Providentia

Can Dysfunctional Families Predict Cyberbullying?

Currently, the enormous quantity of research on cyberbullying during adolescence contrasts with those studies carried out in the university environment. A new study published in Computers and Human Behavior examines the predictive capacity of family environment and emotional intelligence with regard to cyberbullying in university students. The European Cyberbullying Intervention Project Questionnaire, the Social Climate in the Family Scale and the Trait Meta-Mood Scale-24 were administered to a sample of 1282 university students (594 men and 688 women) between the ages of 18 and 46 (M = 21.65; DT = 4.25). The results revealed that a deteriorated family environment increases the probability of being both a victim and an aggressor of cyberbullying, whereas a favorable family environment decreases this probability. Likewise, the dimensions of emotional intelligence were predictive variables of participation as victims or aggressors of cyberbullying. The conclusions of this study are of special relevance given that they do not only bring about a problem that has a little knowledge of the university setting, but because they also note that intervention programs should consider the influence of the family environment during the early adulthood period, as well as the relevance of emotional level of these university students. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved)

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How Can We Help Victims of Clergy Abuse?

When John J. Geoghan was sentenced in January, 2002 on multiple charges relating to his long history of serial child abuse, he represented just the latest in a long line of cases involving sexual abuse in the clergy.     Evidence at Geoghan's trial showed that he was repeatedly transferred to different Catholic dioceses following allegations of inappropriate sexual behaviour involving young boys.   During the 1960s and 1970s, he continued to be transferred to positions where he would have regular contact with children even after the Church arranged for him to be treated for pedophilia.   Even after he formally retired from his active clergy work in 1993, the allegations continued.    By the time he was finally sentenced (after first  being removed  from the priesthood) in 2002, his career of abuse was believed to stretch back decades and involved more than 130 boys.    

In the aftermath of Geoghan's sentencing (and his murder in prison less than a year later), the resulting scandal led to the resignation of Boston's archbishop and numerous investigations concerning how the Church dealt with Geoghan and many of the other priests who also faced allegations.    It also highlighted the treatment of whistleblowers by the Church, many of whom faced serious penalties for attempting to expose what was happening all too often.    Still, while most of the investigations into sexual abuse by religious authorities (SARA) have focused on the Catholic Church, cases of equivalent abuse can be found in most other religions around the world.

Despite countless new stories about abuse by clergy  not to mention the various movie and television dramatizations of different scandals that have come to light, actual research into the impact of this kind of abuse on victims has been surprisingly scarce up to now.   But a new review article published in the journal Traumatology provides a comprehensive look at the psychological impact of clergy abuse on victims and how it differs from other types of sexual abuse.  Written by Danielle M. McGraw and a team of fellow researchers at Alliant International University in Los Angeles, CA, the article examined hundreds of peer-reviewed studies looking at clergy abuse though only a small minority contained actual empirical data on SARA victims.    To supplement the available information, McGraw and her co-researchers also included victim data from several recent books on victims of clergy abuse as well as dissertation data.    

To read more, check out my new Psychology Today blog post.

Thai Woman with Dementia Found After Eight Months Having Wandered 400 Miles into China

While "wandering" remains a frequent problem with people suffering from dementia, the case of 59-year-old Kaeomanee Arjaw is likely unique.    

Having left her house inThai province of Chiang Rai,on June 12, 2018, she apparently decided to visit her son who lived nearby.   But then, after seeing her son, she apparently decided to keep walking.   While her family searched frantically for her in the months following the dementia patient's disappearance, it was only when Chinese officials picked her up in the southern Chinese city of Kunming  in late January of this year that she was finally reunited with her family.

While she was still carrying her Thai identity card, Chinese officials are still trying to determine the route she took to travel over 400 miles and cross national borders either at Laos or Myanmar, both of which are heavily patrolled, to enter China.   According to Kaeomanee, who had lost over 20 kilograms during her long walk, she mainly kept herself fed by begging for food from stalls along the way and avoided the use of any vehicles.  

It was only this week that she was finally reunited with her daughter, Suchada, who had flown to Kunming to take her mother home.   The highly emotional reunion was recorded and has since been posted to social media sites worldwide.  They have since flown back to their home in Chiang Rai.

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Killing Ocey Snead

When Dr. Horace Simmons was called out to investigate the death of 24-year-old Ocey Snead on November 29, 1909, it seemed to be an obvious case of suicide.   At least, at first....

Not only was Ocey's emaciated body found naked and lying face-down in a tub of cold water in the East Orange, N.J. home where she had been living, but there was also a suicide note lying nearby.   The note, which was written in a firm hand, read, "When you have read this, I will have committed suicide.  Do not grieve over me.  Rejoice with me that death brings a blessed relief from pain and suffering greater than I can bear."   

And she certainly had reason to kill herself.   Not only had her husband disappeared some time before (and presumed dead) but her infant daughter had recently died and her surviving son seemed on the verge of dying as well.    Everyone who knew Ocey reported that she had been visibly wasting away in the months leading up to her death but Dr. Simmons found the circumstances of the death to be highly suspicious.

First of all, there was the peculiar behaviour of Ocey's aunt, 57-year-old Virginia Wardlaw, who finally admitted that she had found the body earlier and had waited an incredible twenty-four hours before reporting it.   On asking Wardlaw why she had waited so long to report the death, the aunt simply replied that her niece had said that she didn't want to be disturbed.  The doctor also noted that the house where Ocey died was almost completely empty of furniture.   As for Wardlaw herself, the doctor took note of her bizarre appearance.    This included being dressed completely in black with a cape reaching down to her ankles and a veil covering her face.   Disturbed by all the questions he had concerning the young woman's death, Dr. Simmons went straight to the police and asked them to investigate.   

When investigators tried to question Virginia Wardlaw, they found her to be completely uncooperative.   They also learned that Ocey Snead's relatives had been quietly taking out insurance policies on her life over the previous few years and had even gone into debt using the insurance policies as collateral for loans.   All told, the various policies on Ocey's life amounts to more than $30,000, a hefty sum in those days.   On looking into Virginia Wardlaw's colourful past, investigators found that she had been involved in a number of bogus real estate schemes with her sisters.  Some time before that, she had been discharged from her position as a headmistress in a prominent girl's school and reduced her to virtual poverty.  As for Ocey's "suicide note", police found that the handwriting didn't match letters previously written by the dead woman.  There was also the troubling fact that the note had been written in a firm hand while Ocey had been physically frail in the weeks leading up to her death.   Virginia Wardlaw was arrested as a material witness in Ocey Snead's death while investigators began looking at Virginia Wardlaw's two sisters.  

One of these sisters, 61-year-old Mary Snead, was considered especially suspicious since she also happened to be Ocey's mother-in-law  (Fletcher Snead, Ocey's husband also happened to be her cousin).  Then, there was Ocey's own mother, 64-year-old Caroline Martin who had disappeared, along with Mary Snead, shortly after Ocey's body was found.   Mary was eventually tracked down to a basement apartment where she had been hiding with the aged mother of the three women.   As for Caroline Martin, she was discovered to be hiding out in a Manhattan hotel where her trademark black cape and veil (same as her two sisters) led to her being recognized.   All three women were then charged with first-degree murder in the death of Ocey Snead and, based on evidence provided by other witnesses, Caroline Martin was implicated as the mastermind of the bizarre murder scheme the three women had carried out.   Since all three women were dressed in the same bizarre fashion with long black capes and veils, they became known to the press as the "sisters in black."

In tracing the movement of the three women, detectives soon found another rented house in Brooklyn where Ocey had actually lived with her mother and aunts up to the time of her mysterious death.  Fletcher Snead had lived there for a while as while until he abandoned his pregnant wife in 1907.   Police actually managed to track him down to where he was living in Canada under the assumed name "John Lucas" but he was quickly ruled out as a suspect (he managed to disappear again soon afterward and vanished from history).    

While the three women were awaiting trial at the Trenton Penitentiary, police managed to learn more about Ocey Snead and the tragic events that led to her death.   Believed to have been born in 1885 in New York City, Oceana Wardlaw Martin (later nicknamed "Ocey")  came from a long and eminent family that stretched back to the American Revolution.   Despite this illustrious background, Caroline Martin and her two sisters had fallen on hard times and were living in near-poverty by the time Ocey married Fletcher Snead in 1906.   The marriage had been conducted in secret because the family initially opposed the union though this changed with the birth of Ocey's first child.  

When this first child, a girl, died just days after her birth, Ocey was devastated and the later disappearance of her husband, while Ocey was pregnant with her second child, caused her to sink into a "pitiable state", as her mother would later relate.  Caroline Martin also insisted that Ocey had become a morphine addict who regularly daydreamed of suicide.  As she would explain later,  Ocey had died due to an accidental overdose of morphine that Martin had given her daughter and she then placed her in the bathtub in an attempt to revive her.   Once she realized that her daughter was dead, she went into hiding.

But evidence provided by other witnesses painted a much more disturbing picture.   By all accounts, Ocey been a target of abuse by all three women, including her mother and this pattern of abuse stemmed all the way back to her childhood.   But things became even worse for Ocey in the years leading up to her death.   Already frail following the death of her first child, being abandoned by her husband and having to deal with a second pregnancy made her even more of a target.   Almost immediately after her second child was born, the three sisters spirited him away to a hospital where he later died.    The sisters then moved to New Jersey along with Ocey.    It was also around this time that Ocey's health began to fail and the sisters called in Dr. William Pettit who immediately diagnosed her as suffering from malnutrition.    After learning that his medical instructions weren't being followed,  he tried to protest but Caroline Martin and the others simply discharged him  (and failed to pay his medical bill).   Another doctor who had been called in even tried to sneak in food for Ocey but her mother and aunts put a stop to this as well.

Finally, the sisters called in Dr. Pettit and asked him to get Ocey to write a will as they believed she was dying.   They even offered to make him one of the beneficiaries of her life insurance policy in lieu of paying his medical bill.   While Pettit had been on the verge of calling in the police, the sisters had disappeared once more taking Ocey with them.   He would never see her alive again.

After Ocey Snead's death, Dr. Pettit came forward to provide additional evidence against Caroline Martin and the others.   Police also began investigating some of the other death linked to the family, including Caroline's husband Ocey's brother, Hugh (she had received sizable insurance settlements for both deaths) though no real evidence of murder ever surfaced in either case.    All that really remained was what to do about the three "women in black" awaiting trial.   Which soon became two women after Virginia Waidlaw died in August, 1910.   Though she had been visibly wasting away in the weeks leading up to her death, nobody realized that she had been deliberately starving herself and feeding her meals to the rats which infested the prison.    Whether this was deliberate suicide or due to her despondency at being in custody, the end result was the same.

Which still left Caroline Martin and Mary Snead to stand trial.    Despite Martin's bizarre behaviour while in custody, including frequent outbursts in court as she defended herself, she was found fit to stand trial.    She eventually pled guilty to manslaughter but emphasized that the morphine overdose that killed Ocey was accidental.   Though she likely expected leniency, she was outraged when she was sentenced to seven years in prison on January 23, 1911.   Shrieking that she didn't deserve such a harsh sentence, bailiffs ended up carrying her out of the courtroom, chair and all.   As for Mary Snead, she was acquitted, largely based on a technicality since she could not be charged as an accomplice to manslaughter.  Caroline Martin continued with her bizarre outbursts while in prison and she was soon transferred to a psychiatric asylum.   Once there, she began starving herself much as her sister did and eventually died on June 20, 1913.   

And there the story ends.   Ocey is buried at Mount Hope Cemetery along with her father, brother, and two children.  Mary Snead went to live with her youngest son and eventually moved to California where she died in 1937.   Some time before her death, she wrote a letter to a Tennessee newspaper in an attempt to clear her name.    Of her sister, Virginia Waidlaw, she wrote that she was "an angel on Earth.  It was her pity that led her to take Mrs. Martin and her daughter Ocey, a sweet, lovely child, into the school to live."   She was less complimentary about Caroline Martin, though.  "The bare truth is that Mrs. Martin was insane and had been so for years," she wrote.  "She should have been put into an asylum long before."    

Was Ocey's death accidental or did her mother kill her as part of an insurance scheme?   You be the judge.

The Flying Saucer Man

For Orfeo Angelucci, his strange career as a spokesperson for the aliens watching Earth reportedly began on August 4, 1946 with an amateur science experiment.  

Born in Trenton, New Jersey to a working-class Italian American family, Angelucci was a sickly child with a history of childhood illness.    Diagnosed with “constitutional inadequacy” as a child, his poor health left him with recurring migraine headaches as well as a peculiar sensitivity to thunderstorms.   Despite having to leave school early due to poor health and family financial problems, he continued to study science in his spare time until a complete physical breakdown forced him to give up his job.   After nearly two years in hospital, he eventually returned to work and resumed his amateur science experiments.   

While his experiments may have been somewhat offbeat, there was no doubting his enthusiasm.   Angelucci had a particular fascination with how electricity and thunderstorms affected humans and even wrote an enthusiastic letter to then-President Franklin Roosevelt about his discoveries.   In the letter, he insisted that the “range paralysis” he saw in chickens was related to atmospheric static conditions  and suggested that this might be relevant to the treatment of polio.   He never received an answer.

In the fateful 1946 experiment,  Angelucci tried to launch samples of the fungus, Aspergillis clavatus, into the upper atmosphere in a homemade weather balloon.    He hoped to study how the fungus was changed by atmospheric conditions but the balloon broke away from the mooring and was lost along with his fungus samples.  As he would later describe, Angelucci and the family members who had gathered to watch the balloon launch saw what appeared to be a flying saucer hover overhead.   When the balloon went up, the saucer apparently followed it until both were lost from sight.    No trace of the balloons or the fungus samples were ever found.   

After moving to California (where he heard there were fewer thunderstorms), Angelucci  attempted to break into the movie industry by writing his own script about a trip to the moon (no studios expressed any interest though).    He finally went to work for the Lockheed Corporation doing fabrication work while continuing scientific research in his spare time.  Along with self-publishing a thesis titled “The Nature of Infinite Energies” describing his theories on “atomic evolution, suspension and involution”,  he also wrote several letters to Linus Pauling outlining his theories on biology and nuclear causation.  Pauling wrote several letters back politely thanking him but adding that he had no comments he could make on these theories. 

With the advent of the “flying saucer” craze in 1948, Angelucci became fascinated with the various sightings being reported.  His own flying saucer event occurred on May 23, 1952 after he left the Lockheed plant early in the morning (he was working the night shift.)     In the statement he later wrote about his experience,, he began experiencing “prickling sensations” while driving home that felt as if his old medical problems were returning.    Angelucci then saw a “red-glowing, oval-shaped object” in the sky which he decided to follow.    On a deserted part of the highway, he saw two smaller objects detach themselves and approach his car.  A clear voice told him, “Don’t be afraid, Orfeo, we are friends” and instructed him to get out of the car.  The two smaller objects were apparently meant for communication.  

After reassuring him of their friendly intentions, he was told that the aliens had been watching him ever since his 1946 balloon experiment.    The voice then told him to “Drink from the crystal cup you will find on the fender of your car, Orfeo!”   And, sure enough, there was a goblet on his car fender filled with a liquid.    Angelucci reported, “It was the most delicious beverage I had ever tasted. I drained the cup. Even as I was drinking a feeling of strength and well-being swept over me and all of my unpleasant symptoms vanished.”   The goblet vanished after he replaced it on the fender.

The twin disks then formed into a luminous screen which showed two “oddly familiar” beings, a man and a woman.  “There was an impressive nobility about them,” he wrote.  “Their eyes were larger and much more expressive and they emanated a seeming radiance that filled me with wonder.”    The screen then vanished.   He was then told that “the road will open” and that they had been watching the Earth for centuries.  They also told him that he had been chosen for first contact and that the “flying saucers” were their own ships which were powered and controlled by tapping into “universal magnetic forces.”    Though “Cosmic law prevented one planet from interfering with the evolution of any other planet and that Earth needed to work out its own destiny”, they had been trying to help the human race move forward.   Perhaps not surprisingly, they also informed him that his numerous unconventional theories on nuclear causation and biology were absolutely correct.  After promising to be in contact again, they then left.

And thus Orfeo Angelucci’s strange mission was born.  Never as famous as other flying saucer enthusiasts such as George Adamski, the message he relayed in books such as his 1955 classic, The Secret of the Saucers, seemed to resonate with his early Catholic upbringing.   In the book (which was co-written by science fiction author Ray Palmer), Angelucci described his early experiences with the aliens as well as later trips on board flying saucers which seemed more like spiritual experiences.  Angelucci also became part of the lecture circuit along with other contactees and became a popular guest with radio show hosts as he described his flying saucer journeys.

On one later trip, he was told that Christ had been an “infinite entity of the sun” who had become “flesh and blood and entered the hell of ignorance and woe and evil” due to “compassion for the world’s suffering.”     During that same journey, Angelucci underwent a death and resurrection experience after which he heard the voices tell him, “Beloved friend of earth, we baptize you now in the true light of the worlds eternal.”   He also learned that the flying saucers were symbols of mankind’s “coming resurrection of the living death.”  

His message was also strongly influenced by the 1950s era.  The aliens appeared strangely concerned about communism which they described as a symbol of the earth’s fallen state and something that humanity needed to overcome (nothing about capitalism, however).    They also warned that the human race was living in a state akin to Purgatory and that a Great Armageddon was approaching unless humanity could reform.  Whether this was a nuclear war or something even more dire was left to the imagination of his readers. 

In a later book, Son of the Sun, Angelucci expanded more on his meetings with the angelic aliens and the mystical nature of his experiences on board the flying saucers.   He also described living for a week in the body of his “space brother” Neptune on a large asteroid while his usual body went to work in a waking dream state.    Angelucci published several other pamphlets expanding on his space-brother ideas and also claimed to be in contact with other people who had met the same aliens that he had. 

While Orfeo Angelucci remained part of the flying saucer movement until his death in 1993, he had faded into obscurity by then.   He still has a cult following and his books, complete with audio CDs of him describing his experiences, are available on Amazon.   Carl Jung devoted part of his 1978 book, Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies to him and regarded Angelucci’s account as being the most compelling of all the first-person contact narratives that were published during that era. 

It is tempting to try explaining Angelucci using his medical history and how his “encounters” resemble the type of hallucination seen in certain neurological patients.   Unfortunately, there is not enough information available to make a real diagnosis in his case.   That his claimed experiences strongly reflected his own Catholic upbringing and personal beliefs (including pep talks with Jesus Christ himself) seems to be one of the common features that he shared with fellow contactees.   His other chief claim to fame was that he is believed to have been the first to coin the term, “New Age.” 

Aside from his books on Amazon and the few web pages dedicated to him, Orfeo Angelucci has been largely forgotten by believers and skeptics alike.   Ultimately, what impressed people most listening to his fantastic accounts was the utter sincerity he displayed at all times.   Whatever you might make of his strange claims, he definitely believed what he was saying and that was enough to convince others as well.   If nothing else, he remains an object lesson in the power of belief.

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Do Smartphones Make Us Less Friendly?

New developments in technology—from the printing press to television—have long facilitated our capacity for “absent presence,” enabling us to escape the limits of our immediate environment. Does being constantly connected to other people and activities through our smartphones diminish the need to engage with others in the immediate social world, reducing the likelihood of approach behavior such as smiling? A new study published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior suggests that it does.  In a preregistered experiment, strangers waited together with or without their smartphones; their smiling was later coded by trained assistants. Compared to participants without smartphones, participants with smartphones exhibited significantly fewer smiles of any kind and fewer genuine (Duchenne) smiles. These findings are based on objective behavioral coding rather than self-report and provide clear evidence that being constantly connected to the digital world may undermine important approach behavior

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Greek Orthodox Bishop Convicted of Inciting Anti-LGBTQ+ Hatred in Landmark Court Ruling

In what is being hailed as a landmark decision, Metropolitan bishop Amvrosios of Kalavryta and Egion has been convicted by a three-judge panel on charges including hate speech, incitement to violence, and abuse of religious office for an online post addressed to his followers.    The post, which was originally published on December 4, 2015, focused on the ongoing debate over legitimizing same-sex unions in Greece.     Not only did he describe homosexuals as "monstrosities of nature" but also urged all of the faithful to spit on them.   "Do not go near them! Do not listen to them! Do not trust them!," he added.  "They are the damned members of society!”

Arguing that the bishop's statements violated Greece's Anti-Racist law, nine LGBT activists filed a complaint on January 16, 2016.    While a first-instance court acquitted Amvrosius, public outrage over the decision as well as further inflammatory remarks (he told the court that "if I had a gun and the law would allow me, I would use it against them") led to a second hearing. 

During his hearing, Amvrosius maintained that “the court does not have the competency to judge me as a bishop, and I cannot understand why today I am being charged for my love of Christ,”   His diocese also published a lengthy statement on the decision stating that "groups of homosexuals will now be uncontrollably and brazenly able to provocatively impose their way of life, which is incompatible with the ontology of human nature and the law of God."    But Amvrosius has a lengthy history of reactionary and inflammatory remarks, including outspoken support for the Colonels' Junta that imposed fascist rule on Greece back in 1967 as well as the Greek neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn, including open approval of actions such as the assassination of anti-fascist musician Pavlo Fyssas in 2013.    He has also exploited the recent wildfires in 2018 which he maintained had been due to divine wrath aimed at atheist President Alexis Tsipras.

While the bishop's lawyers are currently appealing the decision, public reactions to the conviction, both in the Greek media and on social media platforms, reflects the approval with with Amvrosius' conviction has been greeted by most Greeks.  While the sentence has been suspended for three years based on the bishop's lack of a criminal history, human rights observers are hoping that the decision will set a precedent for future cases.

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The Long LSD Trip

As long as we've had psychoactive substances, we've had psychonauts who used thost substances to explore altered states of consciousness. In many ways, the scientific study of psychonautics is as old as psychology itself.  Back in the 19th century, William James experimented with amyl nitrate, chloral hydrate and peyote to learn about mystical experiences while Sigmund Freud experimented with cocaine (and became a frequent recreational user as well).

Despite the backlash against psychoactive drugs in the early years of the 20th century, advances in biochemistry meant intriguing new opportunities for would-be psychonauts . When lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) was first synthesized in 1938 by the Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman, he actually had no idea what he had discovered. The compound was developed as part of a research program searching for ergot alkaloid derivatives that might be useful in the treatment of migraine headaches. Aside from the "restlessness" that was observed in laboratory animals that were given LSD, no particular value was found in this new compound and Hoffman shelved his discovery for five years. It was in 1943 when he accidentally spilled some of the LSD on his skin that Hoffman first discovered its mind-altering properties.   With the LSD on his skin, he soon slipped into a stupor and, in a dreamlike state, experienced "fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors".  That was the beginning of his research into the effects of LSD using himself as a guinea pig. Hoffman's graphic descriptions of visual illusions with bright, intense colours, multiple images of geometric patterns, distortions of body image and subsequent feelings of heightened sensitivity inspired his employers at Sandoz laboratories to perform experiments on other test subjects.

It was Walter Stoll, a psychiatrist at a psychiatric clinic in Zurich, who first began examining the effects of LSD in psychiatric patients and control volunteers. The publication of Stoll's research in 1947 electrified the psychiatric community and Sandoz began marketing LSD as a valuable psychiatric drug under the trade name "Delysid". Not only did Sandoz advertise Delysid as a potential panacea for most mental illnesses (including criminal behaviour and sexual perversions), they also recommended that psychiatrists take it themselves to "gain an understanding of the subjective experiences of the schizophrenic". The key assumption that underlay Sandoz's marketing strategy revolved around what would be known as the "model psychosis" hypothesis.

The minute amounts of LSD that led to psychotic features developing in otherwise normal subjects reinforced the idea that schizophrenia and related psychiatric conditions were purely biochemical in nature. Was it not likely that mental illness was due to the human body generating LSD-like substances under conditions of extreme stress? Could research into chemical agents that interfered with the "psychosis-simulating" effects of LSD lead to new biochemical treatments for mental illness? The serotonin (5-HT) hypothesis of schizophrenia was first proposed during this period based on the observation that hallucinogenics such as LSD and mescaline functioned by acting on 5-HT receptors in the human brain. While the actual mechanisms involved appears to be far more complex than initially thought, it seemed only natural for medical researchers of the period to believe that LSD represented a powerful new tool in treating mental illness.

Delysid/LSD first became commercially available in 1947 and demand by researchers led to its wide availability around the world in a matter of months. Despite being marketed to medical doctors, early LSD advocates including Aldous Huxley and Alfred Hubbard (a.k.a. "Captain Trips") ensured that LSD would be seen as far more than a medical tool. Huxley wrote The Doors of Perception (1954) and Heaven and Hell (1955) based on his experiences with LSD and mescaline and these books quickly became classics. While no one could have ever foreseen the role that LSD would play in the counterculture movements of the 1960s, the recreational possibilities seemed clear enough.

From 1950 to 1965, research into LSD and related hallucinogenics generated over 1000 scientific papers and books and was the subject of at least six international conferences. Thousands of patients received LSD as a treatment for everything from schizophrenia to alcoholism.  While there is no way of doing proper justice to the full range of research into LSD occurring during the two decades following its discovery in the 1940s, some prominent pioneers tend to stand out.

One of these early pioneers was Dr. Humphry Osmond. Born in 1917 in Surrey, England, Osmond trained to become a psychiatrist and later became a Senior Registrar at a psychiatric unit at St. George's Hospital in London. With his colleague John Smithies, he began researching the effects of mescaline on the human body and became one of the early advocates for a biochemical explanation for schizophrenia. Given the strong Freudian bias among British psychiatrists during that period, Osmond's determination to continue with his research meant that he would need to leave Great Britain altogether. Answering an advertisement in the Lancet for a deputy director of psychiatry at a Canadian mental hospital in Weyburn, Saskatchewan, Osmond and his family moved to Canada in 1951.

Within a year of arriving in Canada, Osmond launched his biochemical research program and joined forces with another early pioneer, Abram Hoffer. As a Canadian psychiatrist who had been hired as a research psychiatrist by the Saskatchewan department of Public Health, Hoffer had a keen interest in the biochemical roots of schizophrenia and quickly recognized the importance of Osmond's mescaline experiments. They began to work together and soon discovered that LSD was an even better drug than mescaline in producing psychotic symptoms in normal test subjects. Osmond and Hoffer decided to explore the therapeutic value of LSD in modifying behaviour and settled on alcoholics as test subjects.

The hypothesis that guided them was straightforward enough: since research subjects reported increased self-awareness after taking LSD, could alcoholics develop new insight into their drinking as well? They further argued that the delirium produced by LSD in many ways resembled the experience of delirium tremens in alcoholics drying out from alcohol. If the experience of delirium tremens often forced alcoholics to accept that they had "hit bottom", could LSD delirium produce a similar outcome? In 1953, Osmond and Hoffer tested the effects of LSD treatment on two chronic alcoholic patients at the Saskatchewan Mental Hospital in Weyburn, and reported an astonishing 50 percent success rate.

Osmond was emphatic in stressing that the key to their success was not LSD but rather the "insight" that the LSD provided. A second study published in 1958 involving 24 patients at University Hospital in Saskatoon also found that 50 per cent of the patients reported either total abstention or at least significant reduction in drinking over a three year period. Unfortunately, the highly subjective nature of LSD use and the difficulties involved in replicating Osmond and Hoffer's results made their colleagues reluctant to accept their conclusions. Critics also noted that a minority of patients taking LSD reported negative experiences although these "bad trips" could be mitigated through the use of empathetic staff. Osmond and Hoffer would go on to treat hundreds of alcoholics under carefully controlled conditions.

The Addiction Research Foundation in Toronto (now part of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health) challenged Osmond and Hoffer's research by questioning their methodology, particularly the lack of proper controls. ARF researchers, Reginald Smart and Thomas Storm, conducted their own LSD study in which patients were either blindfolded or restrained to control for the effect of additional stimuli that might bias the research findings. Their results were challenged by Osmond in turn and he questioned the rigidity of the methodology that ARF used in their study. A research study by Weyburn psychiatrist Sven Jensen was published in 1962 that compared alcoholics who received LSD treatment with patients receiving group or individual treatment. Jensen found that 38 of the 58 patients who had received LSD remained abstinent over the follow-up period compared to only a small minority of patients who had received conventional treatment.

While the controversy was raging, a moral panic was brewing elsewhere. The growing use of LSD as a recreational drug, aided by counterculture gurus such as Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (a.k.a. Ram Dass), as well as its role in the student activist movement of the 1960s led to hysterical denunciations of the dangers resulting from rampant LSD use. Humphry Osmond may have unintentionally fanned the hysteria by his own actions (not only did he coin the word "psychedelic" but he was also the one to introduce Aldous Huxley to mescaline and LSD in the 1950s). By 1966, LSD was on the FDA's list of illegal narcotics and Sandoz Pharmaceutical Company (the only legal provider of the drug) voluntarily ceased production. LSD research was subsequently banned across North America by 1968.

And so it stands. Humphry Osmond died in 2004 after a long and illustrious career. Abram Hoffer remained active in the highly controversial field of orthomolecular treatment for schizophrenia until his own death in 2009. Alfred Hoffman, the Swiss chemist who started it all, lived well into his 90s.  Even up to his death in 2008, he never failed to be frustrated by the worldwide prohibition on his discovery. While he conceded in interviews that LSD can be potentially dangerous, he also stressed its therapeutic value as reported by researchers such as Osmond and Hoffer.

Could LSD have developed into a viable treatment for alcoholism if events had gone differently? The use of MDMA ("ecstasy") in therapy has generated considerable interest but the current political climate probably ensures that LSD will stay illegal for the foreseeable future.

*A hat tip to Dr. Erika Dyck of the University of Alberta for kindly providing me with reprints of her publications on this fascinating topic.

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What is Self-Disgust?

Loneliness and self-disgust have been considered as independent predictors of depressive symptoms. In a new study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders, researchers hypothesized that self-disgust can explain the association between loneliness and depression, and that emotion regulation strategies interact with self-disgust in predicting depressive symptoms. Three hundred and seventeen participants (M = 29.29 years, SD = 14.11; 76.9% females) completed structured anonymous self-reported measures of loneliness, self-disgust, emotion regulation strategies, and depressive symptoms. One-way MANOVA showed that participants in the high-loneliness group reported significantly higher behavioural and physical self-disgust, compared to those in the middle and low-loneliness groups. Bootstrapped hierarchical linear regression analysis showed that self-disgust significantly improved predicted variance in depressive symptoms, after controlling for the effects of loneliness. Regression-based mediation modelling showed that both physical and behavioural self-disgust significantly mediated the association between loneliness and depression. Finally, moderated regression analysis showed that expressive suppression interacted with self-disgust in predicting depressive symptoms. Limitations: A cross-sectional design was used, and this study focused on expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal but not on other aspects of emotion regulation or the modulation of emotional arousal and responses. The authors demonstrated, for the first time, that self-disgust plays an important role in the association between loneliness and depressive symptoms. Furthermore, variations in emotion regulation strategies can explain the association between self-disgust and depressive symptoms. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved)

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Gender-based Temple Controversy Divides India

Months after a groundbreaking Supreme Court decision hailed by female activists,  a political firestorm continues to brew over the right of women to pray at an iconic temple in India's Kerala state.  

Dedicated to the celibate Hindu deity Lord Ayyappan, the Sabarimala Sree Dharmasastha Temple in Kerala draws millions of devotees each year.  But, due to the religious traditions maintained by the temple,  women of childbearing age are banned due to the "impurity" of their menstruation.   As a result, all women aged 10 to 50 have been refused entrance for centuries.  Despite objections by female devotees, the Kerala High Court upheld the ban in 1991 stating that the restriction was reasonable given that it had been in place since "time immemorial."   It was only after the Indian Supreme Court struck down the ban last September that two women, Kanaka Durga and Bindu Ammini, became the first in centuries to enter the temple on January 2 because of this (they had attempted to enter before on numerous occasions but had always been stopped).  Videos of the two women entering the temple have since gone viral,

Since then, however, politically-aligned groups and religious zealots have been actively protesting against women entering the religious premises.  Mobs of Brahmin men and women have clashed with police and actively prevented women from entering the temple.   More disturbingly, Durga and Ammini have been forced to go into hiding due to death threats by hardline Hindu groups.   Durga was even assaulted by her own mother-in-law, outraged over what she viewed as heresy.  Though the two women plan to return home soon, following reassurances from police, sporadic violence continues to break out as more women brave the protests to take advantage of the new freedom.  

The controversy has also sparked a Twitter war with Bollywood movie celebrities weighing in with posts featuring hashtages such as #FakeFeminists and #StupidMedia to uphold the "sanctity of the temple".  But the new Supreme Court decision has its defenders as well.  In one post, historian Hindol Sengupta wrote, "As a writer of history, I have been wondering whether it is possible at all to make an objective, non-partisan assessment of what has (and is) taking place at #Sabarimala, one of Hinduism's most sacred shrines? Let us try. To begin with, let us accept that in a world where, after many centuries, the voices of women are being heard, a shrine that bars women of menstruating age, seems dysfunctional to all of us. The question arises, how can this even be an issue today - after all these years of battling for liberty? This is a vital and important question."

As well as being a battle over women's rights, the controversy is also exposing regional conflicts as well as the ingrained Indian patriarchy.  How it unfolds  remains to be seen.

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