Observations from 4000 LSD Sessions

Read an interview to psychiatrist, therapist, pioneer psychedelic researcher and prolific author Stanislav Grof excerpted from  Dr. Richard Louis Miller's Psychedelic Medicine: The Healing Powers of LSD, MDMA, Psilocybin and Ayahuasca, published by Inner Traditions.

Abandoning Freudian Therapy for Cartooning

Dr. Richard Louis Miller, MA, PhD: You started out as a psychiatrist doing Freudian work. You were initially deeply interested in psychoanalysis, but then something happened that brought you into the field of research with LSD.

Stanislav Grof, MD, PhD (SG): I was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, and originally wanted to go into animated movies. Just before I made the final commitment, I read Freud’s Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis and I got very excited. That week I decided not to work in animated movies but to study medicine and to become a psychiatrist. As I was getting deeper into psychoanalysis I became disappointed—at first not with the theory but with the practice of psychoanalysis: how long it takes, how much money it costs, and how much energy it consumes. And the results were not exactly breathtaking. I started nostalgically returning in my mind to animated movies, feeling that it would have been a better career.

Then the psychiatric department I was working in received a large supply of LSD-25 from the pharmaceutical company Sandoz in Basel, Switzerland...

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Stanislav Grog