Beyond the Identity Paradigm: Self-Addiction, Anti-Self Psychology, and Psychedelic Ego-Dissolution
Brian Nuckols
Theory & Psychology October 27, 2026 DOI: 10.1177/09593543261485252 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Addiction Ego dissolution |
| Key points | Argues that compulsive identity maintenance operates as an addictive process the author terms "self-addiction," with the self as the object of dependence, and that rigid self-referential processing tracks suffering while its loosening tracks improvement. Proposes "metacognitive agency"—the capacity to modulate flexibility and rigidity in context—as an alternative therapeutic telos, while noting structural preconditions for flexible selfhood in marginalized communities and the risk that dissolution becomes its own attachment. |
Abstract
Contemporary psychology treats the construction, maintenance, and enhancement of a coherent self-concept as the implicit telos of therapeutic intervention, an assumption so thoroughly embedded in clinical training, diagnostic frameworks, and outcome measurement that it functions less as a theoretical commitment than as a perceptual habit. This article argues that compulsive identity maintenance operates, across diverse clinical presentations and neurobiological substrates, as an addictive process: self-addiction , characterized by salience, tolerance, withdrawal, and persistence despite harm, with substantial selfhood itself as the object of dependence. Drawing on post-Kantian critical philosophy, predictive processing neuroscience, psychedelic ego-dissolution research, and Deleuzian critiques of therapeutic capture, the article traces how independent intellectual and empirical traditions converge on a common finding: that rigid self-referential processing tracks suffering while its systematic loosening tracks improvement. The self-addiction framework is applied to five standing debates the identity paradigm has rendered intractable: the Dodo Bird verdict, process-based therapy’s unexamined stopping point, Jungian outcome data, the narcissism epidemic paradox, and the ethics of ego-syntonic pathology. In each case, it both explains the debate and reveals the identity paradigm as the constraint that kept the explanation invisible. It proposes metacognitive agency, the bidirectional capacity to modulate both flexibility and rigidity in context, as an alternative therapeutic telos, while addressing the structural preconditions of flexible selfhood for marginalized communities and the recursive risk that dissolution becomes its own object of attachment.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on ego dissolution, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Self unbound: ego dissolution in psychedelic experience | 2017 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Looking for the Self: Phenomenology, Neurophysiology and Philosophical Significance of Drug-induced Ego Dissolution | 2017 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Ethics and ego dissolution: the case of psilocybin | 2020 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Mystical and Other Alterations in Sense of Self: An Expanded Framework for Studying Nonordinary Experiences | 2020 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Psychedelic medicalization, public discourse, and the morality of ego dissolution | 2021 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |