The Life & Times of Tim... Leary

Hopefully someone gets it
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Timothy Leary was born in 1920 and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts in an Irish Catholic community. He first attended the College of the Holy Cross, but in 1940 attended West Point under familial pressure. Leary had many conflicts and moved around within the military and colleges for a few years, until ending up at Deshon Military Hospital in Pennsylvania. Here, Leary married his first wife Marianna and received a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology. Leary then attended Washington State University and studied under Lee Cronbach (Devonis, 2012). He received his M.A. with his thesis “Dimensions of Intelligence” (Barron, 1996), about intelligence testing in a clinical setting (Devonis, 2012). Leary was then admitted into UC Berkeley’s PhD program in Clinical Psychology in 1946, under the advisement of Hubert Coffey. In 1950, Leary received his PhD with a dissertation focusing on change in group therapy, “The Social Dimensions of Personality: Group Structure and Process”.

Undergoing transformation upon receiving PhD
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He remained at Berkeley as an instructor and took over as director of clinical research with the Kaiser Foundation in Oakland. At the Kaiser Foundation, Leary and his colleagues studied individual personality and social interaction, leading to a major publication in 1957, “The Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality.” At this point in his career, Leary was well respected and viewed favorably amongst academic and clinical psychologists (Devonis, 2012).

            
           Leary’s life demonstrates the tale of an academic and clinical psychologist, who transitioned to an explorer, psychonaut, philosopher, futurist, and countercultural icon. In the late 1950s, Leary encountered many experiences leading to a major life change. Leary was left the sole parent of two children when Marianna committed suicide in 1955. Leary had a brief, unsuccessful second marriage shortly after. Having no permanent academic ties, Leary left the country in 1958 and met David McClelland in Italy, leading to Leary’s teaching position at Harvard in 1960. The environment at Harvard was the beginning of Leary’s, and many other intellectuals’, interest in hallucinogenic drugs and their effects on consciousness. Leary first used psychedelics in 1960, taking psilocybin in Mexico. This seemed to spark change in Leary, and led him to interact with a “psychedelic club” at Harvard (Lattin, 2010). Leary worked prominently with other psychologists with similar interests at the time, such as Richard Alpert (now Ram Dass) and Ralph Metzner. As a psychologist, Leary largely embraced a humanist perspective, but traveled further outside the mainstream of the typical academic (Devoinis, 2012). This led to Leary’s contact with many individuals in the countercultural art and literature world, such as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. Leary continued studying psychedelics and conducted an experiment at Concord State Prison in which psychedelics were used as a therapeutic adjunct to reduce recidivism. Leary was then involved in the “Good Friday Experiment,” a project of his graduate student to study the effects of psychedelics on religious experience. In 1962, Leary formed the International Foundation for Internal Freedom, an organization designed to continue investigating consciousness-altering drugs (Russin & Weil, 1963). Leary and Alpert were both dismissed as Harvard faculty in 1963 (Devonis, 2012). Alpert was dismissed for administering psilocybin to an undergraduate student off-campus, and while the cause for Leary’s dismissal was stated as failure to attend his lectures, Leary claims that is untrue and many feel the real reason was his growing use and interest in psychedelics (Russin & Weil, 1963).

Alpert & Leary featured in Harvard Crimson's article on psyilocybin experiments
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            Following dismissal from Harvard, Leary began to deliver his message about consciousness expansion and cognitive freedom to a wider audience. From 1963 to 1966, Leary owned a communal living facility in Millbrook, NY and continued his experimentation with psychedelics, particularly LSD. Leary also traveled to India to engage with gurus and reinforced his role as a teacher and spiritual explorer. He remarried multiple times and eventually was arrested on a felony conviction of marijuana possession with his fourth wife in Mexico in 1965. The arrest continued fueling the split opinions of the controversial Leary. He acquired great recognition among the American youth, the countercultural and hippie movements, drug culture, and literary intellectuals (Devonis, 2012). On the other hand, the American Psychological Association (APA) dismissed Leary upon his felony conviction (Barron, 1996).

            
           Leary’s removal from academic society had no impact on his growing influence as a popular culture icon. However, Leary encountered more legal troubles and again was convicted of drug possession in 1970. Radical left-wing societies, such as the Weather Underground, helped Leary break out of prison and flee to Algeria and Switzerland. Leary was arrested when traveling to Afghanistan and returned to the USA (Barron, 1996; Devonis, 2012). It was around this time that Richard Nixon labeled Leary as “the most dangerous man in America” (Colker, 1996). 

Timothy "most dangerous man in America" Leary, as labeled by Richard "Not a Crook" Nixon (who sucks grapes)
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Leary was released from prison in 1976, and marketed himself as a pioneer and philosopher, rather than a scientist, who rejected mainstream society and politics. Leary gained interest and endorsed computer culture in the upcoming decades. He also continued to discuss drugs, neurological and cultural evolution, and intellectual free agency. Some major concepts that recurred throughout the career of Leary are questioning authority, consciousness expansion, self-management of the CNS, imprinting, and SMI²LE (Devoinis, 2012).

SMI²LE
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Leary made multiple attempts to rejoin the APA with the support of peers, but was always rejected (Barron, 1996). The APA’s Division of Personality Assessment and Research later honored Leary in a 1994 symposium “The Legacy of Timothy Leary” (Barron, 1996). Leary died in 1996, at age 75, of a natural death related to prostate cancer. He had often considered cryogenically freezing his body, but ultimately was cremated following death (Barron, 1996). He had left a manuscript, Design for Dying, which was published posthumously in 1997. Leary has written many books and scholarly articles, and was a founding member and co-editor The Psychedelic Review (Barron, 1996). Some of his major works include The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Neurologic, and Neuropolitics: The Sociobiology of Human Metamorphosis. Leary has also released or collaborated on multiple music albums, computer games, and films.

          The legacy of Timothy Leary remains today and will for many years to come. Leary is one of the most controversial moden figures in psychology and society. He was met with widespread negativity from many academics, politicians, police, and mainstream culture, but extensive acclaim from hippies, counterculturals, some non-academic intellectuals, and a few academic peers. Leary is largely left out of modern psychology and textbooks of history of psychology, despite some potentially useful contributions, as a researcher and philosopher, and a well-known reputation. Still, Leary’s works remain relevant, receiving both criticism (Doblin, 1991) and attempts at replication (Griffiths et al., 2006). Leary’s most famous quote, and an excellent characterization of his philosophy, is “turn on, tune in, drop out.”