Language, psychedelic experience

Like psychedelic experience, human language processes... 

Trouton and Eysenck (1961) have pointed out that psychedelic experience is influenced not only by factors related to drug administration, but by personality, physiology, set, and setting. In their account, they also mention "suggestion" and "reinforcement of responses by the experimenter," which suggests the importance of language in determining how a subject reacts. 

Siva Sankar, 1956). As with the other types of language, the alteration of expressive language under LSD can take a variety of forms, depending on how it happens to mesh with other aspects of the psychedelic experience. 

Green have stated, "... the communication of dream material perhaps most strikingly illustrates the weakness of the tool of language." Much the same could be said of psychedelic experience at the sensory level this may be another reason why speech often is reduced during a subject s initial LSD experiences. 

Written language attempts to convey meaning through printed symbols. Although S. Weir Mitchell (1896), one of the first to write a description of a psychedelic experience,... 

The Effects of Psychedelic Experience on Language Functioning", Stanley Krippner, in Psychedelics, Aaronson and Osmond, Doubleday Company 1970. (back)... 

Some of the researchers who have experimented with synthesized mescaline, LSD, or psilocybin have remarked upon the similarity between drug-induced and spontaneous mystical experiences because of the frequency with which some of their subjects have used mystical and religious language to describe their experiences. These data interested the author in a careful examination and evaluation of such claims. An empirical study, designed to investigate in a systematic and scientific way the similarities and differences between experiences described by mystics and those facilitated by psychedelic drugs, was undertaken (Pahnke, 1966, 1967). First, a phenomeno-... 

Blum has maintained that learning the LSD language and vocalizing the philosophy of the psychedelic subculture are steps in the commitment of an individual to an identifiable group. Language, in this instance, becomes a device to provide structure and to create a community of experience among persons who have had LSD. Furthermore, whatever one expects from the psychedelics on the basis of prior information... 

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