Le sostanze psichedeliche hanno una storia ricca e controversa, che probabilmente risale alle origini dell'uomo e si è sviluppata attraverso le grandi civiltà del passato. Dai miti dall'antica Grecia ai simboli cristiani, dalle filosofie buddiste alle cerimonie religiose del nuovo mondo, il tentativo dell'uomo di espandere la propria coscienza o di viaggiare tra le esperienze che "manifestano la mente" rivela l'attrazione per il mondo ancestrale, esoterico, sciamanico che nemmeno il moderno razionalismo ha potuto cancellare, e che nell'ultimo secolo è stato catapultato nella cultura di massa attraverso l'uso prima terapeutico e poi ricreativo delle droghe sintetiche. "Psichedelia. Viaggio nel sogno della mente illuminata" è un resoconto visivo dei diversi modi in cui l'universo psichedelico è stato immaginato e accolto nella storia e dei suoi riflessi sull'arte, sulla musica e sulla cultura popolare.

Facing Eugenics is a social history of sexual sterilization operations in twentieth-century Canada. Looking at real-life experiences of men and women who, either coercively or voluntarily, participated in the largest legal eugenics program in Canada, it considers the impact of successive legal policies and medical practices on shaping our understanding of contemporary reproductive rights. The book also provides deep insights into the broader implications of medical experimentation, institutionalization, and health care in North America.

Erika Dyck uses a range of historical evidence, including medical files, court testimony, and personal records to place mental health and intelligence at the centre of discussions regarding reproductive fitness. Examining acts of resistance alongside heavy-handed decisions to sterilize people considered “unfit,” Facing Eugenics illuminates how reproductive rights fit into a broader discussion of what constitutes civil liberties, modern feminism, and contemporary psychiatric survivor and disability activism.

LSD's short but colorful history in North America carries with it the distinct cachet of counterculture and government experimentation. The truth about this mind-altering chemical cocktail is far more complex -- and less controversial -- than generally believed.

Psychedelic Psychiatry is the tale of medical researchers working to understand LSD's therapeutic properties just as escalating anxieties about drug abuse in modern society laid the groundwork for the end of experimentation at the edge of psychopharmacology. Historian Erika Dyck deftly recasts our understanding of LSD to show it as an experimental substance, a medical treatment, and a tool for exploring psychotic perspectives -- as well as a recreational drug. She recounts the inside story of the early days of LSD research in small-town, prairie Canada, when Humphry Osmond and Abram Hoffer claimed incredible advances in treating alcoholism, understanding schizophrenia and other psychoses, and achieving empathy with their patients.

In relating the drug's short, strange trip, Dyck explains how concerns about countercultural trends led to the criminalization of LSD and other so-called psychedelic drugs -- concordantly opening the way for an explosion in legal prescription pharmaceuticals -- and points to the recent re-emergence of sanctioned psychotropic research among psychiatric practitioners. This challenge to the prevailing wisdom behind drug regulation and addiction therapy provides a historical corrective to our perception of LSD's medical efficacy.