THE HEALING JOURNEY: New Approaches to Consciousness

by Claudio Naranjo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 21, 1973

There's lots new and intriguing -- unfamiliar drugs, difficult terms, and, for those gutsy or desperate enough to accelerate the Freudian process, promising possibilities for treating emotional disorders -- from Naranjo, a Chilean psychiatrist (and early clinical experimenter with psychedelics in psychotherapy) now associated at Esalen Institute who's also a metaphysician (On the Psychology Of Meditation with Robert Omstein, 1972) and a disciple of Fritz Perls and Gestalt therapy. Chemically the four drugs discussed here fall into two groups: the phenylisopropylaminos, MDA and MMDA, and the polycyclic indoles, ibogaine and harmaline. Unlike the ethereal psychedelics -- rhapsodized by Huxley, Leafy and the flower children -- which bring about man-the-god or man-the-devil states, ibogaine and harmaline go down into the instinctual, or man-the.animal; ""fantasy enhancers,"" they plunge the mind into myth, transpersonal symbols and archetypes (yet anybody resistant to the animal level of existence may have no reaction other than unpleasant physical effects). Naranjo describes MDA and MMDA as ""feeling enhancers""; a successful MDA experience, for example, works at integration through dissociation -- the patient in forgetting identity allows himself to reexperience events objectively. A scholarly, responsible and complex study which should appeal to the Castaneda audience, written by a clinical shaman who's something of a Don Juan himself.

Pub Date: Jan. 21, 1973

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Pantheon

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1973

Categories: NONFICTION