A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Psychedelic Experience

This perspective (2022) provides an understanding of the psychedelic experience through 1) ego dissolution and mystical states, 2) hyperassociative states, and 3) the role of set and setting.

Abstract

“As interest in psychedelics as treatments for psychological problems grows, it is important for psychoanalysts to learn about them. Our patients will come to us to discuss their psychedelic experiences; additionally, psychedelics deserve reconsideration as meaningful collaborators with our field, at both the theoretical and clinical levels. After a brief history of these agents, the paper engages three specific areas: 1) psychedelics’ capacity to evoke egolysis, or ego dissolution, and mystical states; 2) their capacity to support hyperassociative states, free association, and emergence of unconscious material, and 3) the role of set and setting in psychedelic therapy. Drawing from the fields of neuropsychoanalysis, phenomenological research and neuroanthropology, the paper offers a discourse that connects mind and brain and psychedelics in ways meaningful for psychoanalysts.“

Author: Jeffrey Guss

Summary of A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Psychedelic Experience

The past three decades have seen a tumultuous revival of interest in psychedelics, with renewed research being done in the fields of neuroscience, psychiatry, psychology, anthropology, consciousness studies and information theory.

Guss suggests that psychoanalysis and psychedelic work have much in common. Both practices offer a path toward subtle yet radical reconfigurations of the self.