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,...
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...
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...
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...
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:...
ABSTRACT In this discussion of The Bad Seed: Mystical Experiences and Time Travel in the Treatment of Psychopathy, I focus on the role of psychedelics in the remarkable clinical account Burton offers. A model for understanding psychedelic action in psychoanalytic terms is put forth, and the account of Seth’s journey is framed in this light. The understanding of psychedelics as facilitating a...
ABSTRACT This is a reply to the discussions by Arthur Fox, Megan Rundel, and Jeffrey Guss. Clarification is made on the utility of diagnosis, as well as further elaboration on what is common to both psychedelic states and the altered states of consciousness encountered in deep psychoanalytic work. Additional thoughts on the integration of a relational multiple self-state model with psychedelic...
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.
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...
ABSTRACT By way of an introduction to a panel on psychedelics and psychoanalysis, the author recounts his young adult experiences with psychedelic drugs and how they forever influenced his perspectives on mental health and psychotherapy before there were conventions in our literature to ground his observations. The author’s experience foreshadows markers in research and clinical practice for...
ABSTRACT As the use of psychedelic agents become a part of mental health treatment, psychoanalysts have the challenge of theorizing how they affect the psyche and the relational field, as well as how they might become part of an analytic process. In this paper, I explore three aspects of psychedelic experience and some ways we might start to understand them in analytic terms. I discuss states...
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...
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...
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.
This paper describes states of consciousness in some disturbed or traumatized patients in which time is not experienced as being linked to future or past. The patient's experience in this state is “digital” rather than continuous, making it difficult for him to have an inner sense of continual “aliveness” and to link analytic sessions together. In extreme cases, his world may be experienced as...
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...