Robert Hunter (MKULTRA)

by: ed. Lykaion Publishing

Topics: Grateful Dead, Robert Hunter, MKULTRA, Acid Test, Merry Pranksters, Stanford Research Institute, Morris I. Stein, Long Shore Drift

Collection: journals_contributions; journals

Language: English

Grateful Dead Lyricist, Robert Hunter, on MKULTRA, the Acid Tests, Standford Research Institute, and CIA.

"They wanted to find out was whether it increased my abiliity to be hypnotized. Just a couple of years back I found out."

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Brown, David, "Robert Hunter on Grateful Dead's Early Days, Wild Tours, 'Sacred' Songs" Rolling Stone, 9 March 2015.

Genzlinger, Neil, "Robert Hunter, Grateful Dead Lyricist, Dies at 78", NYTIMES, 24 September 2019.
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"And legend has it you were the first in the gang to try LSD, thanks to a testing program at a VA hospital.
I used to do psychology experiments -- you could get $10 or $15 for doing them, and this was one of them, only this paid better. I had a romping good time. They wanted to find out was whether it increased my ability to be hypnotized. Just a couple of years back I found out it was military or the CIA or something, that they were trying to find its value as a weapon."

-Rolling Stone

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He owed at least some of his songwriting sensibilities to the C.I.A.-sponsored experiments with LSD and other hallucinogens known as MK-Ultra. He was among the volunteer research subjects in the program at Stanford University in 1962, he said, and whatever they were giving him helped his writing process considerably.

"The words jumped from subconscious to the page," he told The Independent.
-NY Times
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Also see:

Stein, Morris I. Stimulating Creativity: Vol. 2. New York: Academic Press, 1975. Print.

{Stanford Research Institute, LSD Experiments, Wallace Stegner - Creative Writing,}

Harvard Cognition Project

Bruner, Jerome S, George P. Austin, Roger W. Brown, and Jacqueline J. Goodnow. A Study of Thinking. New York: Wiley, 1956. Print.

Bartlett, Frederic C. "Some experiments on the reproduction of folk-stories." Folklore 31.1 (1920): 30-47.

Thorndike, Edward L. "Reading as reasoning: A study of mistakes in paragraph reading." Journal of Educational psychology 8.6 (1917): 323.

Gough, Philip B., and Michael L. Hillinger. "Learning to read: An unnatural act." Bulletin of the Orton Society 30 (1980): 179-196.

Merrill, Reed M., and Louise B. Heathers. "The use of an adjective checklist as a measure of adjustment." Journal of Counseling Psychology 1.3 (1954): 137.