
The Author
Starting in 1981, Tom Roberts taught the world’s first psychedelics course listed in
a university catalogue. In medicine, he is co-editor of the 2-volume Psychedelic
Medicine: New Evidence for Hallucinogenic Substances as Treatments In religion,
he edited Spiritual Growth with Entheogens: Psychoactive Sacramentals and
Personal Transformation and is a major contributor to J. H. Ellens’s Seeking the
Sacred with Psychoactive Substances: Chemical Paths to Spirituality and God (2
volumes). In the humanities, he formulated Multistate Theory in The Psychedelic
Future of the Mind: How Entheogens Are Enhancing Cognition, Boosting
Intelligence, and Raising Values. Most recently, The Psychedelic Policy Quagmire:
Health, Law, Freedom, and Society (co-edited) addresses the complex of issues

across these fields, notably academic freedom. He originated the celebration of
Bicycle Day. He is Professor Emeritus in the Honors Program and in Educational
Psychology at Northern Illinois University. His webpage contains additional
writings and background: www.niu.academia.edu/ThomasRoberts.

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FREUDIAN, JUNGIAN, GROFIAN — STEPS TOWARD THE

Thomas B. Roberts, Ph.D.

KEYWORDS: transpersonal, humanities, Grof, psychocriticism, psychedelic, consciousness,

Copyright Ó 2017 Transpersonal Institute

The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 2017, Vol. 49, No. 2 0

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Microscope to the Mind

Figure 1. Grof’s cartography of the human mind.

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‘‘A Vaster Panoply of Human Experience’’

Psychedelics amplify or magnify one’s awareness of subjective human experiences,

Bathyscaph to The Depths of Our Inner Sea

In addition to coining the term, transpersonal, helping to found the Transpersonal

Groﬁan Contributions to the Humanities 0

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Grof’s research and his successors’ is proof-of-concept that shows it is possible to

Abstract and Aesthetic Level

Done in a visual photographic style, reminiscent of old photographs and home

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Additional Cine Psychocriticism

Groﬁan Contributions to the Humanities 0

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A vast literature — some Groﬁan, most not — examined relationships between

The Hero as Consciousness Explorer

New Century, New Heroes

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In addition to these elders, we might add many others in today’s laboratories,

Psychology, religion, mythology, philosophy — when scholars following different

Perinatal Level Analysis

Grof’s Perinatal Interpretations

History and the Rhetoric of War. In ‘‘The Perinatal Roots of War,

Groﬁan Contributions to the Humanities 0

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Art Criticism. Grof points to H. R. Giger as a master of BPM II (2015) typically

Cross-disciplinary Studies. With the humanities and psychedelic theory

. . . independent of the individual’s cultural and religious background. In my

Others’ Perinatal Interpretations

Philosophy. In ‘‘Sartre’s Rite of Passage,’’ Thomas Riedlinger (1982) analyzed

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Basic Perinatal Matrix Luther’s Lyrics

thereafter. A ‘‘cardboard world’’ of meaningless suffering, a sense of being trapped,

Locating Grof’s work in a wider philosophical context, in The Passion of the

University students can easily learn Groﬁan criticism too. In my Psychedelic

Groﬁan Contributions to the Humanities 0

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Including both psychedelic and non-psychedelic reports, Sisters of the Extreme:

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Beyond a strictly Groﬁan approach but providing supporting intellectual

As ancient history fades into archeology, readings such as Rudgley’s Essential

In ‘‘The Psychedelic Inﬂuence on Philosophy’’ (2016, unnumbered) Sjöstedt-H

Groﬁan Contributions to the Humanities 0

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In support of a wished-for psychedelic agenda for philosophers, Sjöstedt-H (2016)

In fact, it [psychedelic experience] often transgresses the phenomenal criteria by

He quotes Whitehead’s Modes of Thought:

[The] essence of great experience is penetration into the unknown, the

Sjöstedt-H challenges philosophers with a double-dog dare.

Perhaps a philosopher is taking him up on this. In ‘‘Psychedelic Moral