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119.
Americans and Mushrooms in a Naturalistic Environment: A Preliminary Report.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University (Center for Research in Personality), 1962. 10pp. mimeograph in aniline purple, stapled at top corner. The first (and only) printing. Probably no more than 100 copies produced for the authors’ distribution.
The earliest paper on the research conducted by the Harvard Psilocybin Project, providing a summary of the mushroom trips of 175 subjects (127 men, 48 women): “The majority of our volunteer subjects report pleasant, educational, and even life-changing experiences.”
Leary first met George Litwin in August 1960, on the first day of the fall semester, at Harvard’s Center for Personality Research, when Litwin told him about the mescaline experiences he had recently performed on himself and others.
Ralph Metzner joined Leary’s circle of graduate students sometime around March 1961 after asking if he could collaborate in the experiment to give psychedelic mushrooms to prisoners as part of their psychological rehabilitation (the Concord Prison Project).
Two small black ink smudges and two small holograph amendments in an unknown hand to page 3. Near Fine. Very scarce.
