Ego Dissolution or Self-Expansion? A Relational Reframing of Psychedelic Self-Experience
James Amarante preprint
Psychedelic experiences are often described through the language of “ego dissolution,” a phrase that appears to rest on a vertical model of mind in which ordinary egoic identity overlays deeper unconscious, authentic, or transpersonal layers of experience. This paper argues that while psychedelics can profoundly alter self-experience, the language of ego dissolution imports a questionable...