Pointsman

[Mark Kohut]

FALL 1960, HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Soon after the psilocybin project got underway, I wrote an enthusiastic
letter to Arthur Koestler in London, summarizing our work and inviting him
to join us... ... He looked terrible when I picked him up at the airport.
It seemed an English psychiatrist at Ann Arbor named Pointsman, learning
that Arthur was scheduled to take psilocybin with me, had suggested that he
run a session for Arthur instead. (The University of Michigan
psychology-psychiatric departments were hotbeds of covert experimentation
by the CIA).
By the time we settled into the Blanc de Blanc, Arthur was rolling along
with his narrative. "It started off very well. I lay down on the couch and
soon began to experience the kind of phenomena that mescaline mystics have
reported. Luminous patterns of great beauty... ... But my mind was not to
be lulled by this tinsel hallucination. Suddenly the intermittent
reflection from the tape spool became meaningful, ominous.
When Dr Pointsman entered the room, he had undergone an incredible
transformation. His face was a sickly yellow. It was split in two like a
cell dividing. A small scar on the doctor's neck, which I had not noticed
before, was gaping wide, trying to swallow the flesh of his bulbous chin.
One ear had shrunk. The other had grown by several inches. He looked like a
smirking, vicious devil.”
Timothy Leary, ‘Flashbacks’, 1983