KLÜVER, Heinrich

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Chicago: The University of Chicago Press / Phoenix Books, 1966. First trade paperback edition. Octavo; xviii, 108pp.; index. Signature-bound in printed wraps. Near fine: slight for ward cock, light creasing along hinges, a touch of fading to spine. Signed and inscribed by Klüver on the half-title page: ‘To Helen– with all good wishes for experimenting with “non-hallucinatory” reality levels in the year to come.’ With “January 1967” added in pencil below the inscription. Inscribed copy of this 1966 book collecting two important early works by the German-American psychologist best known for his contributions to the fields of Gestalt psychology and animal behavior. In the 1920s, Klüver’s interest in eidetic visual phenomena led him to conduct a series of experiments during which he ingested mescal “buttons,” the dried tops of the peyote cactus, a plant with an ancient history of ritual use among indigenous populations of Mexico and the American southwest. His resulting 1928 monograph, Mescal, broke ground as the first English-language work on the subject. Indeed, Klüver was decades ahead of his time in considering psychoactive compounds as worthy of serious scientific investigation, particularly with regard to various aspects of the human visual apparatus. The present volume contains the full text of Mescal along with the later Mechanisms of Hallucinations (1942), and with a new preface by Klüver. Show more