Tag Archives: psychopharmacology

July 17th BPS/UCL Talk “Visual Illusions, Mescaline and Psychopharmacology: Heinrich Klüver’s Form Constants”

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The British Psychological Society‘s History of Psychology Centre, in conjunction with UCL’s Centre for the History of the Psychological Disciplines, has announced the next talk in its summer seminar series. On Monday July 17th Jelena Martinovic will be presenting “Visual Illusions, Mescaline and Psychopharmacology: Heinrich Klüver’s Form Constants.” Full details below.

Monday 17th July

Dr Jelena Martinovic (Visiting Research Fellow, Institute of Advanced Studies, UCL)

‘Visual Illusions, Mescaline and Psychopharmacology: Heinrich Klüver’s Form Constants’

Mescaline, the chemical compound of peyote, attracted the interest of Western scientists since the late 19th century, among them Heinrich Klu?ver (1897–1967). A German emigre?, Klu?ver introduced gestalt psychology and the pharmacological tradition of experimenting with psychoactive drugs to the United States in the 1920s. Klu?ver became interested in mescaline for its effects on visual perception and claimed that the substance helps to articulate mechanisms of hallucination. In my talk, I will take up Klu?ver’s brain scientific quest to catalogue visual illusions to question the extent to which his work can elucidate the interrelations of psychopharmacology and the human sciences in the first half of the 20th century. More generally, I will explore how the exemplary focus on visuality, which characterises mescaline research in its constituting years, offers a framework to understand the dissemination of expressive forms in fields such as art therapy, psychopathology and creativity research.

Tickets/registration: https://visual illusions.eventbrite.co.uk

Location:
SELCS Common Room (G24)
Foster Court
Malet Place
University College London

Time: 18:00-19:30

Osiris: History of Science and the Emotions

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The 2016 edition of Osiris, the annual thematic journal of the History of Science Society, is now available. This year’s volume explores the “History of Science and the Emotions.” A number of articles may be of interest to AHP readers, including pieces on mother love and mental illness, panic disorder and psychopharmacological, and Emil Kraepelin’s work on affective disorders. The full titles, authors, and abstracts are provided below.

 

INTRODUCTION

“An Introduction to History of Science and the Emotions,” by Otniel E. Dror, Bettina Hitzer, Anja Laukötter, Pilar León-Sanz. The abstract reads,

This essay introduces our call for an intertwined history-of-emotions/history-of-science perspective. We argue that the history of science can greatly extend the history of emotions by proffering science qua science as a new resource for the study of emotions. We present and read science, in its multiple diversities and locations, and in its variegated activities, products, theories, and emotions, as constitutive of the norms, experiences, expressions, and regimes of emotions. Reciprocally, we call for a new reading of science in terms of emotions as an analytical category. Assuming emotions are intelligible and culturally learned, we extend the notion of emotion to include a nonintentional and noncausal “emotional style,” which is inscribed into (and can reciprocally be generated by) technologies, disease entities, laboratory models, and scientific texts. Ultimately, we argue that emotional styles interrelate with broader emotional cultures and thus can contribute to and/or challenge grand historical narratives.

SITUATING EMOTIONS
“Medieval Sciences of Emotions during the Eleventh to Thirteenth Centuries: An Intellectual History,” by Damien Boquet, Piroska Nagy. The abstract reads, Continue reading Osiris: History of Science and the Emotions →

CfP for Workshop: Pharmacopoeias in the Early Modern World

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17-1-royal-pharmacopoeia-largeJoseph Gabriel (out of University of Wisconsin) is hosting a workshop in Madison April 1st and 2nd, 2016 titled Organizing the World of Healing Goods: Materia Medica, Pharmacopeias, and the Codification of Therapeutic Knowledge in the Early Modern World for which he has issued a general call for papers.

 

According to his post on H-Sci-Med-Tech:

  • Authors of accepted proposals will be invited to present pre-circulated drafts of their papers
  • They expect that the workshop will lead to the publication of an edited volume on the topic by a university press.
  • The organizers encourage submissions by scholars both in the United States and in other parts of the world, as well as submissions from independent scholars, graduate students, and other groups underrepresented in academic and scholarly publishing.
  • A small honorarium will be provided to each participant upon receipt of the final version of accepted papers.
  • Funding for travel to Madison and lodging will be available to participants who do not have access to institutional support.
  • Submission deadline is September 1 2015. Please submit a short proposal (no more than two pages) and a curriculum vitae to Matthew Crawford at mcrawf11@kent.edu and Joe Gabriel at joseph.gabriel@wisc.edu

The seminar description is as follows:  Continue reading CfP for Workshop: Pharmacopoeias in the Early Modern World →

Somatosphere Review: Nicolas Langlitz’s Neuropsychedelia

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Head on over to the blog Somatosphere for a review of Nicolas Langlitz’s recent book, Neuropsychedelia: The Revival of Hallucinogen Research Since the Decade of the Brain. The volume is described on the publisher’s website as an examination of

the revival of psychedelic science since the “Decade of the Brain.” After the breakdown of this previously prospering area of psychopharmacology, and in the wake of clashes between counterculture and establishment in the late 1960s, a new generation of hallucinogen researchers used the hype around the neurosciences in the 1990s to bring psychedelics back into the mainstream of science and society. This book is based on anthropological fieldwork and philosophical reflections on life and work in two laboratories that have played key roles in this development: a human lab in Switzerland and an animal lab in California. It sheds light on the central transnational axis of the resurgence connecting American psychedelic culture with the home country of LSD. In the borderland of science and religion, Neuropsychedelia explores the tensions between the use of hallucinogens to model psychoses and to evoke spiritual experiences in laboratory settings. Its protagonists, including the anthropologist himself, struggle to find a place for the mystical under conditions of late-modern materialism.