ECU Libraries Catalog

Psychonauts : drugs and the making of the modern mind / Mike Jay.

Author/creator Jay, Mike, 1959 December 14- author.
Other author/creatorYale University Press, publisher.
Format Book and Print
Publication Info New Haven ; London : Yale University Press, [2023]
Copyright Notice ©2023
Descriptionx, 359 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Subject(s)
Contents Prologue: Before Drugs -- Part I The New Accelerator: Drugs And Mental Enhancement -- 1 The Elixir Of Life -- 2 Prosthetic Gods -- Part II Beyond The Veil: Drugs And The Limits Of Consciousness -- 3 A World Of Pure Experience -- 4 The Unseen Region -- Part III Saturnalia Of The Senses: Drugs And The Creative Imagination -- 5 Tales Of The Hashish Eaters -- 6 Extasia, Fantasia And Illuminati -- Part IV Lost And Found -- 7 A Sin, A Crime, A Vice Or A Disease? -- 8 Twice-Born -- Epilogue: After Drugs -- Endnotes -- Bibliography -- Acknowledgments -- Index
Abstract "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." -- Dust jacket.
Bibliography noteIncludes bibliographical references (pages 335-347) and index.
Issued in other formebook version : 9780300271515
ISBN9780300257946 (hardcover)
ISBN0300257945 (hardcover)
ISBNePub ebook

Available Items

Library Location Call Number Status Item Actions
Joyner General Stacks BF1045 .A48 J39 2023 Item has been checked out - Due: 05/03/2024 Want This?