Treating Childhood Trauma through Psilocybin
Bénédicte Mannix, F. Leron Shults, Michael J. Winkelman
June 16, 2025 DOI: 10.1163/9789004729759_016 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Intervention | Psilocybin therapy |
| Topics | Psilocybin |
| Keywords | Psychotherapist Hallucinogen |
| Key points | Proposes a three-phase psychedelic healing protocol using psilocybin to treat childhood trauma, informed by various psychological and philosophical traditions. |
Abstract
This chapter describes a psychedelic healing protocol developed by Bénédicte Mannix for treating childhood trauma, explaining its therapeutic approaches and the philosophical and psychological traditions that inform her healing practices. The motivation for the development of this protocol has been to harness the power of psilocybin to heal human minds, bodies, and souls from psychological trauma and to participate in the broader ongoing social transformation of the human relationship to our ecological environment. This chapter also outlines some of the main psychological and therapeutic schools of thought that inform Mannix’s approach and presents some of the relevant clinical studies and pharmacological mechanisms related to the effectiveness psilocybin therapy, especially for trauma. In addition to providing a rationale for focusing on childhood trauma as a target for entheogenic healing, the key components of each of the three phases of the protocol are presented—the pre-session, the session itself, and the post-session integration. After describing some of the clinical research on the therapeutic potential of psilocybin therapy and some of the biological mechanisms involved, the chapter summarizes the approach and identifies some of its implications.