The role of self-transcendent emotions in psychedelic experiences: a two-process proposal

Abstract

Psychedelics are known to elicit intense and meaningful subjective experiences. These subjective experiences are supposed to play a major role in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. However, not much attention has been paid to the role played by emotions in these experiences. In this paper, we argue that typical psychedelic-induced experiences share many phenomenological features with two emotions: awe (which involves a reduced sense of the self, need for cognitive accommodation, and alterations of temporal perception) and being moved (which involve feelings of insight, meaningfulness, and connectedness). On the basis of this comparison, we argue that these two emotions might play an important role in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy and put forward a two-process model of the role of emotions in psychedelic-assisted therapy. Based on this model, we propose several testable hypotheses that can be derived from this model.