In Los Angeles, Cohen, Eisner, and Janiger began incorporating LSD in their weekly therapeutic sessions, gradually stepping up the dose each week until their patients gained access to subconscious material such as repressed emotions and buried memories of childhood trauma. They mainly treated neurotics and alcoholics and people with minor personality disorders—the usual sorts of patients seen by psychotherapists, functional and articulate people with intact egos and the will to get better. The Los Angeles group also treated hundreds of painters, composers, and writers, on the theory that if
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