The Acid Diaries (Christopher Gray) / quote 3 of 125
Psycholytic versus psychedelic therapy
Dosage was finally established around the mid-1950s. One hundred micrograms was low, 200 was medium, 300 and above, high. And the two major schools of LSD psychotherapy that evolved were defined primarily by the dose range they employed. The first school used relatively low doses for session after session, or “serially,” as it was called, an approach that became known as psycholytic therapy. The second was based on the concept of the “single overwhelming dose,” sessions never being given more than twice or at most three times, the purpose of which was to shock patients out of their obsessional behavior and give them a glimpse of transcendent reality. Sacred music, religious statues, or other imagery could form part of the setting in this second approach—as could natural beauty—which became known technically as psychedelic therapy. The first was the dominant school in Europe, the second in the United States. By the early 1960s, well over a thousand research papers and several dozen books had been written on the subject; and lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD, as it was already becoming known, seemed set fair to become the wonder drug of psychotherapy for the second half of the twentieth century.