Harvard’s Quixotic Pursuit of a New Science: The Rise and Fall of the Department of Social Relations w/ Patrick L. Schmidt

On this edition of Parallax Views, attorney and author Patrick Schmidt joins us to discuss his fascinting new book Harvard's Quixotic Pursuit of a New Science: The Rise and Fall of the Department of Social Relations. Patrick details the ambitious academic project that attempted to bring together different disciplines like psychology, anthropology, and sociology under one umbrella and why it ultimately failed. It's a story that involves the sociologist Talcott Parsons (known for his contributions to the functionalist perspective of sociology), 1960s counterculture psychedelic gurus Timothy Leary and Ram Dass, the radical leftist Students for a Democratic Society, and even questionable experiment done to Theodore Kaczsynski years before he became infamous as the Unabomber.

This conversation will lead us into multiple different directions including:

- The formation of the Department of Social Relations and how it was an ambitious project that flew in the face of Harvard's conservative approach to academia

- Talcott Parsons role as the ringleader of the department and what it sought to achieve in the post-WWII world

- Sigmund Freud and the influence of psychoanalysis

- Dr. Henry A. Murray and the story of the experiments done on Ted Kacyzinski while the future Unabomber was attending Harvard (including a little bit of discussion about the CIA and MK-ULTRA)

- Timothy Leary involvement with Harvard, Leary's evolution into the bad boy of academia and a counterculture guru, the rise of LSD and the pharmaceutical company Sandoz, Timothy Leary vs. Aldous Huxley, and the ways in which Leary, Ram Dass, and other may have set research into psychedelics back a number of years through their activities

- The Students for a Democratic Society's involvement in the department ultimately leading to the department's downfall

- And much, much more!