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.

1. Introduction

The profession of psychiatry has been described as a pendulum that swings between “psychological” and “biological” theories and therapies. Over the past several decades, the biological emphasis, narrowly focused on the diagnosis and pharmacological treatment regimes, has largely disappointed and failed to yield anticipated results. The advent of psychedelic psychotherapies provides a notably interesting and useful synthesis of the psychological and biological perspectives. Psychedelic medicines modulate neural systems, induce brain plasticity and potentiate learning. The brain is hence primed and receptive for psychotherapy to be especially impactful and potent. The skills and knowledge that derive from the psychoanalytic tradition not only provide a comprehensive system and treatment process relevant to psychedelic psychotherapy but also offer a unique opportunity for psychoanalytic theory and technique to be modified and applied to a treatment context that, similar to psychoanalysis, recognizes the intrinsic healing potential of non-ordinary states of consciousness.

The so-called non-ordinary states of consciousness have been utilized in healing practices in virtually every civilization for millennia. Shamanic healing, naturally occurring (spontaneous) mystical experience, yoga practice, meditation, pranayama and trance, at times enhanced with the use of naturally growing psychotropic plants, represent a mere scattering of approaches and paths through which intrinsic healing potentials are activated within healing rituals and practice.

The origins of psychoanalysis itself can be traced back to experiences of non-ordinary consciousness through the practice of hypnosis. Sigmund Freud was introduced to this treatment modality in 1885 while studying with Charcot and Bernheim in Paris [1, 2]. In Vienna, Freud’s friend and colleague, Joseph Breuer, used hypnotic techniques to regress hysterical patients to uncover the underlying origin of the symptom. Breuer discovered that a strong emotional reaction and release of forgotten traumas would often eliminate hysterical symptoms; the technique was coined “the cathartic method.” It was through these early explorations that Freud postulated the presence of an unconscious mind. Freud speculated that hysterical symptoms contained protective functions as well as symbolic meaning, and he consequently argued that symptoms needed to be respected and not indiscriminately removed. Freud felt the process of hypnosis, even when effective, offered limited insight into the mechanisms of symptom formation themselves and, by extension, of the underlying conflicts that are resolved in symptom expression. However, the radical discovery that Bernheim’s hypnotic method could actually recover lost memories allowed Freud to draw inferences regarding dream formation: “In a dreamer too the lost knowledge about his dreams is present, though it is inaccessible to him so that he himself does not believe it, it is not something entirely out of the blue” [3]. Freud quickly moved beyond hypnosis to develop the free association technique in which obstacles to free expression were worked through to reveal unconscious fantasies and wishes. This methodology endowed the analytic subjects with greater autonomy, and the therapeutic relationship became the central vehicle for the unconscious fantasies and wishes to be actively revived, experienced and re-lived through the drama of transference. The treatment elements such as frequent sessions, the use of a couch to promote reverie and the capture of inherent regressive forces activate the treatment situation. “Subconscious” material, dreams and fantasy expressions emerge under the analytic method’s deliberate tilt away from conscious, censored thought processes. This technique essentially promotes the non-standard, deeper levels of conscious experience that color, shape and animate everyday life.

The Canadian psychiatrist Humphrey Osmond coined the term psychedelic, derived from the Greek word meaning “mind manifesting,” to describe the inherent ability of psychedelic compounds to bring hidden aspects of the unconscious mind into conscious experience. Psychedelics induce changes in the matrix of perception, emotion and self-awareness. It has been speculated that these compounds act to inhibit the default mode network in the brain, a set of brain regions more active during rest than during the execution of goal-directed tasks. It is speculated that more dreamy states of awareness such as those encountered during a psychedelic experience, REM sleep and temporal lobe epilepsy represent an earlier style of cognition that is qualitatively different than normal cognition [4]. This form of cognition corresponds to Freud’s primary process of thinking, which is symbolic in nature and characteristic of an immature ego where representations take place by allusion or analogy, where memory or ideas may be used to stand for a whole, and vice versa. Several different thoughts may be represented by a single thought or image. Verbal representations here are less exclusive, and visual or sensual impressions may appear instead of a word, paragraph or entire chapter. A sense of linear time does not exist; past, present and future are one [5]. Primary process thinking is poetic and fluid and reveals sense impressions, symbol formation and early organizations of sensual and emotional experience. These building blocks create a unique creative vocabulary and poetic palette of representations for inner world formation and enrichment. Ideas about the self and the worldly surround are built on tapestries of fantasy, symbolic representation and belief that defy logic and reason and are instead linked by creative similarities typically encountered in childhood thinking and ideation [6]. It is these elements that provide the substrates of dreams and become the ingredients of the organizational structures and lenses through which we perceive and construct our sense of self and the world.

Recent neuroimaging studies propose theories of how and why the mechanisms of action of classical psychedelic medicines on the serotonin 2A receptor induce a heightened brain state for transformation. It has been speculated that up-regulation of this system, modulated through the binding on the receptor, might prime a “pivotal mental state” that is hyper-plastic for brain and mind states, and provide an enhanced rate of associative learning with the potential for enhanced psychological transformation [7]. Another speculation involves developmental critical periods that mark points of exquisite sensitivity to environmental inputs. Psychedelic medicines, it is suggested, may remove the brakes on adult neuroplasticity to catalyze a state in which critical neurodevelopmental windows are reopened [8].

All of these theories of brain activation capture the unique perceptual field that is accessed during a psychedelic session. Within these states, access to early life experience becomes available through symbolic representations and unique modes of knowing. The opening of these critical developmental windows can render a mind exquisitely sensitive to inputs from the treatment setting, permit a privileged set of conditions for exploration and discovery, and present novel perceptions and opportunities for impactful corrective experience. The psychotherapist, in turn, becomes available as a new object to be introjected for both enrichment and repair, but also as a companion to accompany and participate in the psychedelic experience, replete with early caregiver function provision.

2. Psychedelic signatures

Each psychedelic compound presents an experience with unique features, with great variability of intersubjective range, duration and breadth of noetic feeling. There are particular signatures or qualities cultivated by different compounds in regard to the atmosphere and climate they generate. The medicine dose and route of administration further modulate the experience and should be considered as distinct variables to be leveraged for coloration, depth of immersion and the desired platform of experience. Similar to geographic travel, in which every location and culture offers unique customs and traditions, each psychedelic compound affords a unique atmosphere and invitation to explore. It is through the navigation of the experiential landscape one encounters that one enters into a specific discourse with the medicine and from which detailed knowledge may be gained about and through the self. Each medicine cultivates its own sense of the sacred, sense of wonder and access to a perspective beyond a routine self—along with the structures that inform and contribute to an experience of self—and simultaneously a glimpse of those forces that lie just beyond the margins in which we reside.

MDMA (3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine) as a psychotropic agent allows one to release from fear-based protective systems held in the mind, emotions and body to support an experience characterized by safety and liberation from the dominance of thoughts and thinking. In a field where the mind is quieted, the subject discovers a connection to emotions and sensations of gratitude and awe. Prominent expressions and experiences of profound love and compassion activate an ideal field for forgiveness, repair and re-evaluation of existing life narratives. Traumatic events are able to be processed without re-traumatization. The world and past experiences are navigated in the context of the kind, loving emotional fields, free of risk or danger, to permit rediscovery of forgotten memories, dismissed feelings and fresh perspectives that encourage a reconsideration of relationships and life events.

Psilocybin has the distinct and widely-noted distinction of serving as a teacher. In his legendary book The Doors of Perception [9], Aldous Huxley proposed that the brain acts as a “reducing valve” to limit the outside “Mind at Large”—essentially the sum of all of reality, all ideas and sensory experience present in the Universe. Huxley speculated that the brain permits a “measly trickle” of what exists into ordinary consciousness as a measure to permit efficient survival. Psilocybin, like all classical psychedelic medicines, provides access to an expansive, sensory feast of surrounding details. All the elements encountered in a psilocybin experience present as uncannily but convincingly vibrant and alive, rich in intricacy, delight and charm. Introspective attention generates knowledge about the self-presented through the so-called “primary process” modes of knowing, such as those embedded in music, imagery, somatic sensations or at times an immediate apprehension of information in a fully formed parcel of knowledge. There is not infrequently a sense of “meeting one’s being” or entering into a rapport with the very blueprint of one’s DNA—the architect and designer of the self, and the genetic lineage from which the latter issue.

Ketamine—a dissociative anesthetic and potent antidepressant, has the potential to offer a profoundly meditative experience. In tailored lower doses, the medicine may be finely titrated to permit a gentle release from the defensive, fear-based systems operant in the mind, body, emotional realms and nervous system. The character armor and protective systems in the body typically release in a ketamine session, as the chatter of the thinking mind dissolves. The variety of components that form the experience of self—thought, emotions and somatic sensation—distill and grant access to a platform of uncustomary awareness that permits one to observe the symphony of streams that typically drive action and performance in everyday life. Deep listening to the self beyond the dominance of the mind allows access to novel forms of understanding, presented in the body through sensory domains. A capital aspect of this experience is the cultivation of pathways in the mind, body, feelings and nervous system away from fear, protective reflexes are softened, permitting the concomitant arrival of relaxed and spontaneous play fueled by imagination and creativity. Careful dosing may permit exploration throughout the self-sculpture to the very margins of self, and indeed well beyond, to mystical, unity states of oneness.

Even with this qualitative array of distinct experiences, all psychedelic medicines may be said to share several themes. Each permits an experience beyond the limiting grip of anxiety and fear. They reveal what portion of our character and conditioned behaviors are the results of protective survival strategies that served well in negotiating family-of-origin situations. As these sclerotic structures soften, like a candle melting, they reorganize toward softer positions that are enabled within the current context where the provision of safety, care and attuned attention are offered in the treatment situation. An individual’s gifts and intelligence, formerly directed toward systems of protection, become freshly available to be directed toward play and harnessed toward curiosity, exploration, imagination and joy. During this bountiful creative state, the possibility of rediscovering identity, along with a sense of essential self-energy, represents a path to wholeness—a process of integration and actualization, through individuation and growth. In Playing and Reality [10], Donald Winnicott describes “Playing, which cannot be dissociated from creativity and a sense of ‘enjoyment,’ is an ‘intensely real’ experience that has intrinsic therapeutic virtue, that is to say it is capable of promoting ‘self-healing’.” In the theater of the psychedelic experience, knowledge is accessed, conflicts are addressed, and developmental arrest is negotiated and solved.

Knowledge about the personal past and the creation of the existing self-architecture is discovered as an artifact in the experience itself. Information is received with highly inventive symbolic expression, analogous to the creativity of dream work, but in this instance the dream is lucid and the setting provides the dream elements and dream furniture. Different self-states and introjects may be accessed, to be grasped and compassionately listened to for self-reclamation, expansion and integration [11]. Narratives and storylines that have dominated belief and identity systems and which contribute to the limitation of experience are brought into awareness to afford a more deliberate self-authorship, freedom of choice and invention, and the exhilarating possibility of new experience.

Inner Healing Intelligence—The central principle in psychedelic psychotherapy is one that recognizes the capacity inherent in living systems perpetually to re-establish equilibrium, restore and recover toward wholeness and wellbeing. To activate this innate capacity, one must both remove the obstacles that inhibit healing, and provide adequate conditions for recovery, healing and growth [12, 13]. Consider human ontogenesis as a model: at birth, every infant contains the blueprint and potential for development and growth but the unfolding process depends heavily on the provision of an adequate environment for full developmental progression and mental, emotional, physical and spiritual thriving. The inference here is that as coupled living systems, we innately possess the ability to heal ourselves and each other. We require both the balance and contribution of individual and interdependent systems to obtain wholeness and contribute to collective health [14].

Psychedelic psychotherapy offers a breakdown of protective systems and positions, along with a developmental approach in which the hold of psychological arrests is released to permit developmental progression accompanied by underlying repair of foundational deficits and inner world enrichment. An analogy would be the comparison of a structural renovation of a house in contrast to interior decoration. The former improvements are partly destructive since old structures are broken down, to simultaneously clear the way for new emergent capacities that reflect an upgrade in compromise formations, creative expressions and identity narratives.

3. The psychedelic psychotherapy process

Psychedelic medicines create a shift in access to knowledge and emotional experience both internally and externally. The tapestry of internal threads of experience ranging from mental, emotional, somatic and nervous system realms is annexed and becomes available experientially, all while being woven into an expanded sense and concept of self. Correspondingly, the intersubjective space and all the elements in the surrounding sensory field of awareness—the so-called “setting”—becomes expansively resonant and apprehended through multiple sensory modes in a synesthetic melange, thereby enriching and refining the experience of the outer world.

Similar to the psychoanalytic method, where the removal of obstacles toward free association provides both the methodology and healing process, experiential attention to the self-sculpture allows for the acquisition of knowledge and correction simultaneously. Various self-components that have become exaggerated are softened, leading to the correction of imbalanced protective systems. Trauma blockages and projected interferences may come to be released, which in turn permit correction and repair. Access to the knowledge and wisdom of the mind and body naturally fosters enrichment, development and growth.

4. Connection

Psychedelic medications create the conditions for an expansion of experience that extends into realms that are usually inaccessible. The intangible aspects that at once color, shape and organize subjective experience come into the field of awareness where they can be recognized and appreciated. Primordial aspects of self and experience that in the course of living have been disconnected and disregarded are now reclaimed, and in doing so often revive painful states or memories that reveal the very motivation for the earlier disconnection. This access permits an opportunity to process and negotiate earlier injuries in a real-time repair supported by the attending psychotherapist.

The revived experiences may be considered as a “screen memory” or a symbolic motif that captures the organization of the earlier wound or deficit. Stanislav Grof recognized that psychedelic experiences are organized around powerful and emotionally charged “root experiences” [12]. The revived expression is often presented at the developmental level most conducive to being comfortably addressed. The repair leads to reconnection, reconstruction and enrichment, and frequently sets into motion numerous developmental channels of repair expression following the resolution and release from the organizing complex. Furthermore, the overdetermined aspect of repair has significant implications for technique, the centrality of therapeutic neutrality and the importance of meticulous boundary maintenance. As deeper and intimate new internal connections are forged through the self, these capacities are expressed and mirrored externally through enriched, intimate connections in the subject’s relationships and with the outside world [14].

5. Self and co-regulation

Infants are born with a limited capacity for self-regulation. The mother, or primary caregiver, offers their nervous system and physiological systems to function as a dyadic pair, and together they stabilize and manage the immature regulatory functions of the infant. The maternal functioning serves to soothe, comfort and stabilize dysregulated states, typical of an immature nervous system, while simultaneously providing emotional and physical nourishment. Through the functions of care and nourishment, infant emotional regulation capacity develops through the dyadic emotional regulatory system. The quality and success of the child’s emotional regulatory system are heavily dependent and influenced by the quality of the maternal-infant dyad and maternal regulatory capacity [15]. In cultures where there is a strong family support system and extended families nearby, deficits in maternal regulatory capacity may be compensated for by proximate family members. In situations where there is limited maternal support and scarce extended family help, maternal function deficits fall primarily on and become the burden of the immature infant. Anxieties will be compensated for, and managed by, immature infantile defensive maneuvers, such as denial, splitting and disconnection as a means to cope with overwhelming painful states, with the resulting formation of brittle psychological coping systems with limited flexibility. These latter increase the subject’s susceptibility to future mental problems and poor psychological resilience. In a parallel, overlapping fashion, early maternal bonding and early attachment styles along with associated difficulties lay foundational imprints to inform later patterns of attachment that dovetail into relationship patterns and dynamic formations.

Difficulties in emotional regulation typically contribute to compensations in systems of thinking and/or dissociative states as mechanisms for stabilization, recovery and equilibrium maintenance. Primitive and underdeveloped emotional systems for regulation lead to correspondingly unbalanced compensatory systems in the systems of character and thought, where dissociation strategies are frequently deployed to compensate for the underlying shortfall. Similarly, attachment style and compensations for impoverished early bonding both pattern and heavily influence the subsequent relational quality, depth and texture [16]. Such foundational deficits are unable to be easily corrected because the laying down of these systems tends to follow a progressive developmental unfolding informed by critical windows that impose relatively immutable structures on the basis of character styles and reflexive coping patterns.

Psychedelic medicines offer a radical possibility of accessing these underlying systems for repair, transformation and enrichment. In the psychedelic state, the therapeutic relational field establishes conditions similar to the early maternal-infant dyadic field. The defensive arrangements held in the mind, body and emotional structures of the patient act as protective shells rendering the underlying fields relatively inaccessible and thereby resistant to later repair. It is simply these protective systems that are released within the emotional security of the psychedelic field, and allow for states of reconnection both internally and externally. These releases render the underlying fields permeable to influence. In the open, undefended state, the natural tendency for human physiology to co-regulate and synchronize is utilized for the patient-therapist pair to revive the early infant-maternal dyadic field conditions. Such an environment provides the ideal situation to correct attachment failures, repair regulation deficits and build new emotional regulatory potentials by opening the innate capacities to discover optimal equilibriums and co-regulations. The downstream impact of such foundational repair and enrichment represents a fundamental shift in the understanding of the mechanisms of healing; it moves well beyond symptom reduction, treatment of disease and dysfunction, toward enrichment, resilience and emergence attributes, now considered to be primary indicators of well-being and health.

6. Identity/self states/transformation

Transformation is an under-appreciated innate psychological capacity that provides an ability to update and generate a coherent sense of self throughout the passage of life [17]. To continuously mold and transform a dynamic identity and sense of self through childhood, young adulthood, marriage, parenthood, end-of-life decline and other contingencies of life is a complex process that requires a perpetual and often radical reorganization of identifications without loss of access to earlier, foundational core self states that define and direct subsequent experience and growth. Indeed, it is typical that during transitional life periods, individuals endure tremendous mental stress fueled by circumstances that necessitate adaptive shifts in core identity, sometimes hormonally mediated. During these windows, a heightened susceptibility toward mental illness is noted, e.g., puberty, leaving the rearing environment, marriage, post-postpartum, end-of-life [18].

7. Foundational identity

Introjects, identifications and a myriad of self-states from a range of developmental ages are frequently recognized and witnessed during the psychedelic experience. With careful facilitation, exploration and access to the corresponding emotional states are recognized. Recognition and integration of aspects of the self into coherent whole permits a rich symphony of developmental expressions and capacities. Organizing ideas and reflections about the self becomes available for reconsideration, review and an accurate upgrade based on current life circumstances. Identities that have retreated from expression or have not been fully elaborated, identity errors stemming from projections or compromise formations that provided solutions to underlying anxieties are able to be safely explored and reformulated within an experiential, present-moment exchange with the psychotherapist.

8. Deep listening/presence/mystical states

Similar to the psychoanalytic method of free association, where attention is brought to the unfolding productions of the psyche, in psychedelic psychotherapy the primary instruction provided is to simply focus awareness on any sensation, thought, feeling or experience that arises. Since psychedelic medicines permit expressions from deeper aspects of the self, alongside a plethora of sensory expressions, the patient needs to learn to navigate the experience, familiarize herself with and discover the modes of listening as information is accessed through the senses.

Correspondingly, listening from all sensory levels by the therapist is optimal, to provide a wide-spectrum registering and “deep listening” that flows in tandem with the patient’s as the session progresses and resolves. Psychoanalytic training provides a system of learning the psychoanalytic method through direct experience while inducing within the training analyst an ever deeper knowledge of themselves to enhance their capacity as an instrument of exquisite sensitivity and self-awareness. Similarly, a cultivated knowledge of the psychotherapist’s own self-states, character structure, components of identity and mystical experience states allow for the augmented use of the analyst’s own self as a psychedelic psychotherapeutic instrument where the deeper foundational layers of the self and the underlying emotional anxieties may be registered, addressed and developed through the substance of the therapeutic encounter.

The cultivation of a platform of experience liberated from the distractions of the noisy mind, emotions and in somatic sensation is a principal goal of meditation. Such an experience is one of awareness and stillness, notably free from routine sensory and somatic conditioning. Access to such a state presents an achievement that is often the result of disciplined practice. In such a state, one is more able to be fully present in the core experience as an essential essence of self that resides beyond the narratives and life history held in the mind, in emotional life and in the soma. Such presence is a substantial achievement and should be considered a mystical state as it is an expression of self-energy or essence that is divine in quality. The experience of heightened presence is a consonance that resonates with the life energy within and the energetics of the surrounding world. It is the single energy that animates life and could be considered the substance of existence. A singular virtue of psychedelic medicines is that they provide an immediate portal into a state of presence. Access to this state constitutes a “sweet spot” for healing; it permits resonance with the world around, like a tuning fork vibrating in sympathy with the pulse of life, at once a correction and a tuning to the frequency of life.

Many studies have recognized the value of mystical experiences that reside beyond the margins of self, the so-called “ego-dissolution” states that permit an experience of unity and oneness with the world and universe, often permitting access to knowledge of truths about oneself, the nature of reality or the Universe [19, 20]. Such experiences feel sacred in nature and contain characteristics of the so-called peak experience [21] such as a sense of unity, strong positive emotion, a feeling of transcendence, numinosity, ineffability, insights and paradoxical understandings.

In working with psychedelic medicines, the cultivation of a state of presence through the self allows one to access platforms of intense experience at the margins of self or beyond ego dissolution states. These unity states, however, are arrived at by the journey through the self not simply by bypassing the self-states. This entails the concomitant working through trauma, discovery of previously unaccessed potentials and dormant wisdom.

During states of presence, the corresponding relational field between patient and psychotherapist becomes one where the emotional contact and the intersubjective field are at once heightened and profound. The psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion captures the profundity of such states of emotional experience in which a capacity to metabolize experience by “alpha function” provided by a psychoanalyst allows for a capacity to symbolize and create meaningful connections, and to build a rich internal and external reality at the nexus of the creation of self and the world around [22]. The concept of the inextricably linked (mind)set and the setting is a recognition that the mind simultaneously creates the setting and paradoxically, through a bi-directional, mutually informing, reciprocal matrix, the setting context elaborates the formation of the mind.

In such a relational field, the Bionian directive for the psychoanalyst to maintain a stance “beyond memory and desire” [23] to permit recognition of an evolutionary process in an unfolding session captures the essence of the psychedelic psychotherapy process. Through the shared presence and witnessing functions that the session provides, along with the emotional availability and capacity to hold and follow the session flow, the psychotherapist catalyzes the corrective experience and provides the necessary nutrients and framework for creative growth and the emergence of new potentials.

For a person to emerge into their full self, to matter and to be held in regard through the mind and heart of another, is an indispensable requirement for the free unfolding of self potentials, self-regulation, individuation and the blossoming of innate creative capacities. During a session’s progression, unrecognized aspects of emerging like the shape and form of clay on a potter’s wheel are skillfully guided by the psychedelic psychotherapist but always driven by the patient’s healing process itself.

In his Paris seminars of 1978 [24], Bion, while discussing patient selection for psycho-analysis, poetically describes the spectrum that encompasses the range between, through and beyond the self-sculpture:

“suppose you were walking through a building and saw on the ground a pattern of colors thrown by the light coming through a window. Heredia, in the poem *“Vitrail” (footnote), describes the effigies on the tombs: they cannot see, cannot hear, but with their eyes of stone, they see these colors spread out on the floor. As this patient is talking to me and the light falls on this conversation, what colors do you see? Do you like them? Would you like to spend more time there? Would you like to study the window through which the sunlight penetrates to find out what sort of design there is in the glass of that window?”

Bion’s work particularly, I feel, captures the tenets of psychedelic psychotherapy work through his affirmation of the following principles:

1. the value of the subjective experience,

2. the implicit profundity of every patient/psychotherapist encounter,

3. the irreducible mystery of the experience of life,

4. the daring adventure to know and seek the truth (beyond our conditioning and deceptive narratives) and lastly,

5. the profound value of tolerance for the unknowable to create space for discovery and for the emergence of unforeseeable possibility.

9. Conclusion

The psychoanalytic model and the rich and rigorous scholarship of the historical discipline hold a wealth of expertise and knowledge ripe for modification and elaboration within psychedelic psychotherapy. Psychoanalysis becomes supremely relevant, even renewed, within the current climate of interest in psychedelic medicines and offers an array of fresh theoretical as well as practical applications in a field that, like psychoanalysis, celebrates the plentitude of human being’s inner creativity, relational creativity and the innate capacity to heal and restore both ourselves and others.

*Vitrail

Cette verrière a vu dames et hauts barons Étincelants d’azur, d’or, de flamme et de nacre, Incliner, sous la dextre auguste qui consacre, L’orgueil de leurs cimiers et de leurs chaperons; Lorsqu’ils allaient, au bruit du cor ou des clairons, Ayant le glaive au poing, le gerfaut ou le sacre, Vers la plaine ou le bois, Byzance ou Saint-Jean d’Acre, Partir pour la croisade ou le vol des hérons. Aujourd’hui, les seigneurs auprès des châtelaines, Avec le lévrier à leurs longues poulaines, S’allongent aux carreaux de marbre blanc et noir; Ils gisent là sans voix, sans geste et sans ouié, Et de leurs yeux de pierre ils regardent sans voir La rose du vitrail toujours épaniouie.

Heredia.

Stained Glass (Vitrail)

“This canopy has seen ladies and high barons

Sparkling with azure, gold, flame and mother-of-pearl,

To bow, under the august dexter which consecrates,

The pride of their crests and chaperones;

When they went, to the sound of horns or bugles,

With sword in hand, gyrfalcon or coronation,

Toward the plain or the woods, Byzantium or Saint-Jean d’Acre,

Leaving for the crusade or the flight of the herons

Today, the lords with the chatelaines,

With the greyhound to their long foals,

Lie on white and black marble tiles;

They lie there without voice, without gesture and without hearing, And with their stony eyes they look without seeing.

The ever-blooming stained-glass rose”.

-- José-Maria de Heredia.