Abram Hoffer’s wife Rose was in charge of the tunes during Osmond’s 1950s tests

The soundtrack curated by women for early LSD test remains the template for chill out mixes – plus John Hopkins University (its seven-hour playlist here) and MAPS therapy sessions – today.

After Abram Hoffer’s wife Rose soothed a tripping patient by changing a jarring record to an elegant Bach number, she was thenceforth delegated I/C the tunes. 

Hermina E Browne, director of music therapy at New Jersey State Hospital, began testing music for effectiveness during psychedelic sessions for alcoholics in 1956. Her major innovations were to divide the soundtrack into five thirty-minute parts plus – I love this one – put the music on for half an hour, then turn it off again for the same time. Her playlist categories were:

1 Relaxing to tense

2 Very tense, disturbed with a purpose

3 Solemn, meditative, self-searching, spiritual

4 Relaxing, spiritual

5 Reconciling, restoration of confidence, feeling of hope and faith

Browne passed her findings on to E Thayer Gaston, ‘The Father of Music Therapy’ who eschewed her policy of ‘Five Moods Projected’. Instead he insisted on music ‘familiar’ to the patient. (The handbook says have them ask to change it once, stand ground gently, then cave in if they ask again).

Hermina Browne’s innovation was to put the music on for half an hour, then turn it off again for another thirty minutes

Enter during the 1970s Helen Bonny, who considered music ‘intersubjectively verifiable’ and set out to prove it. Her Maryland Hospital is noted for using four therapists in psychedelic sessions, always including a music therapist.

Bonny’s unpublished research did so, but she’s even better known for conceiving Guided Imagery and Music, the leading form of music therapy in the present day.

Unless you prefer the 2020’s foremost psychedelic tunestress DJ Bus Replacement Service.