This book takes an in-depth look at the spiritual and psychotherapeutic potential of the amphetamine derivatives MDA and MMDA, harmaline (the active compound in ayahuasca), and ibogaine. To distinguish them from classical psychedelics such as LSD and psilocybin, Naranjo coins the terms “emotion-enhancers” and “fantasy-enhancers” for these substances.

Claudio Naranjo is a Chilean psychiatrist and pioneer in the integration of psychotherapy, spirituality, and psychedelic experiences. He is a developer of the Enneagram of Personality, founder of the Seekers After Truth Institute (SAT), and author of numerous books on psychotherapy, consciousness, personality, and education. He has studied at Harvard and the University of Illinois on a Fulbright Scholarship. In 1966, he was invited to the University of California, Berkeley on a Guggenheim Fellowship, later returning as a Research Associate at Berkeley's Institute for Personality Assessment Research. Naranjo was a major figure at the Esalen Institute where he became first an apprentice and later one of three successors to Fritz Perls (founder of Gestalt Therapy). In years prior, Naranjo received additional training and supervision from Jim Simkin in Los Angeles and attended sensory awareness workshops with Charlotte Selver. He became Carlos Castaneda's close friend and became part of Leo Zeff's pioneering psychedelic therapy group (1965-66). These meetings resulted in Naranjo's contribution of the use of harmaline, MDMA, and ibogaine. Naranjo developed the SAT Institute's international program of psychotherapy workshops bringing together Gestalt therapy, applications of the Enneagram to personality, interpersonal meditation, music, and guided self-insight. Since the late 1990s, Claudio Naranjo has participated in many educational conferences in his ongoing work to help create more socially and spiritually responsible educational systems around the world. His book Changing Education to Change the World (published in Spanish in 2004) stimulated the efforts of the SAT-in-Education project, helping spur Spain's increasingly powerful education reform movement. Naranjo's influence on the transformation of the educational system in various countries led the prestigious University of Udine (Italy) to award him an honorary Doctorate in Education (Honoris Causae).