The socialization of hallucinations. Cultural priors, social interactions and contextual factors in the use of psychedelics

This ethnographic study investigates the ‘socialization of hallucinations,’ and breaks down the (contextual) factors such as cultural background and social interactions that shape the psychedelic experience.

Abstract

“Although the effects of so-called “psychedelic” or “hallucinogenic” substances are known for their strong conditionality on context and the culturalist approach of hallucinations has won the favor of anthropologists, the vectors by which the features of visual and auditory imagery are structured by social context have been so far little explored. Using ethnographic data collected in a shamanic center of the Peruvian Amazon and an anthropological approach dialoguing with phenomenology and recent models of cognition of Bayesian inspiration, I draw here some leads in order to shed light on the nature of these dynamics that I call “socialization of hallucinations”. Distinguishing two levels of socialization of hallucinations, I argue that cultural background and social interactions not only organize the relationship to the hallucinogenic experience, but also to its very phenomenological content. I account for the underpinnings of the socialization of hallucinations proposing candidate factors as the education of attention, the categorization of perceptions and the shaping of emotions and expectations. Considering psychedelic experiences in the light of their noetic properties and cognitive penetrability debates, I show that they are powerful vectors of cultural transmission. I question the ethical stakes of these observations, at a time when the use of psychedelic is becoming increasingly popular in the global North. I finally emphasize the importance of better understanding the extrapharmacological factors of the psychedelic experience and its subjective implications, and sketch out the basis for an interdisciplinary methodology in order to do so.”

Author: David Dupuis

Summary

Abstract:

Although psychedelic substances have strong conditionality on context, the nature of the socialization of hallucinations has been little explored. I argue that cultural background and social interactions organize the relationship to the hallucinogenic experience and its very phenomenological content.

I discuss the noetic properties of psychedelic experiences and the ethical stakes of their use. I also emphasize the importance of better understanding the extrapharmacological factors of the psychedelic experience.

Introduction

Identifying the underpinnings of the effects of so-called “psychedelic” or “hallucinogenic” substances under experimental conditions has historically been deemed a great challenge, as these substances are known for their strong conditionality on cultural context.

Some features of the hallucinogenic experience are similar across cultures, while others vary extensively cross-culturally. Many ethnographers have defended a culturalist approach to psychedelic hallucinations, but the vectors by which the features of hallucinations are structured by social factors have so far little explored.

Comparative ethnographic observation of various institutions offering ritual uses of the psychedelic brew ayahuasca1 in the Upper Peruvian Amazon suggests that cultural and symbolic elements as well as the characteristics of the ritual devices specific to these institutions strongly influence the formal characteristics of the hallucinations perceived by the participants.

I show that psychedelic experiences are powerful vectors of socialization, and question the ethical stakes of these observations in the light of the emergence of shamanic tourism and the revival of psychedelic science.

Takiwasi: a shamanic centre in the Peruvian Amazon

Westerners have increasingly participated in exotic rituals perceived as traditional and invested as therapeutic, religious or personal development practices in the Peruvian Amazon. These centres are often based on the partnership between Westerners and Métis or indigenous locals.

The therapeutic community of Takiwasi is a drug addiction treatment clinic and one of the main places in the region hosting Western travellers to “meet ayahuasca”. It offers three different modalities: addiction treatment, outpatient treatment and “personal development seminars”.

Jacques Mabit is the main authority in Takiwasi, and the bearer of ritual authority. A priest has joined the team, and provides spiritual direction services and a weekly mass.

Takiwasi offers seminars that involve the consumption of emetic plants, ayahuasca and other vegetable preparations. Participants must comply with various food, relationship and sexual prohibitions.

Seminar participants come from the middle and upper classes in the urban areas of French-speaking Europe and Latin America. They often report a life journey marked by the accumulation and repetition of different registers of misfortune, and a process of experimentation with alternative therapies.

The ayahuasca ritual in Takiwasi

The first ayahuasca ritual takes place on Wednesday, the third day of the seminar, after the group’s participation in a purging ritual and several conferences. Jacques Mabit presents his etiological theory and describes the ayahuasca experience.

After nightfall, participants are invited to join the main maloca3, where they take their seats under icons representing Christ, the Virgin and Saint Michael. The ritual is frequently preceded by a reminder of the rules, such as body position requirements, refraining from lying down, and abstaining from sleep. Participants are also encouraged to “formulate an intention” before drinking ayahuasca, but not to focus on it during the ritual.

Jacques Mabit invites the participants into the smoke presented as purifying and protective, spreads holy water and salt behind and between them, sings several songs and blows tobacco smoke on his ritual tools, including the bottle containing ayahuasca, and then turns off the light.

The hallucinogenic experience in Takiwasi

Ayahuasca ingestion usually involves certain physiological reactions such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, sensations of temperature variations, dizziness, heart rhythm disorders, anxiety and confusion in the perception of time and space, altered proprioception and dissociative disorders. Participants report rich mental imagery.

The testimonials of the clients of Takiwasi show some specific features that distinguish them from the descriptions collected by psychologists during experimental studies on hallucinations or ethnographic reports concerning the use of psychotropic beverages composed of banisteriopsis.

At one point I had a vision of Saint Michael piercing a demon with his sword, and later I felt the presence of Christ who kicked out my demons’ cage.

Ayahuasca was chasing demons inside me, like little bright snakes, and showed me how to stop them from entering.

Infestation is a cosmological and etiological theory that characterizes Takiwasi and distinguishes it from both the Peruvian curanderismo and other shamanic centres. It is thought to be the consequence of the transgression of taboos, contact with places or people, or transmission through filiation.

The theory of Takiwasi reveals the increasing use of the Catholic doctrinal body and the ecclesial institution, which has profoundly influenced the form and function of the practices proposed by Takiwasi.

The above testimonies appear to be a visionary staging of the cultural and ritual features of the institution, and the predominance of demonic visions gradually marks the visionary testimonies of the participants.

Demons looked like entities that had animal attributes and were nested within each other. They were ugly to look at and had a repulsion.

That night I started sweating, I saw flames and the devil, and I was terrified. Thirty minutes later the same vision came back, blowing gently on my ear.

Some participants who evoked an encounter with demons conceded that they did not see anything strictly speaking, but felt afraid.

The hallucinatory experiences of the ayahuasca participants are all interpreted as signalling the presence of the same category of supernatural entity : the “demon”. The emotions that accompany the experiences are homogeneous and are based on the symbolic and interactional contexts that surround the visionary experience.

Through their comments, ritual specialists invite participants to consider some aspects of their experience as signs of the presence and influence of protective or malicious supernatural entities. Participants often categorize their hallucinations, perceptions and mental states in a dual manner, attributing them to supernatural entities with antagonistic intentions.

Ayahuasca is made present to the participant by its ingestion and by the actions and speeches of ritual specialists. The ritual actions postulate the presence of invisible entities, in the first place including the spirit of ayahuasca, a benevolent entity aiming at the purification, education and protection of the participant.

Ritual specialists use exorcism techniques on participants whose behaviour breaks the ritual rules, which invites the participants as well as the entire ritual audience to interpret their experience through the prism of cultural propositions based on the infestation by demonic entities.

The ritual context surrounding hallucinogenic experiences induces absorption as well as an increase and orientation of attention, which fosters the identification of certain perceptions or specific mental states, which are then prone to be interpreted as signs of the presence, agency and nature of supernatural entities.

The hallucinogenic experience is identified by participants with culturally postulated supernatural entities. This identification is based on the articulation of the hallucinogenic experience with the implicit logic of the ritual interactions and the normative criteria disseminated during the conferences and discussion groups.

Tanya Luhrmann shows that different cultural background and social interactions influence the subject relationship to the hallucinogenic experience. In California, people are more likely to describe their voices as intrusive unreal thoughts, while in South India, voices are mainly described as providing useful guidance.

The content of hallucinations may be influenced by the context in which they emerge, and this is what I will now attempt to shed light on.

Sensory stimulation and emotional arousal

Many participants reported that the ritual songs, perfumes, and tobacco smoke had a profound impact on their psychedelic experience.

Rosa started to sing and I felt like it was for me. It calmed me down and I found myself in a beautiful meadow.

The role of singing and perfumes in the ritual use of ayahuasca in the mestizo and indigenous shamanisms of the Peruvian Amazon is frequently reported by ethnologists. These observations raise questions about how sensory stimuli such as songs and perfumes influence visual and auditory imagery.

Perfumes, like music, are known for strongly affecting the emotional state of the person who perceives them. Similarly, smells have a well-known relationship with memory, activating the recollection of scenes where the same smell has been perceived.

I suggest that the emotional properties of fragrances and music influence the content of visual and auditory verbal imagery during the psychedelic experience.

This hypothesis requires further study, in particular on the clinical implications of these remarks in the treatment of hallucinatory disorders in psychosis. The experience of ritual specialists managing hallucinations may help to socialize hallucinations.

The shaping of expectations

The participants’ experiences during ayahuasca rituals are homogenized into a few recurring patterns, which are illustrated in particular by the stereotypical nature of the visions that sign the presence of supernatural entities.

During the diet, I prayed a lot. At one point, I saw a hole in the sky, and a man on a golden throne with the Virgin saying “look at me, in your eyes”.

These testimonies are striking for their congruence with Catholic iconography, which the participants consistently highlighted during our exchanges. This indicates the influence of the shared culture of the participants.

The spirit of ayahuasca is often seen as a snake or a woman with vegetal and ophidian features. These images are often found on the Internet and decorate the autobiographical books and online forums of shamanic tourists.

Visionary images can be explained as an invasion of perception by culture, and can be explained as a predictive bet emerging from the encounter between expectations and sensory stimuli, which are then reduced to forms identified by our knowledge and past experiences.

The social device surrounding the use of ayahuasca appears to be able to gradually homogenize the very content of the hallucinatory experience, and to modify the mechanisms that ensure the association of ambiguous visual and auditory imagery with an identifiable element.

If models of Bayesian inspiration are relevant to understanding the socialization of hallucinations, further studies should explore how differences in interactional and communicative features shape differences in phenomenology.

Hallucinogenic substances as tools for cultural transmission

Hallucinations are singular perceptions because of their ability to be deeply influenced by cultural context and social interactions. This allows us to better understand the place occupied by hallucinogens in the social life of numerous indigenous groups of the Americas.

Psychedelic substances have the ability to produce perceptions whose phenomenological content is strongly influenced by culture, as well as the ability to induce noetic feeling attributing strong self-relevance to the experience. This property makes hallucinogenic substances powerful potential vectors of cultural transmission.

These observations contrast with models that have highlighted in the past decades the central role of opacity in religious transmission. However, these models underestimate the embodiment of cultural knowledge, which allows for concrete and tangible encounters with culturally postulated supernatural beings.

In contexts of socialization of hallucinations, the transmission of cultural knowledge about the supernatural realm is less based on the transmission of propositional contents than on a training inducing a transformation of the novice’s relationship to his perceptions and mental states.

Takiwasi hallucinogenic rituals are framed by narrative reconstructions and social interactions, which shape the participants’ emotions and expectations, and formalize the very content of the visionary experience.

Hallucinogenic experience is highly dependent on non-pharmacological factors such as expectation, preparation and intention, as well as physical and social environments. This raises serious ethical questions in the current context of globalization of the use of these substances.

Psychedelic-induced experiences may increase truth to cultural propositions and reverence to the holders of these propositions, but may also lead to problematic effects in certain contexts. A better understanding of the contextual mechanisms influencing the hallucinogenic experience may contribute to reduce drug harm.

To understand the extrapharmacological variables of the psychedelic experience, a fieldwork ethnographic study is an irreplaceable resource. However, interdisciplinary methodologies articulating anthropological approach to other disciplines are needed.

David Dupuis, Phd, is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at Durham University studying the globalization of the use of psychedelic substances in the context of shamanic tourism and the renaissance of psychedelic science.

Authors

Authors associated with this publication with profiles on Blossom

David Dupuis
David Dupuis is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Anthropology of Durham University and a member of the Hearing the Voice interdisciplinary research program. Based on ethnographic surveys conducted in the Peruvian Amazon since 2008, his research focuses on the reconfiguration of the use of ayahuasca in the context of the emergence of "shamanic tourism". His research explores more broadly the relationships between hallucinations and culture in an anthropological comparative perspective.

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