The First Wave: Psychedelic Therapy in the Netherlands, 1943-1988

Description

Psychoactive drugs, and psychedelic drugs in particular, are more than only medicines or recreational substances. They are also focus points of contestation in public and scientific domains. This most emphatically characterises the ‘first wave’ of psychedelic therapty. This paper will focus on the dynamics of contestation and its consequence for acceptance and perception of psychedelic therapy in the Netherlands, starting with the discovery of LSD and its introduction in Dutch psychiatric clinics in the 1950s by Kees van Rhijn and others. The paper will discuss the reception of psychedelic therapy among health care professionals, patients, and the public; the spill-over of psychedelics from psychiatry into the public domain and the consequences of the rise of the Sixties counter culture for the acceptance of psychedelic therapy:; the continuing work in this field by psychiatrists such as Jan Bastiaans; and the reasons for the disappearance of psychedelic therapy in psychiatry by 1990.

Period	6 Feb 2024
Event title	Recreational drugs as therapy: A symposium organised by the 138th board of the study association L.P.S.V. „Aesculapius”
Event type	Seminar
Location	Leiden, NetherlandsShow on map
Degree of Recognition	Local