"Justifying" Timothy Leary

A reader asked me to justify the legacy of Timothy Leary and his right to be one of the first person whose remains were launched into space. While I have little desire to justify much of anything (much less the life of someone whom I never met), I thought I would respond with a few thoughts.

From my limited perspective, Dr. Timothy Leary was a flawed human being who made some mistakes including his overconfidence that everyone taking psychedelic drugs would reap the same benefits that he did (Leary did not experiment with these drugs until he was 40 years old).

Much of Leary's positive legacy includes his work with the Kaiser group on interpersonal diagnosis of personality and the foundations for what would later become group therapy. The Leary Grid is still popular today and was even used as a psychometric to evaluate Leary's own "escape risk" from prison (Leary's answers suggested that he was docile, obedient, and appropriate for a minimum security prison from which he later escaped).

While most remembered for the slogan "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out," Leary's most consistent theme was "Think for Yourself and Question Authority." Even his pioneering work in the 1950's that later brought him to Harvard was about empowering the individual to better utilize feedback and adjust one's own course (in contrast to the authoritarian stance of "mental health" practitioners that continues to prevail today).

That doesn't mean that Leary advocated irresponsibility or wrecklessness. Prior to the controversy surrounding psychedelics (LSD was legal when Leary and others began their research at Harvard in the early 1960s), Leary lobbied for regulation and licensing of drug use often comparing psychedelics to other forms of powerful energy such as automobiles.

Leary's intense charisma and growing influence among young people did not go unnoticed by a government struggling to maintain "order" and "control" of a generation who was collectively questioning the consequences of blind obedience, patriotism and war.

No doubt that many of Leary's behaviors contributed to his ultimate legacy of being a wild-eyed guru whose influence (whether intended or not) may have contributed to pain in many people's lives. As Leary suggested about drugs, all forms of energy are likely to have both positive and negative consequences. The more powerful the energy, the more intense the consequences.

Speaking for myself, Leary's legacy provide hope and inspiration for much of the work that I do today. It is through that legacy that I first learned of the role of enthusiasm and optimism in making a better future, the role that environmental factors seem to play in shaping human behavior, personality and potential, and the opportunities for continued growth through responsible exploration of new technologies. I know that my life is much richer for these experiences and, hopefully, the work I do as a result is, in some small way, following in that legacy.