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God & the Devil. As the drug's effect deepens,* the patient has illusions—not hallucinations, the doctors insist, because he does not believe in them. Instead of 'hearing voices," as in schizophrenia, he enjoys visions. These visions may be timeless and seemingly unrelated to past or present experience. But often they consist of incredibly vivid, colorful scenes from the recent past, or from a childhood remembered with superhuman accuracy: 'Some patients describe it by saying that it is as though a 3-D tape were being run off in the visual field." Long-forgotten childhood fantasies may be mixed with real memories, some going back (as patients testify that their parents have confirmed) to life's first year.
Family conflicts may be projected onto the LSD screen in puppet shows, acted out by Disney characters. Symbolic of emotional disturbance are dragons, witches, fairies and satyrs. There may be fantasies of seeing God and the Devil "locked in mortal cosmic combat."
Whatever the visions' content, most important is the fact that the patient seems able to stand aside and report vividly observed conflicts, dredged from his deepest unconscious and acted out before him. Somehow, his sharpened insight is able to function independently of his emotions. The more he "goes with the drug," the more he can stand aside and "see himself" as he has been, resisting reality and rationalizing his behavior. He learns that "in the world of psychic reality, a great many things . . . have no correspondence to facts in the objective world. [But] these psychic realities . . . may be the very ones which, when repressed, give him trouble in his dealings with the objective world."
Addicts' Insights. Who benefits from LSD plus psychotherapy? Drs. Chandler and Hartman had 44 neurotics, 25 cases of personality disorder (including schizoid, paranoid, and eight patients with extreme compulsiveness), and 17 who had been addicted to alcohol or narcotics or both. Most of the patients took LSD dozens of times in stepped-up doses. (There appears to be no danger of addiction.) No fewer than 50 of their patients, the doctors report, showed considerable to outstanding improvement, while 38 more showed at least some improvement. Only 22 were rated as having shown no benefit. Most gratifying was the success with victims of notoriously resistant types of illness—addicts and obsessive-compulsives.
LSD is still an investigational drug (not available for general prescription), its distribution closely controlled by law, and watchdogged by Sandoz. Like a score of other physicians doing research on LSD, Drs. Chandler and Hartman emphasize that by itself it cures nothing. Its apparent value lies in boosting—and accelerating—the benefits to be gained from orthodox psychiatry. One of their patients made a good recovery in less than a year, after six years of drugless couch work had failed.