Interesting draft paper by Michiel van Elk and Eiko Fried on flawed evaluations of psychedelics to treat mental health conditions and how to do better. Neat 1966 quotation at the end:
‘… we urge caution repeating the history of so many hyped treatments in clinical psychology and psychiatry in the last century. For psychedelic research in particular, we are not the first ones to raise concerns and can only echo the warning expressed more than half a century ago:
“To be hopeful and optimistic about psychedelic drugs and their potential is one thing; to be messianic is another. Both the present and the future of psychedelic research already have been grievously injured by a messianism that is as unwarranted as it has proved undesirable”. (Masters & Houston, 1966)’