Review of LSD: The Highway to Mental Health



Hausner, Milan. (2009). LSD: The Highway to Mental Health. Malibu, CA. ASC Books.
Translated by Erna Segal. ISBN: 978-0-9797838-0-7. www.ASCbooks.com. US
$18.95.

293 +xvi pages, Preface by Dr. Milton Hausner, Publisher’s Foreword, The Genesis of
LSD: The Highway to Mental Health by Erna Segal, Introduction by Oscar Janiger, 22
chapters, Conclusion, Epilogue, 2 appendices, bibliography of Dr. Hausner’s
publications, general bibliography, index.

Review: There was a big gap in my knowledge about psychedelic psychotherapy that
I didn’t even know existed until I ran across Hausner’s LSD: The Highway to Mental
Health. I had hardly considered: What happened to LSD psychotherapy in
Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic) after Stan Grof came to the US? Grof wasn’t
the only researcher from there. What about the others? Highway helps fill in that
gap.

The book describes the work of Dr. Milan Hausner at his clinic at Sakska, near
Prague, where as Medical Director of the psychiatric clinic he supervised over 3,000
LSD therapeutic sessions from 1954 to 1980. As Grof says on a back cover blurb, “He
has amassed information that is invaluable for the theory and practice of
psychotherapy.”

Hausner attributes emotional disorders to the patients’ lack of understanding of
hidden thought processes which occur from a combination of disfunctional social
learning processes and faulty parenting. His method of bringing these thought
processes to consciousness is a system he calls Pathogenic Confrontational Model
within a system of Multigroup Comunity Therapy. In order to reset patients’ irrational
attachments to faulty ideas and emotions, psychotherapy confronts patients’ own
past illness-producing experiences and replaces their dysfunctional reactions during
the more congenial atmosphere of the therapeutic relationship between patient and
therapist.

This is therapy in the psycholytic line of many small to medium dose sessions, rather
than the unitive consciousness, mystical experience line. In his clinic, “dosages of LSD
ranging from 50 to 400 [micrograms] and were administered in up to 60, sometimes
90, sessions on an inpatient—and weekend—basis in conjunction with
psychotherapy.” While 400 micrograms is far above the usual psycholytic dose,
apparently such doses were the exception.

Part of the unlearning of faulty patterns of behavior took place in Multigroup
Community Therapy. Patients and staff held daily meetings and the patients took a
role in running the hospital. This social learning process helped patients build reality-
based interpersonal skills and practice them with others.

After 10 chapters of theory and description of Hausner’s model, Highway presents 11
chapters of case histories and back-matter enrichments. Enriched with excerpts from
transcripts of sessions, these chapters focus on depression, schizophrenia, double
bind, archetypes, sexuality, and other presenting problems.

As well as filling in the gap about treatment that continued in Czechoslovakia,  LSD:
The Highway to Mental Health presents its psycholytic methods of treating inpatients,
a way to use group processes, and social learning as adjuncts on the way to mental
health. As in addition to a place in university, medical school, and city libraries,
Highway deserves a place in the library of anyone doing LSD-based therapy or
investigating it, on the shelves of psychedelic book collectors, and of historians of the
60s and of the history of psychotherapy.

Thomas B. Roberts, Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus, Northern Illinois University

Co-editor of Psychedelic Medicine: New Evidence for Hallucinogenic Substances as
Treatments