This meeting will explore the theme of altered consciousness in relation to popular culture\, psychology\, philosophy\, religion\, medicine and literature during the period 1918-1980.
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Many literary and popular authors and performers during the mid twentieth century represented altered states of consciousness in their work\, responding to and participating in research relating to such topics as interplanetary contact\, ESP\, clairvoyance\, telepathy\, mind-altering drugs\, psychic therapies\, spiritualisms\, shamanism\, erotics\, conversion\, revivals\, somnambulism\, precognition\, distraction\, group mind\, multiple personality\, hypnotism\, lucid dreaming\, Vedanta\, hysteria and automatism.
What was the continuing legacy of nineteenth-century approaches to mind and spirit? How did work at the fringes of psychiatry and psychology intersect with mind sciences that consolidated their authority during the mid-twentieth century? What are the key interactions between European\, North American and non-Western sources? How did investigations cross the borders between arts\, sciences\, religion\, education and the military?
Contact: \;altconsc@qmul.ac.uk \;