Allan D Coult
Born 1931
Died 4/24/1970
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On April 24, 1970 anthropology suffered a great loss. Dr. Allan Donald Coult died from hepatitis, which was a complication of his treatments for cancer of the lymphatic system. Coults colleagues characterized him as one of the most inspiring and controversial personalities and one of the few authentic geniuses in anthropology.

He was described as one of anthropologys most original and brilliant minds. Coults earliest field of research involved the social structure and personality of the Hualapai Indians. He completed his Ph.D. thesis on conflict and stability in their society in 1961. After completing his thesis, Coult received a generous grant from the National Institute of Mental Health. Coult used this grant to complete a lengthy research paper on Native American kinship categories and concepts in Kansas City. Coults research earned him several publications and papers that were circulated around many professional societies. Among his accomplishments was the report of The Function of Extended Kinship in Urban Society and the publication Cross Tabulations of Murdocks World Ethnographic Sample. Coult possessed excellent mathematical skills and used them to reveal kinship correlations.

In 1966 Coult caused a major dispute when he introduced Psychedelic Anthropology as a self-proclaimed branch of the American Anthropological Association during the Pittsburgh meeting. Coult is credited with founding Psychedelic Anthropology and fathering the International Society for Psychedelic Anthropology.

Psychedelic Anthropology is based off the researchers experiences of their own psychic states while using different psychedelic substances, in hopes of understanding the nature of the self. Psychedelic Anthropology also deals with the history of consciousness and symbolic processes. Coult used LSD along with other substances and techniques to understand his own nature of consciousness. Dr. Coult showed how the dynamics of consciousness produce the style of awareness necessary for abstraction and cognition. Some techniques developed to achieve the psychedelic effect were types of bodily and meditative yoga, and psychotherapy. These are natural ways to gain the psychedelic effect whereas drugs chemically cause this reaction. Through his studies Dr. Allan Coult published a book Psychedelic Anthropology: The Study of Man Through the Manifestation of the Mind.

There was much controversy and criticism with Coults work because it was associated with drugs, which Coult described in his unpublished work, Psychedelic Anthropology: People Words Play. Coult could not understand why a powerful tool such as LSD would not be accepted and used by those claiming to seek insight into human culture and behavior. Therefore he founded the New University at Berkeley where he held series of well-attended lectures at Kroeber Hall. Coult also was a chairman of the International Society for Psychedelic Anthropology at University of California, Berkeley and published a textbook Psychedelic Anthropology. In 1968-69 Dr. Coult purchased, published, and edited the "Berkeley Barb", which was his second underground newspaper in the sixties.

Dr. Coult wrote a substantial amount about his findings but because of the controversial issue about drugs it wasnt widely published. One of his better-known publications is Sex, Religion, and LSD.
 
Burial Location
B551
 
Father
Stanley A. Coehlo Veteran 
Born 8/18/1912 in New York (Manhattan), NY
Died 1/14/1989 in North Miami Beach, FL
 
Mother
Edith (Gold) Coehlo
Born 1907
Died 2/11/2007