R. John Williams

Thinking the Float Tank – Saturday, August 26, 2023 (Day 3)

The New Internalism of John Lilly’s Biocomputer

Speaker Bio:

R. John Williams is Associate Professor of English and Film & Media Studies at Yale University, and a Visiting Scholar in the Center for Religion and Media at NYU. His academic work so far has focused on international histories of Buddhism, technological innovation and the perceived difference of racial and cultural otherness. He is the author of The Buddha in the Machine: Art, Technology, and The Meeting of East and West (2014), and a forthcoming volume titled World Presence: Deconstructing Mindfulness.

Abstract:

Although Lilly pioneered the water immersion method of sensory isolation, he was far from alone in researching the subject in the 1950s and 1960s. Dozens of universities, private institutes, hospitals, government and military laboratories, and international organizations also began devoting significant resources to researching what eventually came to be known as “SD” (sensory deprivation). But instead of discovering a mechanism for accelerated psychoanalytic therapy as Lilly had hypothesized, what they found was almost universally terrifying—a form of Cold War brainwashing. How did the flotation tank transition from a method of impossible-to-endure torture to a relaxing therapy accompanied by different forms of New Age spirituality? This presentation tracks the historical and cultural transitions that contributed to this reversal in understandings of sensory isolation.