Leary, the son of a U. In he received a doctorate in psychology from the University of California at Berkeley, where he was an assistant professor until During the s Leary developed an egalitarian model for interaction between the psychotherapist and the patient, promoted new techniques of group therapy , and published a system for classifying interpersonal behaviour. He acquired a reputation as a promising young scholar and was appointed to the position of lecturer at Harvard University in At Harvard Leary began experimenting with psilocybin , a synthesized form of the hallucinogenic agent found in certain mushrooms.
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Who Was Timothy Leary?
Timothy Leary, who effectively introduced many Americans to the psychedelic 's with the relentlessly quoted phrase, "turn on, tune in, drop out," died yesterday at his house in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was However indelible his connection with another era, Mr. Leary was very much a man of the moment, and made his death a final act of performance art by having video cameras record it for possible broadcast on the Internet. He had planned a celebration, and Web sites had collected Leary memorabilia -- texts of his books and lectures, tributes from friends, a listing of his daily drug intake, legal and illegal -- from the time he was told last year that he had prostate cancer. Carol Rosin, a friend who was at Mr. Leary's bedside, said his last words were: "Why not? Why not?
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Timothy Leary forged a career as a noted psychology professor and researcher before becoming a major, highly controversial advocate of psychedelic drugs during the s. He was imprisoned on marijuana charges, and escaped only to be caught. He later worked in entertainment and cybernetics and published many books.
The archives of the one-time Harvard psychologist who became an evangelist for the mind-expanding potential of hallucinogenic drugs in the s have found a new home at the New York Public Library, which recently threw a party to celebrate their release. I was born too late to witness Leary's transition from scientist to counterculture celebrity, and I hoped the archives might offer a little hint of what it was like to be there. So I got myself invited to the opening in hopes of being enlightened. By Leary standards the party was pretty tame -- people sipped wine, a man handed out peacock feathers, a flatscreen in the corner looped strange video games Leary helped develop late in life he died in
