We had every right to shoot him. Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Synopsis Born on October 22, 1920, in Springfield, Massachusetts, Timothy Leary forged a career as a noted psychology professor and researcher before becoming a major, highly controversial advocate of psychedelic drugs during the 1960s. In addition to teaching, Leary was affiliated with the Harvard Center for Research in Personality under McClelland. Of course, the drug does not produce the transcendent experience. [citation needed] He was noted for his strong views against the use of drugs which "dull the mind" such as heroin, morphine and (more than occasional) alcohol, and also for his trademark "Leary Biscuits" (a snack cracker with cheese and a small marijuana bud, briefly microwaved). 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. Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. [115][153] He then changed his mind again and requested that his body be cremated, with his ashes scattered in space. What … He uttered the phrase repeatedly, in different intonations, and died soon after. Timothy Francis Leary (October 22, 1920 – May 31, 1996) was an American psychologist and writer known for advocating psychedelic drugs. 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". He also produced and/or collaborated with others in the creation of multimedia presentations and computer games. His salary was terminated April 30, 1963.[36]. 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. A Manual Based on the Tibetan...". Timothy Leary is best known for his role as the poster boy of the 1960’s counterculture revolution. He refused and was "silenced" — that is, shunned, by fellow cadets. Updates? A Manual Based on the Tibetan..." - Timothy Leary", “Chemist Who Sought to Bring LSD to the World, Dies at 75", “Turn On, Tune In, Drop by the Archives: Timothy Leary at the N.Y.P.L. [citation needed] At his request, his sterile house was redecorated by the staff with an array of surreal ornamentation. [67][116] In 1972, President Richard Nixon's attorney general, John Mitchell, persuaded the Swiss government to imprison Leary, which it did for a month, but refused to extradite him to the United States. [16], Leary was born on October 22, 1920 in Springfield, Massachusetts, the only child[16] in an Irish Catholic household. [19] Almost 50 years later, he said that it was "the only fair trial I've had in a court of law".[20]. In late 1959 he started as a lecturer in clinical psychology at Harvard University at the behest of Frank Barron (a colleague from Berkeley) and David McClelland. "The saying morphed into a 1960's mantra. What does timothy leary mean? Most recently they have become available to anyone through the ingestion of psychedelic drugs such as LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, DMT, etc. Then he started going, 'Tune in, turn on, and drop out. This eighth-circuit idea was not exhaustively formulated until the publication of Exo-Psychology by Leary and Robert Anton Wilson's Cosmic Trigger in 1977. and the different stages of "Bardo" as taught in the Tibetan Buddhist religion ! Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). He was best known for having popularized the use of mind-altering drugs in the 1960s. In Mother Jones Magazine, 1997, Smith commented: First, I have to say that during the three years I was involved with that Harvard study, LSD was not only legal but respectable. In 1950 he received a doctorate in psychology from the University of California at Berkeley, where he was an assistant professor until 1955. 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. [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. [146] In the same year, he was the subject of a symposium of the American Psychological Association. The Weathermen then helped both Leary and Rosemary out of the US (and eventually into Algeria). Wilson's book Prometheus Rising was an in-depth, highly detailed and inclusive work documenting Leary's eight-circuit model of consciousness. He concluded that psychedelic drugs could be effective in transforming personality and expanding human consciousness. message" was encoded in human DNA. [204] The collection became available in September 2013. In their discussions, Manson was surprised and found it difficult to understand why Leary had given people LSD without trying to control them. The function of the fifth circuit was to accustom humans to life at a zero gravity environment. The new Ph.D. stayed on in the Bay Area as an assistant clinical professor of medical psychology at the University of California, San Francisco; concurrently, Leary co-founded Kaiser Hospital's psychology department in Oakland, California and maintained a private consultancy. Instead, he preached about space colonization and extension of the human lifespan. Timothy Leary also paved the way for the Young in America by proclaiming … It was impossible to throw it out on the bridge, so Susan put it in her underwear. Timothy Leary, in full Timothy Francis Leary, (born October 22, 1920, Springfield, Massachusetts, U.S.—died May 31, 1996, Beverly Hills, California), American … ", think for yourself and question authority, Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, Massachusetts Department of Public Health, California Court of Appeal for the Second District, Association for Consciousness Exploration, International Association of Applied Psychology, "Tanya Roberts, a Charlie's Angel and a Bond Girl, Is Dead at 65", "Harvard LSD Research Draws National Attention", "Timothy Leary, Pied Piper of Psychedelic 60s, Dies at 75", "Timothy Leary, Pied Piper Of Psychedelic 60's, Dies at 75", "Dr. Leary's Concord Prison Experiment: A 34 Year Follow-Up Study", "Reflections on the Concord Prison Project and the Follow-Up Study", "International Federation For Internal Freedom – Statement of Purpose", "Court Finds Lisa Bieberman Guilty Of Violations of Federal Drug Laws | News | The Harvard Crimson", "A Trip Down Memory Lane: LSD at Harvard", "Erowid Character Vaults: Lisa Bieberman Extended Biography", "The Crimson Takes Leary, Alpert to Task - News - The Harvard Crimson", “Tim Leary and Ovum - A Visit to Castalia with Ovum", “Transmissions from The Timothy Leary Papers: Evolution of the "Psychedelic" Show", "Rosemary W. Leary, 66; Ex-Wife of 1960s Psychedelic Guru", "Rosemary Woodruff Leary – Psychedelic Pioneer", "Legend of a Mind: Timothy Leary and LSD", "Smithsonian Folkways - The Psychedelic Experience: Readings from the Book "The Psychedelic Experience. [101], In the academic community, many researchers believed that Leary provided little scientific evidence for his claims. His death was videotaped for posterity at his request by Denis Berry and Joey Cavella, capturing his final words. [109], On January 21, 1970, Leary received a 10-year sentence for his 1968 offense, with a further 10 added later while in custody for a prior arrest in 1965, for a total of 20 years to be served consecutively. Timothy Leary, in full Timothy Francis Leary, (born October 22, 1920, Springfield, Massachusetts, U.S.—died May 31, 1996, Beverly Hills, California), American psychologist and author who was a leading advocate for the use of LSD and other psychoactive drugs. His phrase “turn on, tune in, drop out” became a popular counterculture slogan. [186], The movie Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), adapted from a 1971 novel of Hunter S. Thompson, portrays heavy psychedelic drug use and mentions Leary when the protagonist ponders the meaning of the acid wave of the 1960s:[187]. Turn On – find a sacrament which returns you to the temple of God, your own body. Corrections? Leary initially announced that he would freeze his entire body, but due to lack of funds decided to freeze his head only. [14], During the 1960s and 1970s, he was arrested often enough to see the inside of 36 prisons worldwide. [6][7][59] Leary and Alpert taught a class that was required for graduation and colleagues felt they were abusing their power by pressuring graduate students to take hallucinogens in the experiments. [46], The Concord Prison Experiment evaluated the application of psilocybin and psychotherapy in the rehabilitation of released prisoners. Cox had taken the drug after attending a lecture, given by Leary, favoring LSD use. [128], Leary was released from prison on April 21, 1976 by Governor Jerry Brown. 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." [192] He plays the character of "Sims", advisor and mentor to the protagonist Emmy Coer, a scientist who makes a breakthrough by communicating across time with the Victorian pioneer of computer programming Ada Lovelace. [78][79] Like most of the psychiatric field, he later decided that homosexuality was not an illness in need of a cure. 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. [76] The poems in the book were inspired by the Tao Te Ching, and meant to be used as an aid to LSD trips. According to Andrew Weil, Leary was fired for missing scheduled lectures, while Alpert was dismissed for allegedly giving psilocybin to an undergraduate in an off-campus apartment. He also took on several godchildren, including actress Winona Ryder (the daughter of his archivist Michael Horowitz) and MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito. Timothy Leary was a noted Harvard lecturer and researcher who became an advocate for LSD and later an entertainment figure. [47][48], The Concord conclusions were contested in a follow-up study on the basis of time differences monitoring the study group vs. the control group, and differences between subjects re-incarcerated for parole violations and those imprisoned for new crimes. [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. The tour generated massive publicity and considerable funds for both. Leary’s experiments were highly controversial, and he was dismissed from Harvard in 1963 along with Alpert. Timothy Leary (1920-1996) was a psychologist, author, lecturer, and cult figure. Timothy Francis Leary (October 22, 1920 – May 31, 1996) was an American psychologist and writer known for his strong advocacy of psychedelic drugs. 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. Confessions of a Hope Fiend (1973) detailed his imprisonment and subsequent escape. These concerns were printed in The Harvard Crimson leading the university to halt the experiments. No more of the speed that fueled that '60s. In June 2011, The New York Times reported that the New York Public Library had acquired Leary's personal archives, including papers, videotapes, photographs and other archival material from the Leary estate, including correspondence and documents relating to Allen Ginsberg, Aldous Huxley, William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Ken Kesey, Arthur Koestler, G. Gordon Liddy and other prominent cultural figures. A year later, he went to Mexico with a colleague to try mushroo… [52][53] This was run by Lisa Bieberman (now known as Licia Kuenning),[54] a friend of Leary. [76][77] Woodruff helped Leary prepare weekend multimedia workshops simulating the psychedelic experience, which were presented around the East Coast. [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. On May 19, 1969, The Supreme Court concurred with Leary in Leary v. United States, declared the Marihuana Tax Act unconstitutional, and overturned his 1965 conviction. In 1957, he published his book The Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality. He suggested that the feelings of floating and uninhibited motion sometimes experienced with marijuana demonstrated the purpose of the higher four circuits. He was a psychologist and writer whose main research topics were mind-altering substances and their effects on the human mind. In 1959, Learymanaged to become a lecturer at Harvard University. 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. By Brian Nixon, Special to ASSIST News Service. They toured the lecture circuit in 1982 as ex-cons debating a range of issues, including gay rights, abortion, welfare, and the environment. [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. [116] Leary received five years for his prison escape, added to his original 10-year sentence. By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica. The Millbrook estate was later described by Luc Sante of The New York Times as: the headquarters of Leary and gang for the better part of five years, a period filled with endless parties, epiphanies and breakdowns, emotional dramas of all sizes, and numerous raids and arrests, many of them on flimsy charges concocted by the local assistant district attorney, G. 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