innermost being is open to the observation of others. This discomfort is likely to be so intense that he will be forced back into the process of self-examination again and again. The subject who becomes involved in this process may display intense emotion, perhaps breaking into tears from time to time. Very often too a subject appears remarkably elated and very easily provoked to laughter. He may in fact frequently appear to laugh more or less at random as though he were laughing for no reason at all. This is not the case. His laughter is provoked by his being able to see with a new clarity both the answers to many problems which have weighed heavily upon him, and the inane nature of many of the methods he has been using to cope with these difficulties. There are steps in the development of self-acceptance which are a direct function of the personality involved and which therefore, we assume, differ remarkably from person to person and cannot be described in any general way. Its achievement is the result of the resolution of the person’s own intrapsychic problems. The therapist cannot solve these problems for the subject. What he can do is to offer the subject encouragement or intelligent criticism from time to time. The therapist, at this stage, should not hesitate, when he is convinced that it will be helpful to the subject, to be insistent that the subject face up to and examine his problems. This does not mean the list of questions the subject has prepared. The subject’s problems, at this time, are evident to him without a list. Because of the amazing human propensity for rationalization and because the chief therapeutic value of the level of awareness induced by LSD is that it permits a person to see through his own system of rationalization, the therapist should not accept any attempt on the subject’s part to avoid responsibility for his own predicament. Usually the subject will realize unconsciously that he is rationalizing and will seek confirmation and support for his rationalizations form the therapist. Indeed, at this point it is safe to say that he knows he is wrong before he asks a question. However, preferring what he realizes is the wrong answer because it is less painful to the self, he seeks to get outside support and confirmation to bolster his accustomed self-concept. The patterns of rationalizations may vary but the themes are general. The subject may try to enumerate the ways in which he has done all he could to get along with others. Outside circumstances have been such, he may claim, that a man cannot afford to love or trust his neighbor or indeed deal particularly fairly with him. At times he may feel that the therapist is “putting pressure upon him. He may, too, try to escape self-examination on the basis that it is useless to bother since he is so had that there can be no hope for him. The therapist should not offer any support for this type of escape. He should refer the problem back to the subject by asking him, “are you certain?” or some such question. The therapist should point out that the subject, and only the subject, can solve the subject’s problems. The subject is very likely to find this an excessively painful process but he should be encouraged to go through with it. It is misguided kindness to try to ease the person painlessly through this stage by reassuring him and distracting him from his self-examination. This is much more likely to happen in group sessions, since in that setting it is much easier for the therapist to distract the subject and he is more inclined to do so because the therapist cannot help sharing some of the subject’s discomfort. The therapist must realize that although he senses hostility on the part of the subject, this hostility I only secondarily directed at him. Primarily it is the subject’s inwardly directed hostility. The subject, finding aspects of himself of which he is ashamed, attempts to conceal them. This is true in either individual or group session but particularly in the latter. He is aware that the others in the experience can sense his feelings as he can sense theirs and he fears that they will reject and revile him because of what they may discover about him. This comes about through a misinterpretation of feeling as
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