Walter Pahnke, Date of Birth, Date of Death
TweetWalter Pahnke
Minister, physician, psychiatrist
Date of Birth: 18-Jan-1931
Date of Death: 10-Jul-1971
Profession: psychiatrist
Zodiac Sign: Capricorn 
About Walter Pahnke
- Walter Norman Pahnke (Jan 18, 1931 - July 10, 1971) was a minister, physician, and psychiatrist most famous for the "Good Friday Experiment", also referred to as the Marsh Chapel Experiment or the "Miracle of Marsh Chapel". Pahnke attended Harvard in the early 1960s.
- He earned an MD from Harvard Medical School, a BD (now MDiv) from Harvard Divinity School, a PhD from Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and a Harvard psychiatric residency.
- He was a psychedelic researcher at Harvard University. On April 20, 1962, Pahnke conducted the "Good Friday Experiment" as part of his Ph.D.
- thesis in Religion and Society under his thesis advisors Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert.
- In this experiment, ten students from Andover Newton Theological School were given 30 mg psilocybin and ten were given an active placebo (niacin - vitamin B3) in a religious setting (a Good Friday service) to see whether entheogens could help facilitate a genuine religious experience.
- Nine out of ten of the students reported religious or mystical experiences while only one of ten in the placebo group reported the same.
- Among those who participated in the study were Leary and Huston Smith, professor of philosophy at MIT and respected religious scholar.
- Later follow-up studies (see Marsh Chapel Experiment) confirmed the results and the thesis that primary religious experiences could be occasioned by using psychedelic drugs in a religious setting. In 1967, Pahnke joined the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center in Spring Grove, Maryland.
- He conducted psychedelic therapy sessions using LSD and DPT ,with terminal cancer patients as well as people suffering from alcoholism and severe neurosis.
- There he worked with therapists Stanislav Grof, Bill Richards, and Richard Yensen, among others.
- Pahnke served as director of the project from 1967 until 1971, when he died in a scuba diving accident in Maine.
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