Synthesizing Attachment Theory with the REBUS Model
The Oxford Handbook of Psychedelic, Religious, Spiritual, and Mystical Experiences – December 18, 2024
Source: CrossRef
Summary
Our early relationships shape deep-seated mental models that influence how we connect with the world. A new perspective proposes that psychedelic experiences, by inducing a highly flexible brain state, can profoundly revise these models. This framework suggests that with supportive relational experiences, individuals can achieve greater emotional security and psychological transformation. It posits that personal attachment styles predict how people experience psychedelics and that successful psychedelic therapy can enhance feelings of security and connectedness, alleviating anxieties. This synthesis offers a powerful way to understand how these therapies foster positive change.
Abstract
Abstract In this chapter, the authors synthesize the relational developmental perspective of attachment theory with a neuroscientific model: the RElaxed Beliefs Under pSychedelics (REBUS). This synthesis, the authors argue, can serve as an organizing framework for psychedelic science. Attachment theory posits that people develop internal working models (IWMs) of relational experiences with close others. These IWMs function as predictive models (“priors”) that, for better and for worse, contribute to people’s social and emotional worlds and organize how they navigate them. Effective psychedelic interventions may work by inducing a hyper-plastic neural state that, supported by corrective relational experiences (with therapists, God, or others), facilitates rapid and deep learning. This can include revision of IWMs toward greater security and other psychological transformations. Based on the attachment-REBUS synthesis, the authors describe three main proposals to guide future research. First, individual differences in attachment security predict the phenomenology of psychedelic experiences and processes related to their integration. Second, increasing attachment security may be a clinical outcome of efficacious psychedelic therapy. Third, among other process-level mechanisms, the clinical utility of psychedelic treatment involves attachment-related dynamics (e.g., connectedness to others and God, alleviation of attachment-related worries and defenses). Finally, the authors provide words of caution and future directions.