Oscar Janiger (February 8, 1918 – August 14, 2001) was an experimental
psychiatrist
A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry, the branch of medicine devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, study, and treatment of mental disorders. Psychiatrists are physicians and evaluate patients to determine whether their sy ...
and a
University of California Irvine
The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a public land-grant research university in Irvine, California. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, UCI offers 87 undergraduate degrees and 129 graduate and pr ...
psychiatrist and psychotherapist, best known for his
LSD
Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), also known colloquially as acid, is a potent psychedelic drug. Effects typically include intensified thoughts, emotions, and sensory perception. At sufficiently high dosages LSD manifests primarily mental, vi ...
research, which lasted from 1954 to 1962.
Early life
Janiger was born on February 8, 1918, in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
, New York.
Beat
Beat, beats or beating may refer to:
Common uses
* Patrol, or beat, a group of personnel assigned to monitor a specific area
** Beat (police), the territory that a police officer patrols
** Gay beat, an area frequented by gay men
* Battery (c ...
poet and author
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Gener ...
was a cousin.
[
]
Career
He moved to Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...
in 1950, setting up a private practice and later teaching at the University of California
The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...
at Irvine.[
As a pioneer advocate of hallucinogens, Janiger introduced LSD to ]Cary Grant
Cary Grant (born Archibald Alec Leach; January 18, 1904November 29, 1986) was an English-American actor. He was known for his Mid-Atlantic accent, debonair demeanor, light-hearted approach to acting, and sense of comic timing. He was one o ...
, Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and philosopher. He wrote nearly 50 books, both novels and non-fiction works, as well as wide-ranging essays, narratives, and poems.
Born into the prominent Huxley ...
, and other celebrities, taking the drug 13 times himself.[ He was interested in the relationship between creativity and mind-expanding drugs. He said,
]It really took me out of a state in which I saw the boundaries of myself and the world around me very rigorously prescribed, to a state in which I saw that many, many things were possible...
He bought the then-legal drugs from a Swiss company, Sandoz Laboratories
Novartis AG is a Swiss-American multinational pharmaceutical corporation based in Basel, Switzerland and
Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States (global research).name="novartis.com">https://www.novartis.com/research-development/research-loca ...
, abandoning his research when the U.S. Government began investigating researchers in 1962. The drugs were made illegal in 1966.[
In 1986, he formed the Albert Hofmann Foundation for psychedelic research, named after the chemist who first synthesized LSD.][
His work pre-dated ]Timothy Leary
Timothy Francis Leary (October 22, 1920 – May 31, 1996) was an American psychologist and author known for his strong advocacy of psychedelic drugs. Evaluations of Leary are polarized, ranging from bold oracle to publicity hound. He was "a her ...
's but was not recognised widely because he did not publish his data.[ Janiger administered the drugs in his Los Angeles office.][
]
Experiments
He had 900 people take LSD (usually 2 micrograms per kilogram of bodyweight) and recorded their experiences. The participants included celebrities, actors, writers, college students, a Deputy Marshall, housewives, attorneys, clerical assistants, counselors, medical personnel, dentists, physicians, and engineers.
Frank Murdoch
A sub-study within Janiger's research focused specifically on artists and creativity
Creativity is a phenomenon whereby something new and valuable is formed. The created item may be intangible (such as an idea, a scientific theory, a musical composition, or a joke) or a physical object (such as an invention, a printed literary w ...
. One patient of Janiger's, bipolar and alcoholic
Alcoholism is, broadly, any drinking of alcohol that results in significant mental or physical health problems. Because there is disagreement on the definition of the word ''alcoholism'', it is not a recognized diagnostic entity. Predomin ...
artist Frank Murdoch, was given a controlled, experimental dose of LSD for several months as an attempt to cure his late stage alcoholism (probably a less well-known purpose to his LSD experiments, but very common in the era).[Maclean, J.R.; Macdonald, D.C.; Ogden, F.; Wilby, E., "LSD-25 and mescaline as therapeutic adjuvants." In: Abramson, H., Ed., ''The Use of LSD in Psychotherapy and Alcoholism,'' Bobbs-Merrill: New York, 1967, pp. 407–426; Ditman, K.S.; Bailey, J.J., "Evaluating LSD as a psychotherapeutic agent," pp.74–80; Hoffer, A., "A program for the treatment of alcoholism: LSD, malvaria, and nicotinic acid," pp. 353–402.] Janiger had Murdoch paint still life
A still life (plural: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly wikt:inanimate, inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or artificiality, m ...
s both on and off LSD, including a Kachina doll
A kachina (; also katchina, katcina, or katsina; Hopi: ''katsina'' , plural ''katsinim'' ) is a spirit being in the religious beliefs of the Pueblo peoples, Native American cultures located in the south-western part of the United States. In t ...
(that he reportedly had 70 other patients also paint).
The artists produced some 250 paintings and drawings after ingesting LSD. Historian Carl Hertel
Carl Conrad Julius Hertel (17 October 1837, Breslau – 10 March 1895, Düsseldorf) was a German genre painter, associated with the Düsseldorfer Malerschule.
Life and work
From 1855 to 1858, he attended the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where ...
analyzed the art in 1971 and compared it to the artists' non-LSD work. Hertel found while the LSD art was neither superior nor inferior to the artists' other work, it was brighter, more abstract and non-representational, and tended to fill the entire canvas.
Two follow-up studies have been done. The first, done by Janiger around 1968, collected questionnaires from about 200 of the original participants. Much of this data remains unanalyzed and only a limited amount has been published.
A second follow-up study was conducted in 1999 by Rick Doblin
Richard Elliot Doblin (born November 30, 1953) is an American drug activist and executive who is the founder and executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS).
Life and career
Born in 1953, Doblin grew up ...
, Jerome E. Beck, Kate Chapman and Maureen Alioto, 40 years after the original experimental LSD sessions. Taped interviews were completed by 45 of Janiger's original participants, as well as Janiger himself. The study concluded that the experiences were positive overall, but only 1/3 of the follow-up subjects reported long-term benefits from the LSD experiences.
Other
Also at the Irvine faculty, he studied the connection between hormones and premenstrual depression in women. Janiger was also involved with a group studying dolphin
A dolphin is an aquatic mammal within the infraorder Cetacea. Dolphin species belong to the families Delphinidae (the oceanic dolphins), Platanistidae (the Indian river dolphins), Iniidae (the New World river dolphins), Pontoporiidae (the ...
s in their natural environment.[
]
Publications
Janiger published a few journal articles and one book entitled ''A Different Kind of Healing'' in 1993 with Philip Goldberg. The book details physicians' views on the use of alternative medicine
Alternative medicine is any practice that aims to achieve the healing effects of medicine despite lacking biological plausibility, testability, repeatability, or evidence from clinical trials. Complementary medicine (CM), complementary and alt ...
within traditional medical practice. Janiger also coauthored a second book with Marlene Dobkin de Rios about his LSD research—which was published posthumously in 2003 by Park Street Press—entitled ''LSD, Spirituality, and the Creative Process''.
Media
He took part in a documentary on psychedelics and creativity, ''Drug-taking, and the Arts.''
Personal life
A dedicated ocean swimmer, in his 60s, Janiger won a race from Santa Monica
Santa Monica (; Spanish: ''Santa Mónica'') is a city in Los Angeles County, situated along Santa Monica Bay on California's South Coast. Santa Monica's 2020 U.S. Census population was 93,076. Santa Monica is a popular resort town, owing to ...
to Venice Pier and swam regularly in the ocean for a further 10 years.[
Janiger was affectionately referred to as "Oz "by his close friends. He married three times; his third wife, Kathleen Delaney Janiger, died before him, in February 2001.
]
Death
He died of heart and kidney failure at the Little Company of Mary Hospital on August 14, 2001, in Torrance, California
Torrance is a city in the Los Angeles metropolitan area located in Los Angeles County, California, Los Angeles County, California, United States. The city is part of what is known as the South Bay (Los Angeles County), South Bay region of the m ...
. He was 83.
He was survived by sons Robert and David; sister, Estelle Rosten and a brother, Nat.[ Oscar Janiger continued his psychiatric practice until a month before his death.][
]
References
Sources
Erowid online biography of Janiger
{{DEFAULTSORT:Janiger, Oscar
1918 births
2001 deaths
Psychedelic drug researchers
University of California, Irvine faculty
American psychedelic drug advocates
American psychiatrists