Integrating the ineffable: a social phenomenological analysis of the psychedelic experience
Library, Museums and Press - UDSpace (University of Delaware) – February 04, 2025
Source: OpenAlex
Summary
Psychedelic experiences are profoundly shaped by social frameworks, revealing how individuals integrate altered states into daily reality. Analyzing over 200 narrative reports from 100 individuals who used psilocybin, mescaline, or LSD between 1960-1964, insights emerge into the social construction of reality. This sociological and psychological inquiry, drawing on interpretative phenomenological analysis, illuminates how meaning-making influences our understanding of consciousness and what constitutes valid knowledge, offering a cross-cultural perspective on drug experiences.
Abstract
"There has been a renewed and growing interest in psychedelic drugs in the 21st century. Drawing on social-phenomenology, cognitive sociology, and ‘set and setting’ theory, I delineate how individuals use socially defined frameworks of understanding to attribute meaning to psychedelic experiences. These frameworks refer to the ‘ready-made’ schemes that structure subjective experience of objects, people, and a variety of other phenomena. Hence, I investigate how experiences with psychedelic drugs are meaningfully integrated into everyday understandings of reality. The main question guiding this thesis is: How do users of psychedelic drugs reconcile the experience with everyday waking consciousness and social reality? I attempt to answer this question in three phases that will 1) describe the quality of the psychedelic experience, 2) identify how individuals integrate the experience into everyday life, and 3) outline what these experiences can tell us about the social construction of everyday reality in the United States. This study uses conventional and directed content analysis of accounts originally collected between the years 1960-1964 as part of the Harvard Psilocybin Project. Specifically, I analyze over 200 narrative reports from 100 individuals collected from the Timothy Leary Papers archival collection held at the New York Public Library. These reports recount experiences with psilocybin, mescaline, and LSD. Using this data to describe the character of psychedelic experiences, how individuals integrate these experiences into everyday life, and what constitutes valid knowledge in the United States, I hope to ‘demystify’ the psychedelic experience and generate more useful ways of thinking about psychoactive substances."