Bernard W. Aronson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_W._Aronson

Bernard William Aronson (born May 16, 1946) was United States Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs from 1989 to 1993.

Bernard W. Aronson served four U.S. Presidents in senior positions. He was twice awarded the State Department's highest civilian honor, the Secretary's Distinguished Service Award, for his role in ending the wars in Central America and Colombia. In April 1993 Aronson was awarded the Distinguished Service Award by Secretary of State Warren Christopher for "singular achievements in forging a bipartisan policy towards Nicaragua and tireless and successful efforts end the civil war in El Salvador. In November 2016 as U.S. Special Envoy to the Colombia Peace Process, Aronson was presented the Distinguished Service Award by Secretary of State John Kerry for "his instrumental role" in ending the 52 year long war between the government of Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). In his remarks at the February 4, 2016 White House celebration of the 15th anniversary of Plan Colombia, President Barack Obama said, "I especially want to recognize someone who's played a pivotal role in the peace process. That's our Special Envoy, Bernie Aronson."

Aronson left government service in 1993, joining Goldman Sachs as an International Advisor for Latin America. In 1996, he founded his own private equity company, ACON Investments, serving as its Founding Partner. He has also served on the board of directors of Mariner Energy, Liz Claiborne, Royal Caribbean International, The Amazon Conservation Team, Global Hyatt, Kate Spade, Lindland Expeditions Inc., and founding board member of the Center for Global Development. Aronson is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Academy of Diplomacy.[6]

is a member of the Inter-American Dialogue[7] and also serves on the board of directors of the National Democratic Institute.

Humphry Osmond https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humphry_Osmond

Humphry Fortescue Osmond (1 July 1917 – 6 February 2004) was an English psychiatrist who expatriated to Canada, then moved to work in the United States. He is known for inventing the word psychedelic and for his research into interesting and useful applications for psychedelic drugs. Osmond also explored aspects of the psychology of social environments, in particular how they influenced welfare or recovery in mental institutions.

After the war, Osmond joined the psychiatric unit at St George's Hospital, London where he rose to become senior registrar. His time at the hospital was to prove pivotal in three respects, firstly it was where he met his wife Amy "Jane" Roffey who was working there as a nurse, secondly he met Dr John Smythies who was to become one of his major collaborators, and thirdly he first encountered the drugs that would become associated with his name (and his with theirs): LSD and mescaline.

At Weyburn, Osmond recruited a group of research psychologists to turn the hospital into a design-research laboratory. There, he conducted a wide variety of patient studies and observations using hallucinogenic drugs, collaborating with Abram Hoffer and others. In 1952, Osmond related the similarity of mescaline to adrenaline molecules, in a theory which implied that schizophrenia might be a form of self-intoxication caused by one's own body. He collected the biographies of recovered schizophrenics, and he held that psychiatrists can only understand the schizophrenic by understanding the rational way the mind makes sense of distorted perceptions. He pursued this idea with passion, exploring all avenues to gain insight into the shattered perceptions of schizophrenia, holding that the illness arises primarily from distortions of perception. Yet during the same period, Osmond became aware of the potential of psychedelics to foster mind-expanding and mystical experiences.

In 1953, English-born Aldous Huxley was long-since a renowned poet and playwright who, in his twenties, had gone on to achieve success and acclaim as a novelist and widely published essayist. He had lived in the U.S. for well over a decade and gained some experience screenwriting for Hollywood films. Huxley had initiated a correspondence with Osmond. In one letter, Huxley lamented that contemporary education seemed typically to have the unintended consequence of constricting the minds of the educated—close the minds of students, that is, to inspiration and to many things other than material success and consumerism. In their exchange of letters, Huxley asked Osmond if he would be kind enough to supply a dose of mescaline.

Osmond's interests included the application of Jung's Typology of personality to group dynamics. He and Richard Smoke developed refinements of Jung's typology and applied them to analysis of the presidents and other world figures. Osmond also studied parapsychology.

Later, Osmond became director of the Bureau of Research in Neurology and Psychiatry at the New Jersey Neuro Psychiatric Institute (NJNPI) in Princeton, where he collaborated with Bernard Aaronson in hypnosis experiments. Still later, he became a professor of psychology at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. Osmond co-wrote eleven books and was widely published throughout his career.