http://www.erowid.org/li.../review/review.php?p=300

LSD: The Highway to Mental Health
by Milan Hausner with Erna Segal

Publisher:ASC Books
Year:2009
ISBN:978-0-9797838-0-7
Categories: Book Reviews
Reviewed by Thomas B. Roberts, Ph.D., 12/21/2009

By Thomas B. Roberts PhD:

There was a big gap in my knowledge about psychedelic psychotherapy that I didn’t even know existed until I ran across Hausner’s LSD: The Highway to Mental Health. I had hardly considered: What happened to LSD psychotherapy in Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic) after Stan Grof came to the United States? Grof wasn’t the only researcher from there. What about the others? Highway helps fill in that gap.

The book describes the work of Dr. Milan Hausner at his clinic in Sadská, near Prague, where as Medical Director of the psychiatric clinic he supervised over 3,000 therapeutic LSD sessions from 1954 to 1980. As Grof says on a back cover blurb, “He has amassed information that is invaluable for the theory and practice of psychotherapy.”

Hausner attributes emotional disorders to the patients’ lack of understanding of hidden thought processes which occur from a combination of dysfunctional social learning processes and faulty parenting. His method of bringing these thought processes to consciousness is a system he calls Pathogenic Confrontation Model within a system of Multigroup Community Therapy. In order to reset patients’ irrational attachments to faulty ideas and emotions, psychotherapy confronts patients’ own past illness-producing experiences and replaces their dysfunctional reactions during the more congenial atmosphere of the therapeutic relationship between patient and therapist.

This is therapy in the psycholytic style, with many small to medium dose sessions, rather than the unitive consciousness, mystical experience approach. In his clinic, “dosages of LSD ranging from 50 to 400 [micrograms] were administered in up to 60, sometimes 90, sessions on an inpatient—and weekend—basis in conjunction with psychotherapy.” While 400 micrograms is far above the usual psycholytic dose, apparently such doses were the exception.

Part of the unlearning of faulty patterns of behavior took place in Multigroup Community Therapy. Patients and staff held daily meetings and the patients took a role in running the hospital. This social learning process helped patients build reality-based interpersonal skills and practice them with others.

After ten chapters of theory and description of Hausner’s model, Highway presents eleven chapters of case histories and back-matter. Enriched with excerpts from transcripts of sessions, these chapters focus on depression, schizophrenia, double bind, archetypes, sexuality, and other presenting problems.

As well as filling in the gap about treatment that continued in Czechoslovakia, LSD: The Highway to Mental Health presents its psycholytic methods of treating inpatients, a way to use group processes, and social learning as adjuncts on the way to mental health. A worthy addition to university, medical school, and city libraries, this book deserves a place in the library of anyone doing LSD-based therapy or investigating it, or on the shelves of psychedelic book collectors, historians of the 60s, and historians of psychotherapy.



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What do you guys think about all this?

LSD is a very valuable tool for fixing mental problems that are specifically behavior oriented. SWIM has used it for this very purpose on himself after learning about this utility from Timothy Leary. When used right, LSD can aid you in self development. It can be used to rid you of learned behavioral problems. It really does work, and works very well. But you need to know how to use it for this purpose. Just taking LSD isn't going to fix you. You need to know the proper techniques that go along with LSD therapy in order to make good use of it.

What kind of techniques we talking about here? Im very intersted.

Seems like lots of the current researchers into psychadelica are looking at its potential to treat addictive personalites. Seeing that Hausner, who died in 2000, conducted these experiments in Czechoslovakia while it was in the Soviet Bloc, you wonder if the military had been involved ... but here is the joke (as reported in MAPS Spring/Summer 2007 issue):

"The Czech military was also
interested in the drug. In 1967, doctors
tested the abilities of officers to plan a
response to a military attack under LSD -
they sat around laughing instead - in case
it was used as a weapon by the United
States."

A hilarious film of this experiment is on
YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iualITdxXBk Notice the guy on the left sneaking seconds! Bugs on your gas mask?

Looks like Hausner's methods had good results with alcoholism. Let's hope that the current research into tryptamine therapy takes this to the next level.

SWIM developed his techniques with LSD from years of practicing. He new right away it was a mind tool the first time he took it and felt it could make him think better and solve his inner turmoils. He used it in this manner ever since. He doesn't know the techniques Leary or any LSD therapist used, but he has learned how his own mind works from his experience. It is a very amazing and powerful tool, if one knows how to navigate the mind space..