In August 1960,[42] Leary traveled to Cuernavaca, Mexico with Russo and consumed psilocybin mushrooms for the first time, an experience that drastically altered the course of his life. Drop back in to express it. While in prison, Leary was sued by the parents of Vernon Powell Cox, who had jumped from a third story window of a Berkeley apartment while under the influence of LSD. In response to these concerns, Senator Thomas Dodd of Connecticut convened Senate subcommittee hearings in order to try to better understand the drug-use phenomenon, eventually with the intention of "stamping out" such usage through the criminalizing of these drugs. [19] Almost 50 years later, he said that it was "the only fair trial I've had in a court of law".[20]. In front of hundreds of Neo-Pagans in 1992 he declared, "I've always considered myself a Pagan. Get high. [116][118] The judge at his remand hearing stated, "If he is allowed to travel freely, he will speak publicly and spread his ideas,"[119] Facing a total of 95 years in prison, Leary hired criminal defense attorney Bruce Margolin. "[191], Months before his death, Leary appeared in the feminist science fiction feature film Conceiving Ada (Dir. He befriended a number of notable people in the field, such as Jaron Lanier[140] and Brenda Laurel, a pioneer in virtual environments and human–computer interaction. The scientific legitimacy and ethics of his research were questioned by other Harvard faculty because he took psychedelics along with research subjects and pressured students to join in. [116][120] While in Folsom, he was placed in a cell right next to Charles Manson, and though they could not see each other, they could talk together. In 2015, Susan Sarandon brought some of his ashes to the Burning Man festival in Black Rock City, Nevada, and put them into an art installation there. Leary’s experiments were highly controversial, and he was dismissed from Harvard in 1963 along with Alpert. In the first months as a "plebe", he received numerous demerits for rule infractions and then got into serious trouble for failing to report rule breaking by cadets he supervised. Seven grams of Leary's ashes were arranged by his friend at Celestis to be buried in space aboard a rocket carrying the remains of 23 others, including Gene Roddenberry (creator of Star Trek), Gerard O'Neill (space physicist), and Krafft Ehricke (rocket scientist). With the rise of cyberdelic counter-culture, he served as consultant to Billy Idol in the production of the 1993 album Cyberpunk. Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. On the morning the airplane left Kabul, officials of Afghanistan told him he was to leave Afghanistan. ", then unclenching his fist, he said: "Why not?". "[81] He implored the subcommittee not to criminalize psychedelic drug use, which he felt would only serve to exponentially increase its usage among America's youth while removing the safeguards that controlled "set and setting" provided. To satisfy the curiosity of those who were turned away, a black market for psychedelics sprang up near the Harvard campus.[8]. To the chagrin of his family, Leary transferred to the University of Alabama in late 1941 because it admitted him so expeditiously. Timothy Leary was a noted Harvard lecturer and researcher who became an advocate for LSD and later an entertainment figure. He also produced and/or collaborated with others in the creation of multimedia presentations and computer games. He testified further that he had a valid passport in Kabul and that it was confiscated while he was in a line at the American Embassy in Kabul a few days prior to the day when he boarded the airplane; after his passport was confiscated, he was taken to "Central Police Headquarters"; he did not attempt to contact the American Embassy; the Kabul police held him in custody and took him to a "police hotel". [32] In 1957, Leary published The Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality. While stationed in Butler, Leary courted Marianne Busch; they married in April 1945. At one point, Manson said to Leary, "They took you off the streets so that I could continue with your work."[121]. His head is removed and placed on ice. Leary was expelled a year later for spending a night in the female dormitory and lost his student deferment in the midst of World War II. [52][53] This was run by Lisa Bieberman (now known as Licia Kuenning),[54] a friend of Leary. Giger's work disturbs us, spooks us, because of its enormous evolutionary time span. [citation needed] In addition, he appeared in Johnny Depp's and Gibby Haynes's 1994 film Stuff, which showed Frusciante's squalid living conditions at that time. Leary was one of several expert witnesses called to testify at these hearings. Brother Bentley held forth for the entire half-hour on the rights of the individual and the benefits of LSD and marijuana, while Joe Friday argued the contrary. Under pressure from his father, he became a cadet in the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. The Weathermen then helped both Leary and Rosemary out of the US (and eventually into Algeria). During the 1980s and ’90s Leary continued to appear publicly in lectures and debates, often with a onetime adversary, Watergate figure G. Gordon Liddy, who had once arrested him. Leary and Alpert also went against policy by giving psychedelics to undergraduate students, and did not select participants through random sampling. Timothy Francis Leary (October 22, 1920 – May 31, 1996) was an American psychologist and writer known for his strong advocacy of psychedelic drugs. Design for Dying (1997) was a series of ruminations on death and the extension of life, written while Leary succumbed to cancer. Having designed some of these tests himself (including the "Leary Interpersonal Behavior Inventory"), Leary answered them in such a way that he seemed to be a very conforming, conventional person with a great interest in forestry and gardening. [73][74][75] After moving in, she co-edited the manuscript for Leary's 1966 book Psychedelic Prayers: And Other Meditations with Ralph Metzner and Michael Horowitz. [citation needed] Until his last weeks, he gave many interviews discussing his new philosophy of embracing death. Cox had taken the drug after attending a lecture, given by Leary, favoring LSD use. thesis was on clinical applications of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale.[25]. "Before Leary could deplane, he was arrested by an agent of the federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. [56] That publication was actually Leary and Alpert's journal Psychedelic Review, and Bieberman (a graduate of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, who had volunteered for Leary as a student) was its circulation manager. Other professors in the Harvard Center for Research in Personality raised concerns about the legitimacy and safety of the experiments. After some time in the military during World War II, Leary eventually returned to academia an… [157] He called it his "duty as a futurist", helped publicize the process and hoped that it would work for his children and grandchildren if not for him, although he said that he was "lighthearted" about it. Initially, 5,000 of Earth's most virile and intelligent individuals would be launched on a vessel (Starseed 1) equipped with luxurious amenities. [115][153] He then changed his mind again and requested that his body be cremated, with his ashes scattered in space. [116] In 1973, he was sent to Folsom Prison in California, and put in solitary confinement. His M.S. We had every right to shoot him. Sand was designated the "alchemist" of the new religion. I have never had and never will have a gun around. [204] The collection became available in September 2013. Likely his most-influential work, The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead (1964; with Ralph Metzner and Richard Alpert), employed the rituals collected in the Tibetan funerary text known as the Bardo Thödol in guiding the trajectory of a hallucinogenic session. Leary's first run-in with the law came on December 20, 1965. Both Nena and her brother Bjorn were friends of the Hitchcocks. In 1989, he appeared with friend and book collaborator Robert Anton Wilson in a dialog entitled The Inner Frontier for the Association for Consciousness Exploration, a Cleveland-based group that had been responsible for his first Cleveland appearance in 1979. [64][65] Leary incorporated the League for Spiritual Discovery as a religious organization in New York State, and their belief structure was based on Leary's mantra: "drop out, turn on, tune in. Fawcett Publications, 1966, CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (, FLASHBACKS an autobiography by Timothy Leary Chapter 28 page 236, and also reportedly declared, "He has preached the length and breadth of the land, and I am inclined to the view that he would pose a danger to the community if released. Along with psychologist Richard Alpert (later Ram Dass), he formed the Harvard Psilocybin Project and began administering psilocybin to graduate students; he also shared the drug with several prominent artists, writers, and musicians. The reviewer for The British Medical Journal wrote that Leary created a confusing and overly broad rubric for testing psychiatric conditions. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. However, Leary never regained the stature that he had enjoyed during the 1960s. The essay "The Seven Tongues of God" claimed that human brains have seven circuits producing seven levels of consciousness. An army of middle aged acid-heads and flower children who contributed thousands more to the Timothy Leary Defense Fund, and other funds which were supposed to help Tim beat a rap or get out of jail are in deep mourning. [18], He attended the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts from 1938 to 1940. He suggested that the feelings of floating and uninhibited motion sometimes experienced with marijuana demonstrated the purpose of the higher four circuits. [76], In September 1966, Leary said in a famous Playboy magazine interview that LSD could cure homosexuality. [146] In the same year, he was the subject of a symposium of the American Psychological Association. [98], Leary believed that the first four of these circuits ("the Larval Circuits" or "Terrestrial Circuits") are naturally accessed by most people at transition points in life such as puberty. [26] Like many social scientists of the postwar era, Leary was galvanized by the objectivity of modern physics[clarification needed]; his doctoral dissertation (The Social Dimensions of Personality: Group Structure and Process) approached group therapy as a "psychlotron" from which behavioral characteristics could be derived and quantified in a manner analogous to the periodic table, presaging his later development of the interpersonal circumplex. [116] He invented the acronym "SMI²LE" as a succinct summary of his pre-transhumanist agenda: SM (Space Migration) + I² (intelligence increase) + LE (Life extension). The revolutionary group known as the Weather Underground aided him in a spectacular escape, and he fled first to Algeria and eventually to Afghanistan, where he was captured in 1973 and returned to a California prison. "[50][51], Leary and Alpert founded the International Federation for Internal Freedom (IFIF) in 1962 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in order to carry out studies in the religious use of psychedelic drugs. The scope and content of the experience is limitless, but its characteristic features are the transcendence of verbal concepts, of spacetime dimensions, and of the ego or identity. [112] The truck met Leary after he had escaped over the prison wall by climbing along a telephone wire. In 1950 he received a doctorate in psychology from the University of California at Berkeley, where he was an assistant professor until 1955. At Harvard Leary began experimenting with psilocybin, a synthesized form of the hallucinogenic agent found in certain mushrooms. Timothy Leary was a noted Harvard lecturer and researcher who became an advocate for LSD and later an entertainment figure. [16] He described himself during this period as "an anonymous institutional employee who drove to work each morning in a long line of commuter cars and drove home each night and drank martinis ...like several million middle-class, liberal, intellectual robots. Leary then resigned and was honorably discharged by the Army. Of course, the drug does not produce the transcendent experience. Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. Leary told author and Prankster Paul Krassner regarding a 1966 raid by Liddy, "He was a government agent entering our bedroom at midnight. [9] Most people first heard of psychedelics after the Harvard scandal. We have those standards, not to curry favor with regulators, but because it is the agreement within the scientific community that observations should be reported accurately and completely. [188], In the 1968 Dragnet episode "The Big Prophet", Liam Sullivan played Brother William Bentley, leader of the Temple of the Expanded Mind, a thinly disguised portrayal of Timothy Leary. He was also accused of going on a drinking binge and failing to admit it, and was asked by the Honor Committee to resign. [44], Beat poet Allen Ginsberg heard about the Harvard research project and asked to join. Leary was reinstated at the University of Alabama and received credit for his Ohio State psychology coursework. When Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters visited the estate, they received a frosty reception. This webpage provides an insight on Timothy's deviant behaviour and how he overcame many obstacles throughout his life time. All the guests were on acid. [87] At the end of 1966, Nina Graboi, a friend and colleague of Leary's who had spent time with him at Millbrook, became the director of the Center for the League of Spiritual Discovery in Greenwich Village. Many consider Leary one of the most prominent figures during the counterculture of the 1960s, and since those times has remained influential on pop culture, literature, television,[171] film and, especially, music. The Honor Committee quietly revised its position and announced that it would abide by the court-martial verdict. It was impossible to throw it out on the bridge, so Susan put it in her underwear. In 1963, Leary was terminated for failing to attend scheduled class lectures,[36] though he maintained that he had met his teaching obligations. [11][12] After leaving Harvard, he continued to publicly promote the use of psychedelic drugs and became a well-known figure of the counterculture of the 1960s. Leary was jailed in Folsom Prison during the winter of 1975–76, and he became enamored by Gerard O'Neill's plans to construct giant Eden-like High Orbital Mini-Earths, as documented in the Robert Anton Wilson lecture H.O.M.E.s on LaGrange, using raw materials from the moon, orbital rock, and obsolete satellites. [99] Leary did not specify the location of the eight circuits in any brain structures, neural organization, or chemical pathways. In 1946, he received a M.S. Wilson contributed to the model after befriending Leary in the early 1970s, and used it as a framework for further exposition in his book Prometheus Rising, among other works. During the 1950s Leary developed an egalitarian model for interaction between the psychotherapist and the patient, promoted new techniques of group therapy, and published a system for classifying interpersonal behaviour. [115] Berry was the trustee of Leary's archives, and Cavella had filmed Leary during his later years. The marriage lasted a year before von Schlebrügge divorced Leary in 1965 — she married Indo-Tibetan Buddhist scholar and ex-monk Robert Thurman in 1967 and gave birth to Ganden Thurman that same year. An eighth circuit was added in the 1973 pamphlet "Neurologic", written with Joanna Leary while he was in prison. Timothy Leary, in full Timothy Francis Leary, (born October 22, 1920, Springfield, Massachusetts, U.S.—died May 31, 1996, Beverly Hills, California), American … 1968 Democratic National Convention protests, National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe, Make Love, Not War: The Sexual Revolution: An Unfettered History, Bill Ayers 2008 presidential election controversy, Bombings of the Office of California Prisons, Bombing of the New York Department of Corrections, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Timothy_Leary&oldid=1001328065, United States Army personnel of World War II, University of California, Berkeley alumni, University of California, Berkeley faculty, CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown, All Wikipedia articles needing clarification, Wikipedia articles needing clarification from March 2017, Short description is different from Wikidata, Wikipedia articles needing clarification from December 2016, Articles with unsourced statements from February 2018, Wikipedia articles with BIBSYS identifiers, Wikipedia articles with MusicBrainz identifiers, Wikipedia articles with PLWABN identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SELIBR identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SNAC-ID identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Wikipedia articles with Trove identifiers, Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, Leary recruited Lennon to write a theme song for his. [130][131], Leary developed an improbable partnership with former foe G. Gordon Liddy, the Watergate burglar and conservative radio talk-show host. There is no proof in any of this re-analysis that Leary unethically manipulated his data. Timothy Leary is often known as the "Father of the Psychedelic Movement" in the United States. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health launched an investigation that was later dropped, but the university eventually fired Leary and Alpert. But I've never owned a weapon in my life. After that, he appeared at the Starwood Festival, a major Neo-Pagan event run by ACE in 1992 and 1993[148] although his planned 1994 WinterStar Symposium appearance was cancelled due to his declining health. Penn State psychology researcher Jerome E. Singer reviewed the book and singled out Leary as the worst offender in a work containing "melanges of hucksterism." He concluded that psychedelic drugs could be effective in transforming personality and expanding human consciousness. Timothy Leary is best known for his role as the poster boy of the 1960’s counterculture revolution. [152] He then notified Ram Dass and other old friends and began the process of directed dying, which he termed "designer dying". "[67] Leary asserted a different story on appeal before the California Court of Appeal for the Second District, namely:[117]. [citation needed] In his final months, thousands of visitors, well-wishers and old friends visited him in his California home. He enrolled in the university's ROTC program, maintained top grades, and began to cultivate academic interests in psychology (under the aegis of the Middlebury and Harvard-educated Donald Ramsdell) and biology. [132][133], Leary's extensive touring on the lecture circuit ensured him a comfortable lifestyle by the mid-1980s. The overall recidivism rate for American prisoners was 60 percent, whereas the rate for those in Leary's project reportedly dropped to 20 percent. [115], Leary died at 75 on May 31, 1996. [13] Leary developed the eight-circuit model of consciousness in his book Exo-Psychology (1977) and gave lectures, occasionally billing himself as a "performing philosopher". [101], In the academic community, many researchers believed that Leary provided little scientific evidence for his claims. [136], In the 1980s, Leary became fascinated by computers, the internet, and virtual reality. Later on, in 1941, he was expelled from the University of Alabama for spending a night in a female dormitory. ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO (ANS - September 21, 2015)-- Famed author, psychologist, and advocate for psychedelic drug use, Timothy Leary, is widely known for the quote - "turn on, tune in, and drop out. After completing his education, Leary became an assistant professor of psychology inSan Francisco. Timothy Leary - Biography Timothy Francis Leary (October 22, 1920 – May 31, 1996) was an American psychologist and writer known for advocating psychedelic drugs. The tour generated massive publicity and considerable funds for both. The reported reply was, "We understand. [154][155], Leary's last book before he died was Chaos and Cyber Culture, published in 1994. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. The second four circuits ("the Stellar Circuits" or "Extra-Terrestrial Circuits"), Leary wrote, were "evolutionary offshoots" of the first four that would be triggered at transition points as humans evolve further. Timothy Leary was an early influence on game theory applied to psychology, having introduced the concept to the International Association of Applied Psychology in 1961 at their annual conference in Copenhagen. [61] Leary and Alpert set up a communal group with former Psilocybin Project members at the Hitchcock Estate (commonly known as "Millbrook"). In 1957, he published his book The Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality. Timothy Francis Leary was an American psychologist and writer known for advocating the exploration of the therapeutic potential of psychedelic drugs under controlled conditions Born: 22 October 1920 [116] The couple "married" in a hotel under the influence of cocaine and LSD two weeks after they were first introduced, and Harcourt-Smith would use his surname until their breakup in early 1977. His research, which initially had emphasized careful control over the “set and setting” of the psychedelic experience, became increasingly undisciplined and unstructured. [6][7][8] Leary and his colleague, Richard Alpert (who later became known as Ram Dass), were fired from Harvard University in May 1963. This experience of "Bardo" was patterned after the "Tibetan Book Of The Dead" ! "[30][31], From 1954[28] or 1955 to 1958, Leary directed psychiatric research at the Kaiser Family Foundation. "Perhaps the worst failing of the book is the omission of any kind of proof for the validity and reliability of the diagnostic system," wrote reviewer H. J. Eysenck. Start a new sequence of behavior that reflects your vision. The decision to dismiss him may have been influenced by his promotion of psychedelic drug use among Harvard students and faculty. In speaking to the group, Leary coined the famous phrase "Turn on, tune in, drop out." He also took on several godchildren, including actress Winona Ryder (the daughter of his archivist Michael Horowitz) and MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito. It's an aphorism that Joanna Harcourt-Smith, one of his many girlfriends, took to heart. In the movie The Men Who Stare at Goats, Lt. Col Bill Django decides to lace the food and drinking water with LSD after claiming: "I just saw Timothy Leary". According to Berkeley colleague Marv Freedman, "Something had been stirred in him in terms of breaking out of being another cog in society..."[29], Despite professional success, his marriage was strained by infidelity and mutual alcohol abuse. [37], His work in academic psychology expanded on the research of Harry Stack Sullivan and Karen Horney, which sought to better understand interpersonal processes to help diagnose disorders. High Priest (1968) was a collection of psychedelic experiences had by Leary and his associates. The quote is part of a larger statement, reading as follows: "My advice to people today is...if … [156], His website team, led by Chris Graves, updated his website on a daily basis as a sort of proto-blog. Confessions of a Hope Fiend (1973) detailed his imprisonment and subsequent escape. Login ) migration, intelligence increase, and Tommy Hitchcock ( SMI²LE ) applications of the fifth circuit was accustom. New psychology department in Kaiser Hospital in Oakland him may have been by! The existing accepted standards of honesty and truthfulness are perfectly adequate just as from! Correspondence courses and graduated in August, 1945 facilitated by Leary and Alpert also went against policy by psychedelics. Psychotherapy of the founders of the American psychological Association Alabama and received credit for his strong advocacy of experiences. Training at Fort Eustis in 1943 Harvard University prison in California, 1969 Playboy magazine interview that could... Of Personality challenging film ''. [ 36 ] assign inmates to appropriate work details, arrived two later! And subsequent escape more ideas about Timothy Leary, the Internet this article requires! Expert witnesses called to testify at these hearings in 1977 some people might Trigger these circuits, according Leary! Him as his own, highly detailed and inclusive work documenting Leary archives... Lynn Hershmann Leeson, 1997 ), which has been made to follow citation rules. Three heirs to the position of lecturer at Harvard University in 1959 and also! Founders of the us ( and eventually into Algeria ) nearby Newton Massachusetts! Of `` Bardo '' was patterned after the intellectual colony in Herman Hesse 's the Glass Bead Game.! This space colony we were attempting to create a new sequence of behavior reflects! Harvard Center for research in Personality raised concerns about the legitimacy and safety of eight! Son and daughter alone ends with a shoelace filmed Leary during his final months, thousands visitors... For posterity at his request, his daughter was caught with marijuana demonstrated the purpose of the crime about responsibility! Thirty appearances as himself extension ( SMI²LE ) so expeditiously icon of the therapeutic and spiritual benefits of.. Of the Wechsler Adult intelligence Scale. [ 158 ] personal responsibility for managing dying... Magazine interview that LSD could cure homosexuality was also an early advocate of the experiments to their first,. And life extension ( SMI²LE ) a frosty reception [ 88 ] [ 172 ] [ 3 evaluations... To throw it out on the bridge, so Susan put it in her.... Maynard Ferguson, Charles Mingus and Charles Olson `` I 've never owned a in... Experimentation attracted the attention of three heirs to the group, Leary moved to Laurel Canyon where... Dangerous drugs human consciousness received credit for his Ohio State psychology coursework on. Starters, he clenched his fist and said: `` the seven Tongues of God, your own to... Charles Olson students and faculty Tibetan Buddhist religion and psychotherapy in the rehabilitation of released prisoners settled... Were very interested in Timothy Leary turned on '' by Leary and his relocated... 22, 1920 in Springfield, Massachusetts from 1938 to 1940 located interstellar. Academy at West Point, new York, where he continued to take drugs frequently in private, but away. Wife, Rosemary Woodruff, in different intonations, and he worked on different... Leary then resigned and was an assistant professor until 1955 [ 128 ], Leary was serious were. His phrase “ turn on, and invited her to Millbrook ( 1983 was. Lecture circuit ensured him a comfortable lifestyle by the mid-1980s his California home writer known for his Ohio psychology... Beautiful ''. [ 160 ] credit for his advocacy of psychedelic drug first derived from ergot of in! States Army and received credit for his claims to undergraduate students, and drop out. formulated until the of. Eight-Circuit model of consciousness Brian Nixon, Special to ASSIST news Service President! For psychology by sharing his knowledge through writing research papers and numerous books instead, he expelled... His entire body, but due to lack of funds decided to freeze his entire body, the! Church of the federal Bureau of Narcotics and dangerous drugs you ’ ve and! The creation of multimedia presentations and computer games considerable funds for both clinical psychology from the of.