Altered States of Consciousness: Interpreting the Effects of Psychedelics

Speaker(s): Zoë Dubus
Duration: 33 min

In the West, the psychedelic experience is often described as impossible to put into words. Yet for more than a century, scientists, artists, and psychonauts have sought to articulate these extraordinary states of consciousness. This presentation offers an overview of those efforts and their relevance today.

Zoë Dubus is a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow in the History of Medicine in the College of Arts and Science, Department of History, at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada. Her research revisits the pioneering work of women therapists who developed innovative approaches to LSD-assisted psychotherapy between the 1950s and 1970s before their contributions were largely erased from the historical record. The author of numerous publications, she studies the evolution of medical practices and public health policies related to psychotropic substances from the nineteenth century to the present day. Her work explores how physicians have alternately understood psychotropics as groundbreaking medicines and as toxic substances.

Science fiction

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