Michael Hollingshead

"Hollingshead was the Executive Secretary for the Institute of British-American Cultural Exchange in 1961. Dr. John Beresford received a package of LSD from Sandoz Laboratories in Switzerland at a time when it was still legal to use in experiments, and he in turn gave one gram of it to Hollingshead. One experiment Hollingshead conducted involved studying the effects on web-weaving by spiders under the influence of the drug. He claims to have first tried LSD by licking the spoon of a batch of LSD-laced cake icing he had packed in 2 mayonnaise jars for transport. (This jar was to become an object of psychedelic legend.) After his first experience, he contacted Aldous Huxley who suggested he get in contact with Timothy Leary to discuss LSD's potential.

"In September 1961 he met Leary in Cambridge, and was invited to live in Leary's house and teach a course at Harvard. Shortly thereafter, he introduced Leary to LSD. He participated in the Concord Prison Experiment with Leary, Ralph Metzner, and several others in 1962. For the next few years he worked with psychedelic therapists, and lived at Millbrook with Leary and Richard Alpert (aka Ram Dass). He then set up a New York-based project of his own together with Jean Houston, where guided trips were performed and data gathered which, according to Hollingshead's book, formed the core material for Masters' and Houston's book The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience. In 1965 he moved to London where he opened the World Psychedelic Center. He also worked with experimental film, collaborating on the Scott Bartlett short subject "Moon 69", inspired by the 1969 Project Apollo orbit of the moon.

"Hollingshead is an associate of the Castalia Foundation". wiki


 * The Man Who Turned on the World, his 1973 autobiography.

He was the cofounder with John and Jean of the Foundation for Mind Research - their patron was Nassau millionaire Howard Teague. "Jean believed that the reality of the existence of archetypes had been confirmed and demonstrated in the LSD session, which seemed to bring mythological and archetypal structures into conscious awareness. " "Hollingshead, the man with the mayonnaise jar, founded the Agora Foundation in New York with the aid of Victor Lownes, the crown prince of the Playboy empire, and the finance of Howard Teague, a Nassau millionaire. From there he went back across the Atlantic to the Swinging London of the mid-1960s and set up shop in Chelsea. Based in a large and comfortable flat off the Kings Road, he founded the World Psychedelic Centre with the help of two old Etonians. Hollingshead imported books and half a gram of LSD from the United States. The centre built up links to St Martin's School of Art and the recently opened Institute of Contemporary Arts. Among those who (he claims) came within his circle were Alex Trocchi, the writer; Julie Felix, the folksinger; and Sir Roland Penrose, artist and photographer. "

He recalls: "I was working in New York at that time as the executive secretary of the Institute for British American Cultural Exchange. This grandiose title meant that I was in the service of a semi-official British propaganda agency in the field of international cultural relations. There was an impressive board of directors, which included Lord and Lady Natalie Douglas-Hamilton, Huntington Hartford (the megamillionaire whom Tom Wolfe has described as someone who had come amongst us in the role of a 'Martin Luther for modern culture'), Lionel Trilling, W. H. Auden, Congressman Seymour Halpern, General Frank Howley, the Vice-President of New York University, Buell Gallagher, President of City College, New York...

"Some of my time was spent selecting scholarship candidates for a Junior Year programme at St. Andrews University (Lord Douglas-Hamilton's brother, The Duke of Hamilton, was Chancellor); and for short-term credit courses at Oxford and Cambridge; some of my time was spent meeting and talking with executives of the large Foundations like the Carnegie and the Rockefeller Institute, to try to get more money for our programmes. But most of the time I spent smoking grass; and, towards the end, getting stoned on acid. And, as the summer of 1961 approached, it became increasingly clear that I should have to resign. "

Related Sourcewatch

 * Desmond O'Brien
 * Wing Commander Lord Malcolm Avondale Douglas-Hamilton OBE, DFC (12 November 1909 – 21 July 1964) was a former Governor of Gordonstoun School