Psychoanalytic Dialogues
November 2, 2025
David Raniere
1 citation
This discussion extends psychoanalytic theory and practice to engage expanded states of consciousness elicited by psychedelic medicine. The author utilizes Peoples and Rundel’s clinical illustration involving ketamine-assisted psychoanalysis to propose the intra-collective as a transpersonal holding environment that encompasses and contains the intersubjective field, where highly organized,...
Psychoanalytic Dialogues
November 2, 2025
Karen Peoples, Megan Rundel
In this paper, we take up the question of what happens from a psychoanalytic perspective when a patient engages in psychedelic-assisted therapy. While some writers have suggested that psychedelic agents promote regression to an earlier point in development, we argue that such states may be better understood as expanding the mind beyond ordinary consciousness. We assert that traditional models...
Psychoanalytic Dialogues
November 2, 2025
D. Brenner
Peoples and Rundel argue that oceanic experiences in psychedelic-assisted treatment need not indicate regression but may reflect expansions of consciousness. I respond by examining how the self enables survival yet contributes to suffering, distinguishing expanded states from perspective, and proposing perspective as the hinge that transforms transient ego-dissolution into lasting growth. I...
Psychoanalytic Dialogues
November 2, 2025
Lawrence Fischman
ABSTRACT In Expansion and Regression in Oceanic Experience, Peoples and Rundel examine “what happens from a psychoanalytic perspective when a patient engages in psychedelic-assisted therapy.” In an elegant paper that has both a clinical and theoretical focus, they discuss what Romain Rolland described metaphorically as the “oceanic feeling.” They believe such feelings can have transformative...
Psychoanalytic Dialogues
November 2, 2023
Noelle Burton
2 citations
Psychopathy has long been considered untreatable. The purpose of this paper is to provide a report from the field on therapeutic gains made in the case of a psychopathic personality and to outline what appear to be the most effective aspects of the treatment, as well as to help integrate current psychedelic research and theory with psychoanalytic theory. These therapeutic factors include:...
Psychoanalytic Dialogues
November 2, 2022
F. González
ABSTRACT This essay is a series of short meditations on Adam Blum’s “How to surf the oceanic feeling.” Working in identification with Blum, and through the heaping up of associations to theory and literature, it considers (among other things) the “unintended story” of the group implicit in Blum’s poetic paper.
Psychoanalytic Dialogues
September 3, 2022
Kevin M. Barrett
12 citations
After a two-decade moratorium on psychedelic research in the United States, new studies on psychedelic assisted psychotherapy have shown promising results in the treatment of psychiatric disorders and the betterment of well people. Little has been written in contemporary psychoanalytic journals about the possible use of psychoanalytic theory as an underpinning for this research. This paper...
Psychoanalytic Dialogues
May 4, 2021
Yakov Shapiro, Terry Marks-Tarlow
9 citations
Intuitive response has been a cornerstone of patient–therapist interactions in all schools of therapy. In addition, persistent instances of “uncanny” intuitive knowing, such as “thought transference,” telepathic/precognitive dreams, distant awareness, and synchronicity have been identified since the very beginnings of psychoanalysis. These phenomena have remained on the fringes of scientific...
Psychoanalytic Dialogues
September 1, 2011
John C. Foehl
9 citations
Distance is seen here not only as a clinical phenomenon of being hard to reach but as a phenomenon of the fundamental nature of experiencing. Distance is a concept that interweaves separateness and sameness, a way of understanding how we are fundamentally interconnected and yet private at the same time.
Psychoanalytic Dialogues
1996
Philip M. Bromberg
25 citations
This paper reconsiders the case of Frau Emmy von N—Freud's first effort to treat hysteria—from the vantage point of hypnoid states of consciousness and the phenomenon of dissociation. It proposes that Freud, in ultimately repudiating Breuer's concept of autohypnosis and alterations in consciousness, led psychoanalysis for the next century towards a one‐sided emphasis on repression at the...