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NOTE Libertarianism and Psychology

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The Ludwig von Mises Institute presents The Libertarian Tradition, an audio series with

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Jeff Rigenbach.

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What I have for you today is a few brief notes on a prominent, or perhaps I should say notorious

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libertarian psychologist and a prominent libertarian psychiatrist, along with an observation or

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Number two on what fundamentally is the connection between libertarianism and psychology.

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The first of our two figures, Timothy Francis Leary, was born October 22, 1920 in Springfield,

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Massachusetts.

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He graduated from Springfield's once famous classical high school and then embarked on

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a five-year undergraduate career that took him to the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester,

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The U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York and the University of Alabama, where

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he graduated with a B.A. in psychology in 1943.

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He then went west, earning an M.A. at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington in

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1946 and a Ph.D. at the University of California in Berkeley, California in 1950.

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His dissertation topic was The Social Dimensions of Personality, Group Structure and Process.

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It is worth noting in passing at this point that of course the social dimensions of personality

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cut in two different directions simultaneously.

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On the one hand, how one interacts with others is in part a product of one's individual personality

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traits.

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On the other hand, individual personality traits can be influenced by one's interactions

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with others.

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This is a topic to which I'll return a little later.

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Timothy Leary spent the 50s in the San Francisco Bay Area, first as an assistant professor

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at the University of California, then as director of psychological research for the Kaiser Foundation

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in Oakland.

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At the end of the decade, he went back to Massachusetts and accepted a position as a

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Lecturer in Clinical Psychology at Harvard. While in Cambridge, he began to evolve and formulate

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a new theory of social interplay and personal behavior as a collection of stylized games.

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Under the name transactional analysis, this theory was popularized a few years later by the

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psychiatrists Eric Byrne and Thomas Harris in their best-selling books Games People Play and

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I'm OK, You're OK.

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Then, on a vacation trip to Mexico in 1960, at the age of not quite 40, Leary ate some

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mushrooms he had obtained from a local witch doctor and had his first experience of a drug

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called psilocybin.

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He was never the same again.

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He devoted much of the rest of his life to proselytizing for psychedelic drugs, particularly

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LSD, which he believed to be one of the most beneficial chemical formulas ever devised

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by human beings.

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Inevitably this brought him into conflict with the modern prohibitionist American state,

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and he spent several years behind bars.

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I spent four years in 29 jails and prisons on four continents, Leary told me when I interviewed

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him in 1976 for Reason Magazine.

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All this for being in a car where someone else had, without my knowledge, less than

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half an ounce of marijuana.

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Unsurprisingly, such experiences touched off what might be called libertarian thoughts

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in Leary's mind.

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After many years of observing the political situation, Leary told me, and four years in

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prison where you really see how the politics of a country goes, because a prison is the

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The Best Place to Understand the General Social Climate

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I've come to the conclusion that it's all gangs that control countries, states, blocs,

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and so forth.

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It's all like the mafia.

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The best gang in the world, the most powerful and the most enlightened gangster group that's

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controlling territory, is the US government.

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They give you more freedom, more latitude and longitude, and I'm very pleased and proud

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to say that I'm going to deal with them.

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It doesn't mean I agree with them, it doesn't mean I follow all the ins and outs of policy,

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but basically it's their turf.

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I'm glad to be on their turf and I'll pay them the respect any gang leader demands.

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As of the summer of 1976, Leary told me, I'm very much a libertarian.

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When this interview ran in Reason in April of 1977, it created a bit of controversy within

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from the Libertarian Movement and got Leary invited to deliver the keynote speech at the

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1977 National Convention of the Libertarian Party, which was held in San Francisco over

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Labor Day weekend of that year.

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I was asked to introduce Leary to the assembled multitude, which I did.

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Leary stressed his personal commitment to libertarian ideas once again, and he seems

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is to have still felt that way a decade later, for in 1988 he held a fundraiser in Los Angeles

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for L.P. presidential candidate Ron Paul.

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And in 1993, only a few years before his death, when he wrote an introduction to a new edition

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of his 1968 book, The Politics of Ecstasy, he listed libertarianism as one suggested

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name for what he called the new post-political society that he believed the 60s revolution

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created and continues to create in this country.

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In the original edition of the book, the word libertarian hadn't appeared, but then it was

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rather infrequently used in the America of 1968.

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One year after the 1977 National LP Convention in San Francisco, where I had introduced Timothy

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and the National LP Convention in Boston, also held over Labor Day weekend.

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There I met a prominent libertarian psychiatrist, Thomas Szasz, whose works I had only recently

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begun to read.

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I think I had read The Myth of Mental Illness, Ceremonial Chemistry, The Second Sin, Heresies,

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schizophrenia, psychiatric slavery, and The Theology of Medicine by the late summer of

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1978, along with a couple of dozen magazine pieces that hadn't yet been collected into

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books.

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I had also read an interview with Szasz that had appeared in Reason Magazine.

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I met him over a luncheon table at a restaurant not far from Boston's Copley Plaza Hotel.

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Also seated around that table that noon were Roy Childs, Joan Kennedy Taylor, and Robert

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Nozick, whom I was also meeting for the first time.

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I no longer recall whether it was that day in Boston or over another restaurant meal

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a few months later in San Francisco, again with Childs and Taylor at the table, that

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Szasz told me about three books that had made an enormous impression on him when he was

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a young man and influenced the entire subsequent course of his intellectual development.

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The three books were Human Action by Ludwig von Mises, Philosophy in a New Key by Suzanne

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K. Langer and Mind, Self and Society by George Herbert Mead, who taught philosophy, sociology

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and theoretical psychology at the University of Chicago for more than 35 years and is now

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widely regarded as one of the founding fathers of social psychology.

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Society in a New Key by Langer will surprise no one who remembers Szasz's observation

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that bodily illness is to mental illness as literal meaning is to metaphorical meaning.

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And Human Action will surprise no one who has noted Szasz's firm insistence over the

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years on the sort of society in which every individual is held fully responsible for his

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or her actions.

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The nature of Mead's influence is less immediately obvious, perhaps especially if one recalls

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to mind this classic formulation of Zaza's radical commitment to methodological individualism.

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There is no psychology, he famously wrote.

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There is only biography and autobiography.

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Zaza's own biography shows him born in Budapest on April 15, 1920, the same year as Timothy

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Leary.

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He moved to the United States when he was 18 and attended college and medical school

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in this country.

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After a few years in Chicago, he joined the faculty at the State University of New York's

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Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse.

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This was in 1956.

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And essentially, he never left.

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He is now Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at what is currently called the State University

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of New York Health Science Center in Syracuse.

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On income tax day, he celebrated his 91st birthday.

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It is now more than half a century since his most famous, or should I say, infamous book

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was first published.

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A few months after that first publication, in July 1961, Szasz received a letter from

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Cambridge, Massachusetts that read,

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Dear Dr. Szasz, Your book arrived several days ago.

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I've spent eight hours on it and realize the task and joy of reading it has just begun.

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The Myth of Mental Illness is the most important book in the history of psychiatry.

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I know it is rash and premature to make this earlier judgment.

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I reserve the right later to revise and perhaps suggest it is the most important book published

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in the 20th century.

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It is great in so many ways.

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Scholarship, clinical insight, political savvy, common sense, historical sweep, human concern,

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and most of all for its compassionate, shattering honesty.

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I have already contacted several of my colleagues and intend that everyone I meet will be exposed

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to your work.

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I am in charge of the first year graduate training at this center, and while I don't

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Your text states most eloquently, convincingly, systematically what a group of us here have

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been attempting to communicate.

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I have in the past published extensively on diagnosis and have come to understand the

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rituals and rules of that game.

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In the last two years we have been attempting to apply the game conception to behavior change,

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treatment or rehabilitation.

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We have developed a philosophy, many rules and a new language for real education, that

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is, helping people understand their games, planning new games, working out explicitly

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the rules, rituals, goals, roles of the games they select.

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I wonder if there is any chance that you could pay us a visit. I'll be in Cambridge until

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July 25th and after August 23rd. If you are in New England this month, I hope we can expect

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a visit. I should also like to invite you to come to Harvard on a consultant lecturer

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basis for a couple of days in October, a day of consulting plus a department-wide lecture.

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Travel expenses and a consultant fee will be available if you could arrange this trip.

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I'll write again in more detail about your book, but in the meantime, please accept my

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admiration and gratitude for what you have done for your profession and your times.

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Sincerely Yours, Timothy Leary

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Fifteen years later, Leary was able to report to me that I've known Thomas Szasz for many

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years.

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As a matter of fact, I invited him to come to Harvard.

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It's the first time he ever came there when he was at Syracuse to give a lecture.

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I've been an admirer and a supporter of his ideas for about 15 years.

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And Szasz's relations with Leary, so far as I know, were always cordial thereafter.

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It is perhaps useful at this point to recall that Leary's early theoretical work as a

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psychologist was focused on the social dimensions of personality and that his approach to psychotherapy

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stress the extent to which our social behavior resembles the playing of a set of stylized games.

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Keep all this in mind as you consider the following passage from the works of Thomas Szasz.

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We do not expect everyone to be a competent swimmer, golfer, chess player or marksman,

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nor do we regard those who play games poorly as sick.

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The activities that comprise being a student, parent, worker, etc. are in many ways similar

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to the activities that comprise being a golfer or chess player. Yet we act as if we expected

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everyone to play at his own life games competently and we regard those who play poorly at being

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Asking Husband or Wife, Mother or Father, as Sick, that is, Mentally Ill.

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They often chose somewhat different public issues to speak out on.

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Szasz concerned himself with the involuntary imprisonment of non-violent patients in mental

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hospitals.

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Leary concerned himself with the potential of psychedelic drugs in therapy and in education.

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Both men vigorously opposed the war on drugs, and both made memorable contributions to the libertarian tradition.

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This is Jeff Rigenbach.