Psychoanalysis and Psychedelic Psychotherapy – A New Modern Synthesis?

Abstract

Our chapter traces the origins of the psychoanalytic method back to experiences of non-ordinary states of consciousness achieved through the practice of hypnosis. Psychedelic medicines have the capacity to reveal hidden aspects of the unconscious mind that include symbolic elements and early organizational structures that correspond to Freud’s primary process thinking and which underpin conscious experience. These previously inaccessible layers comprise the building blocks of inner world formation, ideas about the self, and lenses, which serve to organize, construct and shape outer world experience. The chapter describes the signature features and experience of several popular psychedelic agents. Essential theoretical principles and process components found in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy are elaborated. The author asserts that essential psychoanalytic tenets along with the subjective and intersubjective relational spaces described by Freud, Wilfred Bion and Donald Winnicott correspond to the unique experiential frameworks and psychotherapeutic capacities that can be rapidly achieved and become readily available in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. Psychoanalytic principles and technique become supremely relevant, even renewed, within the current climate of interest in psychedelic pharmacology and offers an array of fresh theoretical and practical applications in an emergent field that celebrates human being’s inner creativity, relational creativity and innate capacity to heal.