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Finding Aid for the Sidney Cohen collection, 1910-1987
1845
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Title: Sidney Cohen collection
Date (inclusive): 1910-1987
Collection number: 1845
Creator:
Cohen, Sidney
Extent:
86 boxes (43 linear ft.)
Abstract: Sidney Cohen conducted early LSD research in the 1950s and was a noted U.S. public expert on drug abuse from the 1960s to
the 1980s. Cohen was a Professor of Psychiatry at UCLA and served in the Nixon Administration as the first Director, Division
of Narcotic Abuse and Drug Addiction at the National Institute of Mental Health. He authored more than 250 journal and popular
articles, books including
The Beyond Within: The LSD Story, and served in editorial capacities for a number of journals. The Sidney Cohen Collection includes subject files covering
Cohen's professional research, correspondence files from teen years until close to his death in 1987, biographical information
documenting education and government service, audio tapes of LSD conferences from the late 1950s and early 1960s, a number
of Cohen's articles and manuscripts, and files from LSD and mescaline experiments Cohen conducted with Gerald Heard.
Language: Finding aid is written in
English.
Repository:
University of California, Los Angeles. Library Special Collections.
Los Angeles, California 90095-1575
Physical location: Stored off-site at SRLF. Advance notice is required for access to the collection. Please contact the UCLA Library Special
Collections Reference Desk for paging information.
COLLECTION STORED OFF-SITE AT SRLF: Open for research. Advance notice required for access. Contact the UCLA Library Special
Collections Reference Desk for paging information.
Restrictions on Use and Reproduction
Property rights to the physical object belong to the UCLA Library,
Department of Special Collections. Literary rights, including copyright,
are retained by the creators and their heirs. It is the responsibility of
the researcher to determine who holds the copyright and pursue the
copyright owner or his or her heir for permission to publish where The UC
Regents do not hold the copyright.
Provenance/Source of Acquisition
Gift of Dorothy and Richard Cohen, 1999.
Processed by Robert Schraff in the Center for Primary Research and Training (CFPRT), with assistance from Kelley Wolfe Bachli,
2010.
The processing of this collection was generously supported by
Arcadia
funds.
[Identification of item], Sidney Cohen collection (Collection Number 1845). Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young
Research Library, UCLA.
Sidney Cohen (1910-1987) was born in New York city in 1910, graduated as a pharmacist from Columbia University in 1930, and
received his medical degree from Bonn University, Bonn, Germany, in 1938. After completing an internship in Jamaica, Long
Island, and New York, Cohen entered the U.S. Army and served in the Pacific Campaign, eventually becoming a Colonel in the
U.S. Army Reserves, from which he retired in 1963.
After the war, Sidney Cohen completed an internal medicine residency. He then became the Assistant Chief of Medical Service
for the Veteran's Administration Wadsworth Hospital in Los Angeles from 1948 to 1960. As UCLA's medical school was started,
many V.A. physicians served as faculty, Cohen serving as an Associate Clinical Professor from 1954 to 1970. Cohen was a prolific
writer in both medical journals and in popular media, with more than 250 articles to his credit. He also served as founder,
member of an editorial review board or committee, or editor for a number of journals and collections including:
Drug Dependence, Journal of Psychopharmacology, American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse,
Drug Abuse and Alcoholism Review,
Psychosomatics,
International Journal of Addictions, and the
Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment.
Sidney Cohen was appointed the first Director, Division of Narcotic Abuse and Drug Addiction, National Institute of Mental
Health by Richard Nixon in 1968, where he remained until 1970. Returning to UCLA, Cohen became a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry
and also participating on a number of government grant review committees, including serving as chair of the F.D.A's. Drug
Abuse Advisory Committee from 1982 to 1983. Cohen also served as anti-drug consultant to the Army and the State Department,
as well as various public relations and advertising agencies with pharmaceutical company clients, travelling as an expert
on drugs and drug policy.
Sidney Cohen is perhaps most well-known in popular culture for LSD experiments he conducted with Keith Dittman, Betty Eisner
and Gerald Heard, based on correspondence with Humphrey Osmond, in the mid-1950s. Cohen also conducted a number of very loosely-controlled
experiments with LSD, resulting in descriptions of LSD experiences. Cohen provided LSD to Clare Boothe Luce and Bill Wilson,
founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, among numerous others. After becoming convinced that use of LSD could be dangerous, particularly
if unsupervised, Cohen maintained a public anti-LSD stance and sometimes testy discourse with Timothy Leary. Cohen published
The Beyond Within: The LSD Story in 1965. Cohen also provided the LSD used by Aldous Huxley in his deathbed experience and advocated LSD research, particularly
for the terminally ill, until his own death in 1987.
The papers cover Sidney Cohen's education, early family life, and entire career. There are extensive subject and correspondence
files; biographical files containing documentation of Cohen's education and his Army, Army Reserve and Veterans Administration
careers; audio tapes primarily relating to LSD conferences in the late 1950s and 1960s; a partial collection of Cohen's journal
and popular magazine articles; and files in Gerald Heard's hand and believed to be given to Cohen after Heard's death by J.
Michael Barrie.
Arranged in the following series:
- Subject Files
- Correspondence
- Biographical Material
- Audio Tapes
- From Gerald Heard
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.
Sidney Cohen---Archives.
Gerald Heard papers
(Collection 1054). Department of
Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California,
Los Angeles.