Then (1956), Moksha: Letters of Huxley & Osmond
The Naming of the Experience: What Word Won and What Was Lost
Huxley proposed 'phanerothyme' (Greek: spirit-manifesting) in his famous coinage contest with Osmond in 1956. Osmond's 'psychedelic' won. Huxley accepted the loss gracefully. But the two words encode different theories: phanerothyme implies a pre-existing spirit that the drug reveals; psychedelic implies a mind that the drug expands. The choice of vocabulary shapes the conceptual framework for everything that follows.
confirmed
'Psychedelic' has dominated for sixty years, but the debate about what these substances actually do has continued using other vocabulary. 'Entheogen' (1979) reasserted the phanerothyme tradition: generating the divine within. The DEA's scheduling language ('no medical use, high potential for abuse') is the vocabulary of the psychotomimetic tradition, the opposite of both phanerothyme and psychedelic. The clinical trials use 'mystical experience' language (MEQ30) that is closer to Huxley's phanerothyme than to a neutral psychological vocabulary. RFRA religious freedom cases require 'entheogen' vocabulary to succeed legally. The word Osmond won may have been politically necessary for the clinical framing; the concept Huxley lost may be pharmacologically more accurate.