Buffalo, NY: Creative Education Foundation, 1974. First edition, with laid-in errata sheet.
Subtitled: "A Psychological Analysis of the Psychedelic State and Its Attendant Psychic Powers."
A continuation of sorts to The Development of the Creative Individual (1972), this volume explicates Gowan's theories on the "psychedelic" stage of consciousness. Drugs and natural psychedelic experiences provide glimpses of this stage; Gowan's work offers a blueprint of sorts for its more permanent attainment through a process of directed self-actualization (beginning with his Northridge Developmental Scale). He suggests that those who attain to the psychedelic stage of development may achieve not only the sorts of illumination commonly associated with religious transcendence, but may also gain access to ESP and other psychic phenomena. However far-fetched his theories seem, The Development of the Psychedelic Individual remains an intellectually rigorous work by a well-regarded development psychologist, one informed as much by stalwarts like Jean Piaget and Erik Erickson as by more mystical and experimental thinkers.
A very good copy, with sunning/browning to the wraps, some minor soiling to textblock edges, softening and wear at corners. Binding is strong and reliable; contents are clean and unmarked. The folded errata sheet creased at the ends, with several closed tears. Uncommon in the trade.
