Psychedelic substances have great promise for the treatment of many conditions, and they are the subject of intensive research. As with other medical treatments, both research and clinical use of psychedelics depend on our ability to ensure informed consent by patients and research participants. However, some have argued that informed consent for psychedelic use may be impossible, because...
ABSTRACT:Psychedelics have again become a subject of widespread interest, owing to the reinvigoration of research into their traditional uses, possible medical applications, and social implications. As evidence for psychedelics' clinical potential mounts, the field has increasingly focused on searching for mechanisms to explain the effects of psychedelics and therapeutic efficacy of...
ABSTRACT: Psychedelics, including psilocybin, and other consciousness-altering compounds such as 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), currently are being scientifically investigated for their potential therapeutic uses, with a primary focus on measurable outcomes: for example, alleviation of symptoms or increases in self-reported well-being. Accordingly, much recent discussion about the...
Introduction to the Special Section on Psychedelics Research and Treatment Dominic Sisti Against a backdrop of post-pandemic malaise, diseases of despair, and a fragmented mental health care system, psychedelics have enjoyed a resurgence of interest as powerful psychotherapeutic agents and as catalysts of personal growth. The true power of these substances—some of which are considered...
Recent clinical trials of psychedelic drugs aim to treat a range of psychiatric conditions in adults. MDMA and psilocybin administered with psychotherapy have received FDA designation as "breakthrough therapies" for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and treatment-resistant depression (TRD) respectively. Given the potential benefit for minors burdened with many of the same disorders, calls...
Since psychoneuroimmunology's (PNI) inception four decades ago, so-called "mind-body" approaches relying on or inspired by PNI have offered the promise of healing various ailments based on the age-old but metaphysically ambiguous principle that the mind can heal the body. How this principle is operationalized not only reveals limitations of PNI-based mind-body therapies but offers a test kit of...
In 2002, Dan Moerman outlined three candidate explanations for the "placebo response": the "conditioned stimulus-response," Irving Kirsch's "response-expectancy" explanation, and the "meaning response." The meaning response, Moerman argued, was the only one of the three candidate explanations that could cover all the data, gained from decades of RCTs and centuries of historical record. Moerman...
Open-label placebos (OLP)-placebo pills honestly prescribed-have challenged the notion that placebos require either deception or concealment to evoke salubrious benefits. This essay describes how the author arrived at the counter-intuitive OLP hypothesis, discusses evidence for OLP effectiveness, and examines mechanistic explanations for OLP. Current dominant theories such as expectation and...
Henry Knowles Beecher, an icon of human research ethics, and Timothy Francis Leary, a guru of the counterculture, are bound together in history by the synthetic hallucinogen lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). Both were associated with Harvard University during a critical period in their careers and of drastic social change. To all appearances the first was a paragon of the establishment and a...
Parallel to psychiatry, "philosophy of mind" investigates the relationship between mind (mental domain) and body/brain (physical domain). Unlike older forms of philosophy of mind, contemporary analytical philosophy is not exclusively based on introspection and conceptual analysis, but also draws upon the empirical methods and findings of the sciences. This article outlines the conceptual...
Among the many recent attempts to demonstrate the medical benefits of religious activity, the methodologically strongest seem to be studies of the effects of distant intercessory prayer (IP). In these studies, patients are randomly assigned to receive standard care or standard care plus the prayers or "healing intentions" of distant intercessors. Most of the scientific community has dismissed...
BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES BRUCE GREYSON* Near-death experiences (NDEs) are profound psychological events with transcendental or mystical elements typically occurring to individuals close to death or in situations of intense physical or emotional danger. Such experiences, once regarded as meaningless hallucinations, have become the subject of serious study by medical and other...
SOME EFFECTS OF GROUP DRUG TAKING ERWIN DI CYAN* The purpose of this paper is to discuss briefly some aspects of the differences between drug effects when drugs are used in groups as distinguished from their solitary use. The human organism responds to a variety of stimuli. Its response to signals may be physiological or psychological. The latter response includes recollections by (a) retrieval...
THE RISE, DECLINE, AND FALL OF LSD ROBERT F. ULRICH and BERNARD M. PATTEN* The urge to transcend self-conscious selfhood is ... a principal appetite of the soul. When, for whatever reason, men and women fail to transcend themselves by means of worship, good worh and spiritual exercises, they are apt to resort to religion's chemical surrogates.—Aldous Huxley. [1] On April 16, 1943, a fascinating...
BRIEF PROPOSAL "PERITHAN EXPERIENCE": NAMING THE BEYOND DOUGLAS P. HOBSON* Man's pursuit of knowledge about Ufe after death has taken him into many areas and strange, unexplored frontiers of human experience. Fettered frequently by a nagging fear of death and yet goaded by his persistent curiosity of the mysterious, man has in some fashion found ways of familiarizing himself with death. In this...
If the proper study of mankind is man, it is a paradox worth pondering that consciousness, the receptacle of all that is truly human, has not yet found a place in the life sciences. This is not to imply that neuroscientists are uninterested in physiological correlates and mechanisms of sleep and wakefulness, or that psychopharmacologists are not intensively investigating psychoactive drugs, and...
OUT ON A (PHANTOM) LIMB VARIATIONS ON THE THEME: STABILITY OF BODY IMAGE AND THE GOLDEN SECTION And man created God in his own body image. ROLAND FISCHER* Psychodysleptic Drug-inducedInterference with Readaptation to Distortions It is by now well known that wearing prism spectacles results in a variety ofperceptual distortions which, however, gradually disappear within a period oftime [i, 2,...