LSD therapy in Dutch psychiatry: changing socio-political settings and medical sets.

LSD and similar hallucinogenic drugs have at present acquired a cultural connotation as dangerous drugs that can lead to mental disorders and anti-social behaviour.' At one time, however, these drugs showed promise for medical use in psychotherapy and neuropharmacology, and in research into psychosis. Use of LSD was enthusiastically advocated by numerous psychiatrists from diverse cultural backgrounds and socio-political contexts ranging across the ideological divide between capitalism and communism.' In recent years, pleas have been made for a reintroduction of these drugs in mainstream psychiatry.3 Despite this persistent interest, the history of hallucinogenic drug use in western psychiatry has hardly been systematically investigated. Published historical overviews of psychiatrists have been mainly concerned with the medical advantages and disadvantages of the drugs.4 Other historical studies that mention the psychiatric use of LSD have treated the