These therapists and their patients expected the drug to be therapeutic, and, lo and behold, it frequently was: Cohen and Eisner reported that sixteen of their first twenty-two patients showed marked improvement. A 1967 review article summarizing papers about psycholytic therapy published between 1953 and 1965 estimated that the technique’s rate of success ranged from 70 percent in cases of anxiety neurosis, 62 percent for depression, and 42 percent for obsessive-compulsive disorder. These results were impressive, yet there were few if any attempts to replicate them in controlled trials.
