Embodied Transformation: Psychedelic Therapy Through the Lens of Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology

Abstract

Abstract This paper develops a phenomenological account of the therapeutic significance of psychedelic-induced mystical experience, drawing on the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The central argument holds that the enduring therapeutic benefits of psychedelics emerge through a radical transformation in the structure of lived experience. Two prominent objections to the therapeutic value of mystical experience are examined and shown to rest on implicit Cartesian assumptions that obscure the embodied, situated character of human experience. Using Merleau-Ponty’s concepts of the body-subject and the intentional arc, depression is analysed as a collapse of perceptual attunement and engagement with the world, while psychedelic-induced mystical experience is shown to instantiate the opposite structure, recalibrating the intentional arc and restoring pre-reflective meaning. A phenomenological analysis of the acute mystical experience substantiates this claim, before a final response to the objection that psychedelic experiences are merely hallucinatory, arguing, via Merleau-Ponty’s account of perception as irreducible to passive reflection, that such experiences may still disclose meaningful dimensions of the world.

In the evidence

This study is part of the evidence base for 2 syntheses in the library. Here is how each one recorded it.

• State of the evidence: Philosophy of mind ↑Supports

  Argues via Merleau-Ponty that psychedelic mystical experience recalibrates the intentional arc and restores pre-reflective meaning, and that objections to its therapeutic value rest on implicit Cartesian assumptions.

  Synthesized November 1, 2026

• State of the evidence: Psychedelic-assisted therapy ?Unclear

  Argues that psychedelic mystical experience recalibrates the intentional arc and restores pre-reflective meaning, framing depression as a collapse of perceptual attunement.

  Synthesized October 25, 2026

Comparable studies

Other theoretical and historical papers on psychedelic-assisted therapy, most cited first.