Set and setting: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 05:58, 25 February 2021

Revision as of 16:14, 10 May 2021

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{{quote|text=Of course, the [[Psychedelics, dissociatives and deliriants|drug]] dose does not produce the [[transcendence (philosophy)|transcendent]] experience. It merely acts as a [[chemical]] key — it opens the mind, frees the [[Central nervous system|nervous system]] of its ordinary patterns and structures. The nature of the experience depends almost entirely on set and setting. Set denotes the preparation of the individual, including his personality structure and his mood at the time. Setting is physical — the weather, the room's atmosphere; social — feelings of persons present towards one another; and cultural — prevailing views as to what is real. It is for this reason that manuals or guide-books are necessary. Their purpose is to enable a person to understand the new realities of the expanded [[consciousness]], to serve as road maps for new interior territories which modern science has made accessible.|sign=[[Timothy Leary]]|source=''[[The Psychedelic Experience|The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead]]''}}

Due to the importance of setting in early [[psychedelic therapy]], Hubbard introduced a "treatment space decorated to feel more like a home than a hospital", which came to be known as a "Hubbard Room".<ref>{{cite book |title=How to Change Your Mind |first=Michael |last=Pollan |authorlink=Michael Pollan |isbn=9780525558941 |page=164 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3vk5DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA164 |quote=But though this mode of therapy would become closely identified with Osmond and Hoffer, they themselves credited someone else for critical elements of its design, a man of considerable mystery with no formal training as a scientist or therapist: Al Hubbard. A treatment space decorated to feel more like a home than a hospital came to be known as a Hubbard Room, and at least one early psychedelic researcher told me that this whole therapeutic regime, which is now the norm, should by all rights be known as "the Hubbard method." Yet Al Hubbard, a.k.a. "Captain Trips" and "the Johnny Appleseed of LSD," is not the kind of intellectual forebear anyone doing serious psychedelic science today is eager to acknowledge, much less celebrate.}}</ref>

In 1966, Timothy Leary conducted a series of experiments with [[dimethyltryptamine]] (DMT) with controlled set and setting. The aim was to see whether DMT, which had then been mostly thought of as a terror-inducing drug, could produce pleasant experiences under a supportive set and setting. It was found that it could.{{ref|Leary1966}}