MARLENE DOBKIN DE RIOS, Ph. D. is a medical anthropologist and licensed marriage, family therapist in California. Additionally, she is Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry & Human Behavior at the University of California, Irvine where she lectures to psychiatric residents and fellows. She is Professor Emerita of Anthropology at California State University, Fullerton, where she taught cultural anthropology from l969-2000.

Dr. de Rios conducted anthropological fieldwork on traditional folk healing in the Peruvian Amazon and coast, studying the plant hallucinogen, ayahuasca, in the treatment of emotional and psychological disorders. From l999 to 2005, she directed the qualitative dimension of research in Brazil on the use of ayahuasca among adolescents in the União do Vegetal Church. A recent U. S. Supreme Court decision has allowed the plant hallucinogen to be used as a sacrament in U.S. religious rituals of this church.

A noted public speaker and writer, de Rios is the author of seven books and several hundred professional articles and book chapters. Her latest book, “LSD, Spirituality and the Creative Process” examines the work of Oscar Janiger, M.D. who gave almost l,000 men and women LSD from l954-l962, and the resultant artwork and poetry that resulted from this study. A recent article of hers appears in the Skeptic Magazine December 2006 issue and describes her work as a fortune-telling anthropologist during her early fieldwork in Peru.