Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind - Paperback

$20.00

Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind - Paperback

Name: Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind - Paperback
Brand: BooksCloud
SKU: 9780300276091
Price: 20.00 USD
Availability: InStock

by Mike Jay

$20.00

Book Overview

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by Mike Jay (Author)

"Fascinating."--Thomas W. Hodgkinson, The Guardian

"Richly detailed and frequently illuminating."--Rhys Blakely, Times (UK)

"Excellent."--Clare Bucknell, New Yorker

A New Yorker Best of the Week Pick

A provocative and original history of the scientists and writers, artists and philosophers who took drugs to explore the hidden regions of the mind

Until the twentieth century, scientists investigating the effects of drugs on the mind did so by experimenting on themselves. Vivid descriptions of drug experiences sparked insights across the mind sciences, pharmacology, medicine, and philosophy. Accounts in journals and literary fiction inspired a fascinated public to make their own experiments--in scientific demonstrations, on exotic travels, at literary salons, and in occult rituals.

But after 1900 drugs were increasingly viewed as a social problem, and the long tradition of self-experimentation began to disappear.

From Sigmund Freud's experiments with cocaine to William James's epiphany on nitrous oxide, Mike Jay brilliantly recovers a lost intellectual tradition of drug-taking that fed the birth of psychology, the discovery of the unconscious, and the emergence of modernism. Today, as we embrace novel cognitive enhancers and psychedelics, the experiments of the original psychonauts reveal the deep influence of mind-altering drugs on Western science, philosophy, and culture.

Author Biography

Mike Jay has written extensively on scientific and medical history and contributes regularly to the London Review of Books and the Wall Street Journal. His previous books on the history of drugs include Mescaline, High Society, and The Atmosphere of Heaven.

Number of Pages: 384

Dimensions: 1.3 x 7.5 x 4.9 IN

Illustrated: Yes

Publication Date: April 30, 2024

ISBN	9780300276091
Author	Mike Jay
Publisher	Yale University Press
Genre	Biography, History, and Self-help & personal development
Format	Paperback
Published	April 2024
Language	ENG- English
Pages	384
Weight	1.0 lb
Target Audience	Adults
Print Size	Standard Print