Utopias for Boomers: religion, psychology, and sovereignty in the long sixties

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the intertwining of religion and politics in utopian imaginaries against the backdrop of Robert Yelle’s recent theoretical reflections on the relationship between the ‘sacred’ and Carl Schmitt’s idea of a ‘state of exception.’ It argues that in utopian imaginaries, the convergence of the religious and political domains becomes apparent in the postulation of an antinomian ‘Archimedean point of view’ that provides a foundation from which the new social reality can be represented and legitimized. To illustrate this thesis, the article compares the utopian imaginaries put forward in the Long Sixties by three academic psychologists – B.F. Skinner, Timothy Leary, and Abraham Maslow – who provided visions of the ideal future to the Baby Boomer generation. The article shows that despite their different understandings of both the nature of the human psyche and the ideal social order, all three authors base their projects on a form of antinomian sovereignty.

KEYWORDS:

• Utopia
• Long Sixties
• psychology
• antinomian sovereignty
• Carl Schmitt
• B.F. Skinner
• Timothy Leary
• Abraham Maslow

The exception is more interesting than the rule.

(Schmitt 2006, 15)

OK, Boomer … 

(Anonymous)

Introduction

In popular culture, the generation of Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, is often linked with a self-assured, ‘can-do’ mentality that is sometimes met with sarcasm from younger generations. Although these stereotypes do not necessarily capture individual life experiences, they do harken back to a time of prosperity when many young individuals in Western societies believed in their ability to actively shape a more positive future. In this article, I will explore some of the utopian visions that Baby Boomers encountered during their formative years. However, my primary goal is not historical, but rather systematic.

My aim is to examine the heuristic fruitfulness of utopian imaginaries for discussing interactions across social fields such as religion, politics, and science in modern societies. This assessment is intended to contribute to the ongoing debate on a relational approach to social reality (Powell and Déplateau 2013), which recently also took root in the study of religion\s (e.g., Josephson-Storm 2021; Krech 2020; Krüger 2021). Although there is no consensus yet on the exact contours of such an approach, one of its goals is to rethink and complexify the debate around the processes of social differentiation and dedifferentiation by calling attention to forms of thought and action that appear to evade unequivocal ascription to a distinct functional domain. Against this background, I contend that, if on a historical basis it might make sense to distinguish between religious, scientific, or political utopias (see Mignon in this issue), on a conceptual basis this distinction is moot. In fact, my point is that utopia is the (or at least an) imagined locus in which the line between these domains becomes blurred.

Before moving on, some preliminary remarks on my understanding and use of the term utopia are in order. As mentioned in the introduction to this special issue, utopia is a multidimensional concept implying both an imagined and a lived dimension. On the one hand, it can point to a normative picture of the world ‘as it should be’ in contrast to ‘how it is’; on the other hand, it can indicate a concrete attempt to translate such an outline into practice. In my discussion, I will focus on the first dimension. Even when I refer to material practices, my focus will be on the narratives surrounding them and not on the reality in the field. Concretely, I am interested in utopias as ‘cognitive shortcuts for thought experiments with boundary conditions of social policies’ (Swirski 2011, 9), as mental maps unburdened by the pragmatics of their realization. As other authors have shown in detail (see Beutter in this issue), there is always a gap between imagination and life. This, however, does not affect the critical and motivational potential of utopian thought in the face of real-world hurdles, nor its capacity to illuminate social relations by offering an idealized counterpoint to lived conditions.

It is above all in this imaginative act that the contours of a distinct social sphere become fuzzy. In this article, I consider how and why this is the case, drawing on both theoretical reflections and selected case studies. From a theoretical point of view, I will argue that the vision of a new social order requires the construction of an Archimedean point from which the new reality can be observed and legitimized. My intention is to demonstrate that such a God’s-eye perspective is inherently antinomian, transcending the constraints of the established normative order. By this, I mean not only that the utopian plan positions itself in opposition to the dominant social order, offering a radical alternative, but also that the imaginative act of conceiving a utopian society inevitably includes – and must come to terms with – an antinomian element. This element constitutes an exception within the envisaged utopian order itself. In this respect, my conceptual framework draws on the recent analysis by Robert Yelle (2019) of the relationship between sovereignty and the sacred. Building on these insights, I will argue that religious and political realms converge in utopian thought not only through its ambivalent relationship to millenarian worldviews, but also through the invocation of a state of exception as the foundation of a new governance. I will provide a summary of Yelle’s thesis in the next section.

In my examination of case studies, I will combine Yelle’s insights with an in-context discussion of how scientific advances intertwine with politics and religion in modern utopian imaginaries. In his intellectual history of utopia and anti-utopia, British sociologist Krishan Kumar (1987, 32–68) highlights that a key feature of modern utopian projects since the late eighteenth century has been their dynamic and future-oriented nature. These utopias regard the power of human rationality to actively shape a better tomorrow through technological advances and insights from the social sciences as an inherent part of the historical process. These tendencies reached a fever pitch in the nineteenth century (see Kirsch in this issue), but the catastrophes of the twentieth century put a dent in such optimistic predictions and called attention to the shadow side of utopianism (see Claeys 2017). However, a new burst of utopian hope emerged after the Second World War, during the countercultural effervescence of the Long Sixties (ca. 1955–1973). The second section will provide a sketch of these developments and emphasize the role of psychology as the science that shaped the utopian imaginary of the Baby Boomers.

The following three sections will provide a closer look at the work of three psychologists who, while belonging to an older generation, were instrumental in devising utopian worldviews for Boomers. The three Ivy League scholars under examination are B. F. Skinner (1904–1990), one of the most prominent advocates of radical behaviorism; Timothy Leary (1920–1996), the self-proclaimed High Priest of the psychedelic counterculture; and Abraham Maslow (1908–1970), one of the main proponents of humanistic psychology (and toward the end of his life, of transpersonal psychology). These authors had different political views. However, I will argue that they share a common drive toward applying their scientific insights to a radical reform of society and that in order to do so, they have to ‘domesticate’ a form of antinomianism at the crossroads of sovereignty and the sacred. However, before entering into the empirical details, let me first outline my theoretical framework.

Utopia, sovereignty, and the sacred

Utopian representations and projects rest on the criticism of current living conditions and on the promise of systematic improvement across societal domains. Utopian narratives often adopt an enumerative style, highlighting the virtues of profound reforms in various aspects of life. Religion is typically included in this inventory, either to commend its perfected form or to celebrate its timely disappearance. In both cases, the reference to religion aims to underscore the political and metaphysical superiority of the new social order. The prospect of a new ‘cosmos’ constitutes one of the main appeals of utopian imaginaries. At the same time, however, as my case studies will illustrate, the emphasis on the break with the surrounding societal (dis)order does not fully answer the question of the legitimacy of the new social structures. The radical propositions of utopian narratives reveal – and, not unlike myths (see Smith 1982), allow for reflection on – the deeper disruptions that ground a new political order. It is in these moments of disarrangement that we can observe a confluence of religion and politics.

To explore this feature of utopian visions, I draw on a series of recent studies that Robert Yelle has dedicated to the ‘connection between sovereignty and the sacred as a way of reimagining the foundations of both polity and religion’ (Yelle 2019, 1). In his analysis, Yelle notes the unease with which both contemporary political theory and the study of religion\s regard the irrational and disruptive nature of sovereign decision making, be it the authority of kings or the fiat of the gods. In his view, such an attitude is rooted in the self-representation of seemingly disenchanted modern societies that emphasize, in their political and scientific rhetoric, their discontinuity with a past order plagued by such disruptions and insist on the disciplined form of their modes of governance. As legality prevails over sovereignty, the sacred loses its ambivalence and tends to be appraised in terms of harmony and stability (Yelle 2019, 13–17).

As Yelle’s reconstruction demonstrates, such a picture has deep historical roots in Christian thought and subtly perpetuates theological positions that sought to exclude all charismatic ruptures that could question the regularities of natural law. Indeed, Yelle argues that the idea of disenchantment can be regarded as a Christian myth (Yelle 2011; 2013) or as a political theology that obscures the persistence of antinomian sovereignty (Yelle 2010; 2019, 37–73). His argument reaches back to the work of the German philosopher Carl Schmitt (1888–1995). According to Schmitt, the liberal conception of the state dissimulates the reality that no legal order can establish its foundation from within since it lacks the capacity to internally determine the conditions that would justify its suspension (Schmitt 2006, 5–6). The declaration of a ‘state of exception’ can only be an act of sovereignty (Schmitt 2006, 5). In Schmitt’s view, the rise of political liberalism must be understood as the consequence of a profound theological and metaphysical change:

The idea of the modern constitutional state triumphed together with deism, a theology and metaphysics that banished the miracle from the world. This theology and metaphysics rejected not only the transgression of the laws of nature through an exception brought about by direct intervention, as is found in the idea of a miracle, but also the sovereign’s direct intervention in a valid legal order. (Schmitt 2006, 36–37)

The analogy between the exception in jurisprudence and the miracle in theology (Schmitt 2006, 36) invites us to explore the juncture of religion and politics precisely in those situations in which the established routine encounters its limits (Yelle 2019, 13).

Expanding on this line of thought, Yelle argues that ‘there is a convergence between the sacred and sovereignty as states of exception’ (Yelle 2019, 20). This convergence is ‘based on their shared qualities of rupture, singularity, and antinomianism’ (Yelle 2019, 18). While Yelle refrains from making a definitive statement, this perspective suggests the possibility that these two categories, sacred and sovereignty, rather than representing sui generis phenomena, ‘could turn out to be the same as each other’ (Yelle 2019, 18). To explore this thesis, Yelle draws mostly on examples from Jewish, Christian, and Roman antiquity, with some excursions into the world of early Indian traditions. In the following, I will argue that his perspective can be fruitfully adapted to analyze more recent sources.

Utopias for Boomers

After the bursts of social enthusiasm and revolutionary imaginaries of the nineteenth century – the ‘most utopian century’ (Kumar 1987, 34) – the twentieth century has come to be seen as the ‘twilight of utopia’ (Kumar 1987, 380). The horrors of the mechanized conflicts in the first half of the century profoundly shook any faith in the potential of scientific and technological progress to construct an ideal society. The cohort known as the Greatest Generation (born ca. 1900–1925), who persevered through the Great Depression, was deeply affected by the devastating impact of the Second World War. Among the intellectual elites, the atrocities committed in the names of Nazi and Fascist ideologies, coupled with a growing awareness of the brutality of the Stalinist regime, dampened hopes for radical political transformations.

This disillusionment with the redemptive power of rational planning found its literary expression in works such as Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). Concurrently, in his philosophical writings, Karl Popper (1957, 71) cautioned against the ‘unholy alliance’ of historicism and utopianism epitomized by Plato and Marx. Popper did not fundamentally oppose the practical utilization of the social sciences to enhance society. However, he clearly differentiated between a piecemeal approach to social engineering, which worked by gradual, incremental steps, and a holistic attempt to usher in a new society by uncovering the laws that govern historical change (see Popper 1945, 147–157; Popper 1957, 58–82). According to Popper, any comprehensive blueprint for a new society contained the germs of totalitarianism, since it rested on ‘the colossal assumption that we need not question the fundamental benevolence of the planning Utopian engineer, who is vested with an authority which at least approaches dictatorial powers’ (Popper 1957, 91).

Popper’s admonitions exerted a significant influence on academic discussions on the role of applied social sciences (see Podgórecki 1975). By the mid-fifties, however, Western societies had bounced back from the austerity of the war economy and were in the midst of a period of rapid economic and demographic revitalization, retrospectively characterized as ‘the glorious thirty’ (Fourastié 1979). Newfound security provided the Baby Boomer generation with the freedom to experiment with new forms of life, including in the domains of sexuality, communal living, and religion (see Rota 2023b). Cautious attitudes towards societal transformation did not align with the vibrant social and cultural effervescence of the Long Sixties, when a renewed, albeit short-lived, planning euphoria swept through large sectors of society. During that time, notable sociologists such as Talcott Parsons and Robert Bellah emerged as empathetic observers of the new utopian spirit of the counterculture (see Ashcraft 2023; Walthert 2023). However, it was arguably the field of psychology that produced some of the most substantial visions that sought to revolutionize society.

Psychology’s status in Western societies changed fundamentally at the end of the nineteenth century with the rise of the ‘New Psychology,’ a movement that strove to detach the study of the human mind from philosophical speculation and reframe it as a ‘proper science’ (see Koch 1992). Psychologists now claimed special expertise in the analysis of human nature, offering concrete solutions to private and social problems (Wiklander 1996, 90). The idea that ‘individuality is no longer ineffable, unique, and beyond knowledge but can be known, mapped, calibrated, evaluated, quantified, predicted, and managed’ (Rose 1992, 358) provided support to policies aimed at administering ‘individuals in their collective existence’ by making ‘intersubjectivity calculable’ (Rose 1992, 360). At the same time, a psychological approach to the self and interpersonal relationships progressively seeped into everyday life, giving rise, after the Second World War, to what psychology historian Roger Smith (2013, 102) calls a ‘psychological society,’ in which ‘Mr and Ms Everyman became psychologists themselves,’ and in which ‘the psychological representation of life became dominant.’

Against this backdrop, psychological utopian projects such as those discussed below gained an aura of plausibility. However, during this period of rupture, academic psychology itself also underwent rapid changes. The rise of new clinical approaches and of humanistic psychology challenged the dominant paradigms of the previous decades, behaviorism and psychoanalysis. Within the space of a few years, new ways of understanding the human mind and, consequently, the human person and its social dimensions entered the intellectual mainstream. This development also caused the rapid transformation of the contemporary utopian imagination.

In the following, I will argue that this transformation can be analytically divided into three steps, moving from a conservative to a republican and thence to a (neo)liberal political framework. The three steps are exemplified by Skinner’s approach to the ‘engineering of behavior,’ Leary’s take on the ‘engineering of extasy,’ and Maslow’s views on the ‘engineering of the self.’ As the analysis of their works will show, the common denominator of these psychological utopian projects is the inclusion of an antinomian element couched in religious terms that serves as the extraordinary – one might say, transcendent – foundation of the new social order. With these ideas in mind, let us first turn to the behaviorist utopia of B. F. Skinner.

A behaviorist utopia

To this day, the name Burrhus Frederic (B. F.) Skinner is among the most recognized in psychology. As a Harvard graduate and later as a professor at the same university, he made significant scientific contributions by developing and refining the behaviorist approach originally pioneered by the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936) and the American psychologist John B. Watson (1878–1958). Behaviorism played a pivotal role in shifting psychology’s focus away from introspection and toward the study of observable behavior, starting with the analysis of conditioned reflexes in animals, epitomized by Pavlov’s famous experiments with dogs, and ending with the study of human linguistic expression (Skinner 1957).

Skinner used innovative, self-devised laboratory instruments to study how research subjects, mostly rats and pigeons, operated on their environment and how to alter their behavior by manipulating the consequences of their actions. Through his experiments, he formulated the theory of operant conditioning, which asserts that the response tendencies of subjects can be strengthened or weakened by manipulating their environment, notably by introducing positive reinforcement following the performance of desired actions. Behaviors that are followed by positive reinforcement, such as the provision of food, are more likely to occur in the future (Skinner 1938, 19–22).

Skinner combined his experimental approach with a sophisticated epistemological stance rooted in radical behaviorism. This standpoint acknowledged that introspection allows us to perceive a mental ‘world within the skin’ (Skinner 1974, 22) that we commonly use to explain our behavior. However, it would be misleading to regard the events in that realm as inherently personal states of mind. What we represent as ‘inner states or possessions’ are, in fact, ‘the effects of operant reinforcement’ (Skinner 1974, 49) arising from the preceding environmental conditions. Therefore, although we intuitively relate our actions to these internal phenomena, the underlying causes of our behavior are external to us. As Skinner (1974, 65) puts it, ‘Feelings or states of mind […] may be interpreted as collateral products of the contingencies which generate behavior.’

Although Skinner never performed experiments with human subjects, his intellectual work extended beyond the laboratory, both as the inventor of devices to improve family life and education, and as a public intellectual committed to social reforms (Rutherford 2009, 19–40). Skinner’s social philosophy bears the imprint of Francis Bacon’s technological idealism and is firmly rooted in a tradition of Anglo-American meliorist thought that can be traced back to the Puritans (see Smith 1996). In 1971, at the pinnacle of his fame, Skinner published his most systematic and controversial essay on contemporary social issues and their solutions, Beyond Dignity and Freedom. However, more than twenty years earlier, he had published his own New Atlantis in the form of the utopian novel Walden Two (Skinner 1948). The essay and the novel present similar ideas in different forms, and it is worth reading them as a single narrative.

The novel follows a rather straightforward plot. Shortly after the Second World War, Burris, a psychology professor and Skinner’s literary alter ego, receives a visit from two young men, returned from the war, who seek his help to locate one of his former colleagues, a certain Frazier, who has founded an experimental settlement called Walden Two. Together with a philosophy professor named Castle, the two returning soldiers, and their fiancées, Burris visits the self-proclaimed utopian community where, over several days, Frazier introduces his guests to various aspects of the group’s life. The main drive of the story is provided by the debates between the skeptical Castle and the histrionic Frazier.¹ In the end, Castle vehemently rejects Frazier’s utopian vision, while Burris, after some hesitation, embraces it.

Far more interesting than the novel’s plot are its diagnosis of the human condition and the ideas it suggests to improve social life. Frazier paints a picture of human coexistence not unlike that of the ‘war of all against all’ found in Hobbes ([1651] 1996) – a state that current societies do a poor job of improving upon.

‘Each of us,’ Frazier began, ‘is engaged in a pitched battle with the rest of humankind’ […]. 'Each of us has interests which conflict with the interests of everybody else. That’s our original sin, and it can’t be helped. Now, “everybody else” we call “society.” It is a powerful opponent, and it always wins. [’] (Skinner 1948, 95)

At the same time, however, humankind cannot dispense with society, since ‘[w]ithout a social environment, a person remains essentially feral, like those children said to have been raised by wolves’ (Skinner 1971, 122). In this respect, Skinner is categorical: ‘Rousseau’s great principle – that “nature has made man happy and good, but that society depraves him and makes him miserable” – was wrong’ (Skinner 1971, 123).

In the novel, Frazier maintains that forms of government that put ‘too much faith in human nature’ are doomed to fail. However, his verdict is not that humans are inherently evil but that concerns about human nature are irrelevant (Skinner 1948, 182). This standpoint reflects the most radical aspects of Skinner’s behavioristic idea of a person: ‘The picture which emerges from a scientific analysis is not of a body with a person inside, but of a body which is a person in the sense that it displays a complex repertoire of behaviour’ (Skinner 1971, 195). It is only by dispensing with the idea of the ‘autonomous man – the inner man, the homunculus, the possessing demon, the man defended by the literatures of freedom and dignity’ that science will be able to finally turn ‘to the real causes of human behaviour’ and move ‘from the inferred to the observed, from the miraculous to the natural, from the inaccessible to the manipulable’ (Skinner 1971, 196).²

An analysis of ‘the real causes of human behaviour’ would reveal that social ailments are, in essence, the consequence of an inadequate social environment. For Skinner, ‘It is the environment which is “responsible” for the objectionable behavior, and it is the environment, not some attribute of the individual, which must be changed’ (Skinner 1971, 77). Thus, as Frazier explains, the key to improving society lies in answering two simple questions: ‘What’s the best behavior for the individual so far as the group is concerned? And how can the individual be induced to behave in that way?’ (Skinner 1948, 95).

Multiple passages in Walden Two explicitly reject the possibility of deriving the answers to these inquiries from some general principle. Frazier insists that ‘Walden Two isn’t a religious community’ and that no systematic religious teaching is imparted to children (Skinner 1948, 185). In his view, political ideologies, philosophy, psychoanalysis, theology, and history are futile because the definitive picture of a good life they claim to offer can only be imposed through power, and ‘You can’t force a man to be happy’ (Skinner 1948, 180). To any ‘revealed truth,’ Frazier opposes a ‘constantly experimental attitude toward everything’ that encourages viewing ‘every habit and custom with an eye to possible improvement’ (Skinner 1948, 25). Nevertheless, there are two ideas that guide the open-ended, real-world laboratory of Walden Two: the Walden Code and the pioneering ‘science of behavior.’

The Walden Code contains a number of rules of conduct that must be accepted by each member (Skinner 1948, 150). Adherence to the contract is not merely voluntaristic, however. Specific means are deployed to make sure that ‘no one in Walden Two ever acts for the benefit of anyone else except as the agent of the community’ (Skinner 1948, 220). In particular, ‘certain behavioral processes’ are set up that ‘will lead the individual to design his own “good” conduct when the time comes’ (Skinner 1948, 96). To Castle’s recriminations against the loss of individual freedom, Frazier replies that techniques of control are an unavoidable feature of every society (Skinner 1948, 153). The real issue is how control is exerted. In light of this truth, Walden Two has been set up as a dynamic experiment to test the best way to exert it for the good of society.

Since experimental testing has demonstrated that force, physical restraint, and punishment are of limited value in achieving society’s goals, such practices have no place at Walden Two. Instead, the control of behavior draws on the deliberate manipulation of the environment to provide ‘positive reinforcement.’ When a community member acts as they should, their behavior is reinforced by the creation of a situation they like or by removing some aspects they do not like (Skinner 1948, 244). In such conditions, the opposition between control and freedom breaks down because every member of Walden Two will want to observe the Code.

We can achieve a sort of control under which the controlled, though they are following a code much more scrupulously than was ever the case under the old system, nevertheless feel free. They are doing what they want to do, not what they are forced to do. That’s the source of the tremendous power of positive reinforcement – there’s no restraint and no revolt. By a careful cultural design, we control not the final behavior, but the inclination to behave – the motives, the desires, the wishes. (Skinner 1948, 246–247)

At Walden Two, the determination of the best behavior in each domain of society and the study of the best contingencies to induce it are the tasks of Planners and Managers, who determine the best behavior experimentally (Skinner 1948, 47–50). It is against this backdrop that Frazier’s role emerges as the antinomian figure, the sovereign, on which the foundation of the new social order rests. Revealingly, this issue is discussed in relation to God’s sovereign power.

Toward the end of the novel, Burris meets Frazier on a stone hill called The Throne. From there, Frazier can observe the whole of Walden Two: ‘I look upon my work and, behold, it is good,’ he says (Skinner 1948, 278). Before a surprised Burris, he draws a parallel between his creation and God’s, calling attention to theological discussions of predestination and free will:

‘All that happens is contained in an original plan, yet at every stage the individual seems to be making choices and determining the outcome. The same is true of Walden Two. Our members are practically always doing what they want to do […] but we see to it that they will want to do precisely the things which are best for themselves and the community. Their behavior is determined, yet they’re free.’ (Skinner 1948, 279)

If the social order of Walden Two makes a dictator out of him, as Castle argues, then Frazier sees himself as no more a dictator than the God of the Old Testament – or even less since he, like Jesus, refuses to punish (Skinner 1948, 279–280).

Nevertheless, it is clear that Frazier is not subject to the rules of Walden Two, unlike the other members of the community, while being a part of it. His exceptional position becomes incidentally apparent during a visit by Burris to Frazier’s private room, which, in contrast to the tidy community, is a chaotic and disheveled space. Frazier admits being a ‘curious study in opposites’: ‘The precision and order in my thinking is equaled only by the fantastic disorder of my personal habits.’ (Skinner 1948, 231). However, this contrast extends beyond the setting of the room. Reacting to Burris’s mistrusting attitude, Frazier exclaims,

‘You think […] My motives are ulterior and devious, my emotions warped. In a word – of all the people you’ve seen in the past four days, you’re sure that I’m one, the least, who couldn’t possibly be a genuine member of any community.’ […] ‘Well, you’re perfectly right,’ he said quietly. […] ‘But God damn it Burris!’ he cried, […] ‘Can’t you see? I’m – not – a – product – of – Walden – Two!’ (Skinner 1948, 233)

While adhering to the Walden Code in his daily life, Frazier distinguishes himself as the sole individual at Walden Two who can perceive its underlying order and who can willingly subvert it should he choose to. In his self-avowed cosmogonic role (Skinner 1948, 281), Frazier incarnates the quality of the sovereign who is ‘at the same time, outside and inside the juridical order’ (Agamben 1998, 15). In this regard, Skinner observes,

When a person changes his physical or social environment ‘intentionally’ – that is, in order to change human behaviour, possibly including his own – he plays two roles: one as a controller, as the designer of a controlling culture, and another as the controlled, as the product of a culture. There is nothing inconsistent about this; it follows from the nature of the evolution of a culture, with or without intentional design. (Skinner 1971, 202)

Having excluded all other possible sources of subversion, Skinner presents Frazier as the only figure able to transcend the social order of which he is also a subject. However, Skinner appears to struggle with Frazier’s sovereign role. The question of ‘who controls the controller’ is recurrent in his work, although the answer is always elusive. In the end, the solution offered in the novel seems to converge with the standpoint of deists in the eighteenth century, which had God retire from creation after having set everything in motion (Yelle 2019, 37–44). Indeed, Frazier awaits the moment when, according to his plan, the social structure he is putting into place will no longer need him. ‘You can safely leave me out,’ he says to Burris, ‘Forget me, and turn your face on heaven’ (Skinner 1948, 234).

An acid utopia

When it came out in 1948, Walden Two received a cold reaction from both audiences and critics. A few decades later, however, it became a record-breaking best-seller. Arguably, this success was less due to its content than to the inextinguishable thirst for new social imaginaries in the context of the rising counterculture of the late sixties (Rutherford 2009, 118–147). Indeed, Beyond Freedom and Dignity also became an instant best-seller, but mostly due to the intense critical reactions it sparked (see Rutherford 2009, 33–37). Within psychology, behaviorism’s ‘de-humanizing’ traits were facing growing opposition. In 1946, the antibehaviorists at Harvard had already founded the interdisciplinary Department of Social Relations, which focused on the study of personality and social issues based on the assumption that humans are naturally autonomous (Gere 2017, 179). The Department’s public renown reached new heights in the 1960s, although not necessarily for the best, thanks to a controversial scholar recruited in 1959 and unceremoniously dismissed four years later: Timothy Leary.

In popular culture, Leary is most famous for promoting the use of psychedelic drugs among the hippies of San Francisco’s Bay Area, while the study of religion\s has focused on his role in developing an entheogenic gnosis (Partridge 2018, 225–287). However, as I have argued at length elsewhere (Rota 2023a), his academic work is fundamental to understanding both his religious and social concerns. In the mid-fifties, Leary, a Berkeley graduate, was a rising talent in clinical psychology, and during his Harvard years, he spearheaded several experiments on the effects and uses of psychedelic substances. These experiments were prompted by a transformative experience he had during a vacation in Cuernavaca, Mexico, in the summer of 1960, after consuming so-called magic mushrooms. Leary was already a critic of mainstream psychology and psychiatry prior to this initial encounter with psilocybin. However, in light of the new insights provided by the psychedelic experience, his break with the old paradigm became irreconcilable.

For Leary, the ‘older, classic world view […] concerns itself with equilibria among forces which are visible, external, predictable, measurable, manageable by man’ (Leary 1964, 15) while losing sight of ‘that which is most important to the subject – his consciousness’ (Leary [1961] 1964, 103). Following other critics, Leary calls attention to the anthropocentric ideology – or ‘myth’ – that underpins this view at the political and scientific levels.

The religious expression of this mythos is Protestantism, with its emphasis on behavior, achievement, work, balancing and rationality. The current political forms (socialism, democracy, communism, parliamentarianism) are again anthropocentric […]. Again the macroscopic, visible manageable aspects of behavior are stressed. […] Classic physical science was almost exclusively a Protestant affair; the emphasis was on the orderly, clockwork equilibrium of external, material, visible macroscopic forces: God the master engineer […]. The psychological expressions of the anthropocentric mythos again fit the dimensions of the myth. Behaviorism (again a scientific movement invented and manned by men of the Protestant faith) recognizes only visible actions. (Leary 1964, 15)

It is clear, then, that a new psychology that takes seriously ‘the incredible multilevel nature of consciousness’ (Leary 1970, 214) constitutes a threat to ‘every branch of the Establishment’ and entails a fundamental transformation of the whole society (Leary and Alpert 1963, 34).

Leary’s revolutionary views emerged from genuine epistemic concerns surrounding the study of experiential data. Anchored in these concerns, he emphasized the importance of a suitable theory of behavior as an essential counterpart for experiential analysis. According to Leary, all behavior is culturally dependent and learned, and ought to be studied analogously to games, that is, by reference to implicit sets of roles, rules, goals, and values. In most cases, such game structures remain invisible and function as a means of social control.

Culturally, stability is maintained by keeping the members of any cultural group from seeing that the roles, rules, goals, […] are game structures. The family game is treated by most cultures as far more than a game […]. The nationality game. It is treason not to play. The racial game. The religious game. (Leary [1961] 1964, 106)

Leary and his colleagues analyzed these dynamics first-hand in a study conducted among the inmates of Concord Prison, concluding that ‘self-defeating games’ that ultimately lead to repeated criminal offenses ‘are maintained largely through inability to recognize the features and rules of the game one is involved in’ (Leary [1961] 1964, 106).

Herein lies the therapeutic potential of psychedelic substances: ‘[D]rug-induced satori. In three hours under the right circumstances the cortex can be cleared. The games that frustrate and torment can be seen in the cosmic dimension’ (Leary [1961] 1964, 112). According to Leary, the prisoners at Concord who ingested psilocybin in a supportive setting became aware of the stereotyped games in which they had been involved: ‘the game of “cops and robbers,” the game of being a tough guy, the game of outwitting the law, the game of resentful cynicism’ (Leary [1961] 1964, 116).

Leary’s interpretation of the psychedelic experience clearly bears the mark of the work of his friend, the British novelist Aldous Huxley (1894–1963). In The Doors of Perception ([1954] 2004), the autobiographical account of his first trip on mescaline, Huxley suggested that psychedelic substances do not create hallucinatory visions but liberate the brain from the (linguistic) constraints that prevent the full flow of consciousness and allow the psychonaut to perceive the ‘mind at large.’ The ordinary person can experience an ‘unfiltered’ reality previously accessible only to great artists and mystics. As Huxley ([1954] 2004, 7) puts it, ‘I was seeing what Adam had seen on the morning of his creation – the miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence.’

For Leary (1963, 104), whose main frame of reference remained clinical psychology, this meant that ‘we can take a lower-class, uneducated criminal […] and, via psilocybin, he can experience what Blake saw in his visions.’ In his view, this possibility opened new avenues for reshaping behavior.

An exciting and frightening aspect of psychedelic drugs is just this – that these compounds not only temporarily suspend old imprints – they produce new imprints. During a psychedelic session the nervous system, stripped of all previous learning and identity, is completely open to stimulation (and here is the joy, the discovery, the revelation), but it is also completely vulnerable. Naked suggestibility. (Leary 1965, 441)

These passages from Huxley and Leary point toward the return to a Rousseauean state of nature, pregnant with possibilities.

As Yelle (2019, 29–33, 126–155) points out, various religious traditions offer the prospect of restoration to a state in which ordinary life is suspended and the community reverts to its original condition – a condition of creative violence or of undifferentiated communitas. Yelle (2019, 30) argues that such a reversal is ‘equivalent to the state of exception that marks sovereignty’ and offers a foundation for the imagination of the polity. This is because the state of nature constitutes, as Agamben (1998, 35) puts it, the ‘being-in-potentiality [l’essere-in-potenza] of the law’ incorporated into society. For Agamben (1998, 37), the state of exception and the state of nature are ‘two sides of a single topological process in which what was presupposed as external (the state of nature) now reappears, as in a Mobius strip or a Leyden jar, in the inside (as state of exception).’ Still, the state of exception cannot be the default state of the social order. Thus, as with the problematic of the liminal status of Frazier in Skinner’s novel, Huxley and Leary were also confronted with the issue of the domestication, or socialization, of the state of exception – here, the replacement of the state of nature by a social contract that inaugurates political society (Rousseau [1762] 2013, 27–29).

Huxley explored the matter in his last work of fiction, the utopian novel Island, published in 1962. In it, a journalist finds his way to the forbidden island of Pala, where the wise Dr. Robert introduces him to an ideal society. Palanese culture combines elements from Western science and Mahayana Buddhism with the ritual consumption of ‘moksha,’ a psychedelic substance that allows the consumer to ‘catch a glimpse of the world as it looks to someone who has been liberated from his bondage to the ego’ (Huxley [1962] 2005, 137). However, the effects of the substance are transient. Thus, as Dr. Robert notes, the following questions arise:

And when it has passed, what will you do with this experience? What will you do with all the other similar experiences that the moksha-medicine will bring you in the years to come? Will you merely enjoy them as you would enjoy an evening at the puppet show, and then go back to business as usual […]? Or, having glimpsed, will you devote your lives to the business, not at all as usual, of being what you are in fact? (Huxley [1962] 2005, 169)

The social arrangements on the island, the doctor continues, can only provide techniques and opportunities: ‘It remains for you to decide whether you’ll co-operate with the grace and take those opportunities’ (Huxley [1962] 2005, 169). The psychedelic experience is framed as a liminal state, the insights of which are not the end but the beginning of a new individual and social transformation.

Leary first encountered this issue in his study with inmates. Describing the work that remains to be done after the first experiences distributing psilocybin in Concord Prison, he stresses that ‘insight is the beginning, and the more demanding task is to help these men choose new games, help them learn the rules, the roles, the concepts, the rituals of the new game’ (Leary [1961] 1964, 117). To explore not only the individual but also the social consequences of the psychedelic experience, in 1963, Leary cofounded the International Federation for Internal Freedom. The Federation’s Statement of Purpose ([1963] 2014), coauthored by Leary and the scholar of religion Huston Smith, called for the establishment of ‘experimental communities based on new perspectives which indole substances produce […] both to provide support for these perspectives and to test their validity.’ This desideratum was put into practice in the summers of 1962 and 1963 during two psychedelic retreats at a resort in Zihuatanejo, Mexico.

The setting of the retreat was inspired by Huxley’s utopian novel, and selected participants were invited to be instructed as ‘ecstatitians’ (Leary, Alpert, and Metzner 1964, 182), that is, trained guides who could help people navigate and get the most from the psychedelic experience. The group operated under the assumption that learned patterns acquired during the socialization process would inhibit direct person-to-person contact in favor of stereotyped social role-playing. By temporarily suspending learned behavior, the psychedelic experience was meant to permit direct, socially unmediated contact with the other while raising the individual’s awareness of the illusory nature of social games. Like the inhabitants of Pala, the participants in the Zihuatanejo project did not assume that they could indefinitely dispense with roles and rules (see Downing 1964, 149–150). However, they regarded the psychedelic experience as a way to transform their participation in social games into a conscious act, taking responsibility for their behavior.

Such a transformation, however, required a way to translate the results of the psychedelic experience into everyday consciousness. This problem was central to Leary’s experimental work and philosophical reflections, since the (drug-induced) visionary states were regarded as going beyond language. To partially sidestep this problem, in Zihuatanejo, Leary and his colleagues encouraged the use of the Bardo Thödol, also known as the Tibetan Book of the Dead, as a source of metaphors to guide and interpret the ecstatic visions.

The book treats of the intermediate state between life and death, but the esoteric aim of the book was to instruct adepts in changing consciousness. It is a book of the living, a manual for recognizing and utilizing ecstatic states of altered consciousness and applying the ecstatic experience in the postsession life. (Leary, Alpert, and Metzner 1964, 184–185)

For Leary and his associates (1964, 185), the Bardo Thödol provided an ‘uncanny portrayal of states regularly encountered in psychedelic sessions.’ However, a more distanced reflection suggests the impossibility of determining an unequivocal correspondence between private states of mind and public discourse. For this reason, it makes sense to consider the Tibetan Book of the Dead as the source of a shared narrative conventionally adopted by the participants to speak about their experiences. In the collective acceptance of such a narrative, we can see the germ of a social contract and of a republican social order.

An individualized utopia

At the end of Huxley’s novel, the island of Pala succumbs to a foreign invader. Retrospectively, this could have been read as a premonition since Leary’s group was subsequently and abruptly expelled from Mexico. Afterward, Leary and his colleagues continued with experiments in collective living, but not all the participants were satisfied with the outcome. In particular Richard Alpert (1931–2019), Leary’s closest associate, later known as Ram Dass, became disillusioned with the psychedelic scene and found a different source of illumination in the teachings of a Vaishnava guru (see Ram Dass 1971). Like him, many seekers in the early seventies repudiated the (by then illegal) psychedelic substances and looked to the East in search of transcendence. Others, however, found it in the nascent Human Potential Movement and its foundation in humanistic psychology (Hammer 2006).

Humanistic psychology emerged as the third force in American psychology in the 1940s. However, it was in the 1960s and 1970s that many of its core ideas diffused into the broader culture (see Bigalke, Eder, and Schüler 2023). Part of this success can be traced back to the popularity of one of its founders, the psychologist Abraham Maslow. Maslow spent most of his academic career teaching at Brandeis University. However, it was during his postdoctoral years in New York at Columbia University and Brooklyn College that he laid the foundations for his most influential theoretical work. The influx of scholars fleeing from Europe in the thirties and forties created a vibrant intellectual milieu. In this context, Maslow befriended influential thinkers such as the anthropologist Ruth Benedict (1887–1948) and psychologist Max Wertheimer (1880–1943), who became his mentors and provided important sources of inspiration.

In 1943, Maslow published a groundbreaking paper presenting a new theory of human motivation. In it, he argued that human behavior could not be reduced to responses to physiological needs – to the structure of rats’ behavior. Instead, he suggested that human motivation is rooted in the satisfaction of a hierarchy of needs. When the physiological needs at the bottom of the hierarchy are satisfied – ‘when the belly is chronically filled’ (Maslow 1943, 375) – new needs emerge, and with them new grounds for action. At the top of the hierarchy, following safety, love, and esteem needs, Maslow placed the need for self-actualization. In his view, self-actualization occurs when the individual, having overcome the more basic needs, is ‘doing what he is fitted for. A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately happy.’ Self-actualization refers to the desire for self-fulfillment and to the tendency to actualize one’s potentialities – ‘What a man can be, he must be’ (Maslow 1943, 382).

Maslow was critical of psychology’s obsession with maladjusted subjects, and much of his work was devoted to the examination of self-actualizing people, regarding self-actualization as paramount for a healthy mind. In an exploratory study, he compiled a list of characteristics associated with self-actualizers, drawing on a small sample of unnamed contemporaries supplemented by selected historical figures, such as Albert Einstein (1879–1944), Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962), William James (1842–1910), and Aldous Huxley. Among their distinctive features, Maslow (1954, 156) mentions their capacity to ‘see reality more clearly […]. Their eyes see what is before them without being strained through spectacles of various sorts to distort or shape or color the reality.’ Accordingly, they are able to detach ‘from ordinary conventions and from the ordinarily accepted hypocrisies, lies, and inconsistencies of social life’ (Maslow 1954, 154) and act as ‘free agents, free willers’ (Maslow 1954, 161). Maslow conveys the picture of a group of people who are at the same time the best members of society while standing outside of the ordinary polity, and he wonders about their true nature: ‘Could these self-actualizing people be more human, more revealing of the original nature of the species, closer to the species type in the taxonomical sense?’ (Maslow 1954, 161).

Another distinctive attribute of self-actualizers is their tendency to report instances of ‘[t]hose subjective expressions that have been called the mystic experience and described so well by William James’ (Maslow 1954, 164). In such moments of deep insight, ‘the “is” and the “ought” merge with each other instead of being different or contradictory’ (Maslow 1962, 14, my emphasis). People reporting such an experience emphasized

the feeling that they had really seen the ultimate truth, the essence of things, the secret of life, as if veils had been pulled aside. Alan Watts has described this feeling as, ‘This is it!,’ as if you had finally gotten there, as if ordinary life was a striving and a straining to get someplace and this was the arrival, this was Being There. (Maslow 1962, 9)

Maslow (1964a) noted that this kind of experience might well be the essence at the core of all religions. At the same time, however, he insisted that while such an experience has historically been interpreted theologically, it must be regarded as ‘a natural experience well within the jurisdiction of science’ that can be grasped without recurring to any conception of the supernatural (Maslow 1964b). His name for it was the ‘peak-experience.’

The capacity to have peak-experiences is not the exclusive province of religious virtuosi, nor, indeed, of healthy people. Rather, ‘it’s available in the midst of life to everyday people in everyday occupations’ (Maslow 1962, 12). For Maslow (1962, 13), the increased frequency of peak-experiences among self-actualizers points toward ‘some kind of mutual and parallel feedback or reverberation between the characteristics of the perceiver and of the perceived world so that they tend to influence each other.’ This resonance suggests that for healthy people, ‘adequately fulfilling the concept of “human being,”’ peak-experiences ‘should be in principle commonplace,’ while their absence may indicate a ‘“lower,” lesser state, a state in which we are not “fully functioning,” not at our best, not fully human’ (Maslow 1964a, 45). These observations tie in with the following question:

If ‘heaven’ is always available, ready to step into, and if the ‘unitive consciousness’ (with its […] perception of the realm of Being and the sacred and eternal) is always a possibility for any serious and thoughtful person […] What prevents this from happening? (Maslow 1964a, 45)

The answer to this interrogation opens the door to Maslow’s utopian speculations, which are geared toward eliminating the obstacles to self-fulfillment.

Reflecting on American society in the early 1960s, Maslow argued that the historical conjuncture of the wealthiest country on Earth provided a good starting point for imagining a better future. However, in his view, the country was ‘ready to conceive a “Eupsychia” – a psychologically healthy culture – rather than just another materially-based Utopia’ (Maslow 1961, 2). In a thought experiment, Maslow imagined what a society of psychologically healthy people might look like.

[W]hat kind of a culture would be generated by a thousand of these mature individuals if they were placed on a desert island and not confronted with outside cultural forces [?] What kind of values would they have? My answers – tentative of course, but nevertheless very provocative – grew from my studies of psychologically healthy people. It appears that there would be a very great respect for individual differences – more permissiveness for other people to grow in their own style. (Maslow 1961, 10)

As this quote suggests, for Maslow, the key to an ideal society does not lie in specific cultural values, such as those of religion or politics. On the contrary, since the ‘good impulses within people are easily warped by cultures,’ the task at hand is to ‘create an environment where more and more of these innate instincts can find expression’ (Maslow 1961, 6). It follows that ‘the goal of any society which is trying to improve itself […] is the self-actualization of all individuals, or some norms approximating this’ (Maslow 1968, 144). The ideal society is one in which everyone can fully be himself or herself.

Such a conception appears highly individualistic. However, as Smith (2013, 102) notes, ‘[M]odern individualism, expressed in so much psychological belief and activity, is a type of social order.’ In the case of Maslow, the social institutions of Eupsychia would transcend the ‘polarity between selfishness and unselfishness, between self-interest and altruism’ insofar as ‘the person who is simply being selfish necessarily benefits other people, and in which the person who tries to be beneficial to others necessarily reaps rewards for himself’ (Maslow 1964b, 156). We find here a tenet of a (neo)liberal social order, albeit with a caveat. Maslow’s Eupsychia is a society in which each individual has integrated and naturalized the state of exception, of which peak-experiences are a manifestation. Each member is, as he puts it, on the path of the Bodhisattva, that is, aware that ‘if one wishes to help other people, then a very desirable way to do this is to become a better person oneself’ (Maslow 1968, 150). Such people would each be ‘liberated’ from cultural forces while they keep acting within the social world.

Conclusion

In the study of religion\s, the category of utopia has not yet received broad recognition. As argued in the introduction to this special issue, one reason is that the different facets of the concept and their analytical value for the discipline’s discussions have not yet been properly fleshed out. In this contribution, I have called attention to the possibility of using utopias as a way to further the development of a relational approach in the study of religion\s, that is, of an approach that examines religion’s entanglement with other social domains. My case studies have particularly highlighted the interwoven relationships of religion and science, and of religion and politics. Regarding the latter, I have argued that in utopian imaginaries, religion and politics converge in the framing of a state of exception. Such framing can take various forms, whether as the active pursuit of a new state of nature or as the autoritas of an absolute sovereign who brings about a Hobbesian ‘Mortal God’ (see Yelle 2022). Its function, however, remains consistent: to provide an antinomian starting point for a new social system – a starting point which is situated outside of both the past and the future normative orders.

However, the moment of fusion between social spheres appears to be transient and in need of domestication. Indeed, my case studies point to an ambivalent attitude of fascination and concern with the extraordinary foundation of a new world. The antinomian nature of the exception always begs the question of its resolution. For these reasons, I suggest extending the use of the concept of utopia in the metalanguage of the study of religion\s to designate those situations in which an individual, a group, or a society reflects on the religious-political antinomian foundation of the social order and seeks a way to manage it. It is worth noting that the hyphen between ‘religious’ and ‘political’ in the foregoing definition is more than merely diacritical. It points toward a theoretical conception of religion and politics in which, in given contexts, their distinction breaks down. The presence of religious semantics in the examples discussed in this article is a telling indicator of this confluence, but not its precondition.

Utopia, in the above-mentioned sense, can be closely related to some forms of praxis. However, it does not have to be. Skinner’s, Leary’s, and Maslow’s utopian visions largely remained imaginative exercises or underwent important modifications when transposed onto the real world – Leary’s period at Millbrook was plagued by conflicts (see Ram Dass 2021, 119–129); the attempt at recreating Walden Two in the Los Horcones and Twin Oaks communes deviated from many of Skinner’s precepts (see, e.g., Kuhlmann 2005).³ This is also attested to by the fact that these authors provided only vague or sectorial instruction on the practical implementation of their ideas. However, this is also true of other utopian imaginaries, such as the biblical Jubilees. As Yelle (2019, 139) notes, it is unlikely that a Jubilee was ever observed. Nevertheless, it ‘accomplishes nothing to dismiss these institutions as utopian’ (Yelle 2019, 155). On the contrary, it is their ideal thrust and their capacity to foster reflection on the preconditions and consequences of radical change, rather than their concrete realization, that makes them socially relevant. In the case of the Jubilee, the ideal horizon was ‘the utopian dream of a return to the condition of equality thought to obtain among the Israelites upon the Conquest of Canaan and the division of the land,’ and as such, it raised ‘the more general problem of the role played by the state of nature, as a state of exception, in the constitution of polity’ (Yelle 2019, 7, 155).

In the modern examples discussed in this contribution, the horizon opened by utopia is the overcoming of social divisions and individual isolation – a total transformation of society at the interpersonal and structural levels in which the boundaries between functional domains become fluid. However, the concept of utopia does not point primarily toward factual processes of dedifferentiation, but rather to a particular kind of cognitive, emotional, and critical work that a disaffection with the increasing social differentiation can set in motion. Nevertheless, in the end, the need to domesticate the antinomian elements that would give rise to the new social order indicates that even in utopian thinking a complete fusion of distinct social spheres no longer appears tenable.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Anja Kirsch, Oliver Krüger, Jens Schlieter, Anne Stensvold, and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on a draft version of this paper. All mistakes are, of course, mine alone. I am grateful to Graeme Currie for the language editing of the article and to IKOS for its financial support in this regard.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Notes on contributors

Andrea Rota

Andrea Rota is a professor of the study of religion at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages (IKOS), University of Oslo. He obtained his PhD from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland and received his post-doctoral “habilitation” qualification from the University of Bern, where he served as an Assistant Professor for the systematic study of religion. He is the current coordinator of the IKOS Religion and Politics research center. He recently published the monograph Collective Intentionality and the Study of Religion: Social Ontology and Empirical Research (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023) and edited the volume Religion and Academia Reframed: Connecting Religion, Science, and Society in the Long Sixties (Brill, 2023).

Notes

1 In fact, most of Skinner’s ideas are expressed by Frazier. Skinner explicitly borrows a narrative device from Moore’s Utopia, ‘wherein Moore writes himself into the story as a sympathetic listener, while voicing his opinions through the mouth of Hythloday, the bearer of news from nowhere’ (Swirski 2011, 24).

2 The views expressed here by Skinner, as well as some other ideas discussed below, appear to be in line with the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. Fleeting references to Hobbes (Skinner 1957, 335; 1974, 133; 1979, 134) indicate that Skinner was familiar with the work of the English philosopher. However, I was unable to find any substantial discussion of Hobbes’ anthropology or political philosophy in Skinner’s publications. The exploration of these parallels certainly deserves closer scrutiny but needs to be postponed to future inquiries.

3 The reasons for these conflicts and adaptations are subjects for historical and sociological analysis and cannot be simply deduced from the ‘plans’ that inspired these communal life experiments. However, the available literature on Millbrook, for example, suggests that the conflict between the search for ecstatic experiences and the everyday management of the estate contributed to internal disputes among the residents.