The Symbiotic Cycle of Creativity: three diagrams mapping scope of care and the psychedelic threshold in design

Abstract

A conceptual framework poster presenting three diagrams that map scope of care in creative practice and the point at which the ego boundary gives way. The Ego-to-Symbiotic Spiral draws four bands of care as a single movement, with line weight carrying the scope: hairline at the ego, heaviest at the symbiotic edge. The Symbiotic Cycle of Creativity holds the same four bands as concentric rings around awareness, showing the whole field at once. The Creative–Culture Loop follows the work after it leaves the maker's mind and comes back as culture. Two of the three diagrams are built on Neri Oxman's Krebs Cycle of Creativity ("Age of entanglement," Journal of Design and Science, 2016, https://doi.org/10.21428/7e0583ad), used and adapted under CC BY 4.0. The Ego-to-Symbiotic Spiral adapts Oxman's wheel and its crossed axes, substituting self and world for culture and nature, and practice for production. The Symbiotic Cycle of Creativity adapts her concentric substrate model, adding four bands of scope of care, an ego boundary drawn as a dashed ring with two openings, and the psychedelic threshold at which the centre moves outward. The Creative–Culture Loop is original to the author. Nothing of the Gropius diagram is reproduced. The framework draws on five years of practice-led research at Psychedelics Design (2021–2026): the author's own design practice, more than 50 published interviews with designers, artists and founders recorded for the Psychedelics Design podcast and Substack and for The Designer's Guide to Psychedelics (Inner Traditions, forthcoming), and one community survey with more than 70 responses. Interviews were recorded for publication with participants' consent. Survey data is anonymous and exploratory. The correspondence proposed between scope of care and the psychedelic literature on ego dissolution and connectedness is conceptual and has not been tested directly. This version supersedes Version 1.0, which held the three diagrams as draft figures without the accompanying framework text. To be presented at States of Consciousness: Psychedelic Discovery and the Edge of Uncertainty, University of California, Berkeley, 14–15 October 2026.