Whence integration? Integration as ‘path’

Abstract: Background and

Aims: As contributions to this special issue attest, psychedelic integration is currently garnering much scholarly attention. However, given that most agree the focus on integration is recent, this paper asks why integration is being given such an emphasis now. What has changed in Western cultures of psychedelicisms, once preoccupied with just ‘set and setting’, that necessitates such concern with what comes after the dose?

Methods: A discourse analysis of recent definitions of the term ‘integration’ was undertaken, and the results read through the lens of ‘margalogy’. Margalogy examines the ways, cross-culturally, that techniques of some desired transformation are canalised, formalised, and institutionalised into a ‘path’.

Results: Discourse analysis reveals two anxieties implicit within ‘integration’, both driven, in the so-called psychedelic renaissance, by the medicalisation of psychedelics. The first and ostensible anxiety concerns the need for psychic integration, but the second, implicit anxiety is concerned with integrating clients back into society without the upset that characterised the 1960s: societal integration.

Conclusions: The tripartite schema of preparation, dose, integration found in psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT) is usefully read as a path , one necessitated by medicalisation. PAT as path is scaffolded with intentional elements, which include preparation and the much-emphasised integration, that are put in place to mitigate the risks of the non-intentional elements that arise from the capricious nature of psychedelics themselves. Examples drawn from psychedelicisms that predate the so-called renaissance suggest that faith in the ability of the integrative path to bring that caprice to heel may not be justified.