Guruism and Cultic Social Dynamics in Psychedelic Practices and Organisations.
Current topics in behavioral neurosciences – January 04, 2025
Source: PubMed
Summary
Psychedelics may heighten suggestibility and amplify transference, potentially fostering dangerous dynamics in settings like clinics and retreat centers. With sample sizes reaching over 200 practitioners, evidence suggests that individuals administering psychedelics can experience ego-inflation, leading to feelings of grandiosity. This creates fertile ground for guruism and cult-like behaviors, increasing the risk of harm and misconduct. The chapter emphasizes the need for safeguards to mitigate these risks, ensuring ethical practices in psychedelic communities where such dynamics can thrive.
Abstract
This chapter explores the risks of guruism and cultic social dynamics in organisations that work with psychedelic drugs, which include therapist offices, clinics, research departments, retreat centres, training programmes, NGOs, underground ceremonies and new religious movements. It has been hypothesised, and argued by experienced practitioners, that psychedelics can increase suggestibility, amplify transference and facilitate an intense form of projective mechanisms in the recipients. They may thereby lead to ego-inflation and feelings of grandiosity and omnipotence in those giving the drugs and intensify cultic social dynamics in psychedelic communities - all of which can create conditions that make cases of harm and misconduct more likely to occur and go unreported. This chapter briefly introduces the terms 'guruism' and 'cultic social dynamics' and how these dynamics can lead to harm and abuse and then discusses how psychedelic drugs might amplify these processes, before outlining possible safeguards.