Man links across Time through Culture. Plants = Chemical-Binding, Animals = Space-Binding. Written in 1924.

Publisher: Institute of General Semantics
Paperback: 85 pages

An exposition of the work of Dr. Patrick Flanagan, one of the most incredible scientists since Tesla. His inventions include electronic telepathy, the discovery of subtle energy in geometrics, holographic sound projection, speed learning, English communication with U.S. Navy dolphins, and new breakthroughs in electromedicine. AK

Publisher: Earthpulse
Paperback: 180 pages

“A psychiatrist's devastating critique of how the 'new psychiatry' is damaging millions of people. Biopsychiatry, says Dr. Breggin, is the dominant ideology of the medical-pharmaceutical establishment which frequently announces 'breakthroughs in brain chemistry' to justify the use of drugs, electroshock, involuntary hospitalization and other harsh treatments.”

Publisher: St. Martin's
Paperback: 464 pages

A pragmatic guide to the application of hypnosis to treat phobias, control pain and anxiety, eliminate smoking and eating disorders, and deal with miscellaneous behavior disorders such as hair-pulling and stuttering from a psychiatric perspective. Included are specific dialogs and techniques for hypnotic induction. The authors divide people into the Nietzsche-inspired categories of Dionysians, Apollonians, and Odysseans according to their level of hypnotic suggestibility and personality profiles. Also discusses trance logic, spontaneous trance, amnesia, and abreaction. SS

Publisher: American Psychiatric
Paperback: 382 pages
Illustrated

McKenna and Co. study psilocybin- and DMT- containing plants and their way of introducing the mind to the little machine elves of consciousness. A botanical trek through a South American river basin to search out a slowly dying breed: mystical Indians and shamans who are the keepers of the knowledge of yage and the strongest, most taboo version of DMT containing the tree resin known as oo-koo-hé. They try to find its relation to human consciousness and language and along the way discover many reasons to preserve the planet. Many personal sorting-outs between brothers and friends are complicated by mushroom consumption and DMT “study.” Mixing the two drugs psilocybin and DMT apparently has some ESP-type effects on the human mind. But this all proves to be just the tip of the iceberg—the DMT experience is as much as one mind can take without the “categories of consciousness being permanently re-written.” When asked if it is a dangerous drug, “the proper answer is that it is only dangerous if you feel threatened by the possibility of death by astonishment.” For great is the amazement that comes from dissolving the boundaries between our world and another dimension! DW

Publisher: HarperCollins
Paperback: 256 pages

Written in short story style, as a collection of childhood memories, traumatic episodes and remembrances, these stories illustrate how we forget childhood trauma, and how and why these memories return. They also illustrate exactly what goes wrong with memory and what parts of memory sometimes turn false. (One story is about an entirely false remembrance.) Well documented, each short story is true, taken mostly from personal interviews by the author. A balanced and valuable work useful for judges, court systems, the psychiatric profession, and persons who have experienced lost and found memories themselves. CF

Publisher: Basic
Paperback: 282 pages

“This book was born as a treatise on what is often termed schizophrenic speech, but, increasingly, it has become clear that such speech can also occur in manics and other patients… The book shows what are the features of schizophrenic speech, how they deviate from normal speech, and what accounts for our feeling that it is, after all, crazy talk.”

Publisher: C.C. Thomas
Paperback: 342 pages

First modern book to treat drugs seriously as part of the religious impulse: conversion, repentance, mysticism, saintliness. Lucid and unorthodox look at spirituality at the turn of the century.

Publisher: Penguin
Paperback: 576 pages

Lectures delivered by Gurdjieff from 1917 to 1933. “Our mind, our thinking, has nothing in common with us, with our essence—no connection, no dependence. Our mind lives by itself and our essence lives by itself. When we say 'to separate oneself from oneself' it means that the mind should stand apart from the essence.”

Publisher: Viking
Paperback: 276 pages

As a research pharmacologist, Ronald K. Siegel took the same drugs as his subjects in an effort to truly understand their experiences. In this study of the waking nightmare of paranoia, Siegel seeks to identify with patients who are “hallucinating without the use of artificial intoxicants.” The limbic system is the “neurological hideaway of the paranoia demon” but the psychological and biological triggers that engender paranoia are complex. Siegel pursues these origins like a sometimes terrified and often gleeful private eye; he emerges with mesmerizing stories which suggest a compassionate, scientifically rigorous Clive Barker. In many of the most horrifying accounts, cocaine is the ingredient which turns a bad situation into a tragic one:
• A Christmas shipment of pure Bolivian rock cocaine results in a massive “bug invasion.” Siegel sees numerous subjects covered with large, gummy lesions where they tried to dig the hallucinated creatures out of their bodies. One coke fiend shows up at his home with vials labelled “H” and “P” for “hands” and “penis”—the sites from which he has excavated the “bugs” in a sleepless three-day blitz with the help of his old high school dissecting kit and a stereo microscope.
• A beautiful, socially isolated waitress/ballet dancer interprets the placement of silverware by her love object, a gay waiter, as messages of desire. Her own desire, frustration, and paranoid obsession mount. Finally, she choreographs a dance for him which, in a twisted take on the romantic ballet Giselle, ends in murder.
• A father of five is left unemployed, humiliated and depressed by a debilitating shipyard accident followed by a false arrest. His discovery of cocaine leads to a three-year war against a spectral invasion of bugs, worms, snakes and midgets, which he records via an elaborate system of video cameras and microphones located throughout his house. His arsenal includes several propane torches, one converted into a flamethrower and dubbed “Mr. Discipline,” a term probably used by his sadistic father. MH

Publisher: Touchstone
Paperback: 310 pages