Songs of Life: Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy and Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘Desiring-Production’
Patricia Kubala
Deleuze and Guattari Studies October 27, 2023 DOI: 10.3366/dlgs.2023.0531 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Mysticism Psilocybin Psychedelic-assisted therapy |
| Keywords | Unconscious mind Psychic Psychoanalysis Psychotherapist Deleuze and guattari Vision Aesthetics |
| Citations | 6 |
| Key points | Argues that psychedelic-assisted therapy should adopt Deleuze and Guattari's schizoanalysis, treating the unconscious as a desiring-machine rather than prioritizing quantifiable mystical experience. |
Abstract
This paper argues that practitioners of psychedelic-assisted therapy could learn a great deal from Deleuze and Guattari’s critique of psychoanalysis in Anti-Oedipus, as well as the practice of materialist psychiatry – schizoanalysis – that they offer in its stead. Much of the clinical research on psychedelics (particularly psilocybin) over the past fifteen years has privileged mystical experience, assessed according to a quantifiable scale, as the goal of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy and source of cure ( Griffiths et al. 2006 , 2016 ; Barrett and Griffiths 2018 ; Pollan 2018 ). Has ‘mystical experience’ become the ‘imperialism of Oedipus’ within the psychedelic revival, towards which all psychedelic experience and activity of the unconscious is expected to tend? Distressed patients would be better held, I contend, through a therapeutic practice that adopts Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the unconscious as a desiring-machine and the cure as a completion of the process of desiring-production that is not arrested and reduced to pre-assigned ends. In this mode of working with psychedelics, the embodied memories, visions and sensations of the patient do not in a predetermined way ‘express’ or ‘represent’ a perennial, quantifiable experience (or myth). Rather, they enable the positive task of schizoanalysis of learning what a subject’s desiring-machines are and how they work, and the negative task of identifying and destroying all that stands in the way of their functioning.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on psilocybin and psychedelic-assisted therapy, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Theorizing that Psychedelic Assisted Therapy May Play a Role in the Treatment of Trauma-Induced Personality Disorders. | 2024 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Towards psychedelic apprenticeship: Developing a gentle touch for the mediation and validation of psychedelic-induced insights and revelations. | 2022 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Psychedelics and Psychotherapy: Cognitive-Behavioral Approaches as Default | 2022 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| The influence of therapists’ first-hand experience with psychedelics on psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy research and therapist training | 2018 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| The Yale Manual for Psilocybin-Assisted Therapy of Depression (using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy as a Therapeutic Frame) | 2020 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |