Esse quam Videre: Critical Reflections on the Use of Psilocybin as an Adjuvant in Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy
Polymatheia. – February 15, 2025
Source: OpenAlex
Summary
Psychology must urgently integrate indigenous wisdom concerning spiritual and non-ordinary consciousness experiences, moving beyond Western-centric mental health technologies. This approach advocates for decolonial perspectives in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapies, involving the psychotherapist in reconnecting individuals with nature. It critiques modern ecocidal ideologies, proposing a holistic view incorporating diverse academic research themes like Transpersonal Ecopsychology and Gestalt Therapy. Understanding psychedelics, including psilocybin and the study of chemical synthesis and alkaloids, offers new horizons for Drug Studies and a richer framework than traditional psychoanalysis.
Abstract
The ethical and technical challenges of recent research with psychedelics and the attempt to regulate them as a health technology open a new horizon for reflections on scientific development and questions about how we experience spiritual and non-ordinary experiences of consciousness and relate to nature. We understand that Psychology needs to resort to psychedelic philosophy and the knowledge of indigenous peoples. Thus, we seek to discuss the distancing of Psychology and mental health technologies in relation to Amerindian spirituality and epistemologies. We are guided by the scientific and philosophical literature that would allow such a debate without an exhaustive review of recent production, but enough to weave threads from the fields of Transpersonal Ecopsychology and Gestalt Therapy with a decolonial perspective and that went beyond the merely theoretical aspects. We also recognize a political position that is often minimized or erased by researchers of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapies and the psych community in general. In this text we will address the role of Psychology and the psychotherapist in the face of modern ecocidal and pathogenic ideologies, the importance of reintegrating people into the environment and the territoriality of which they are part, the use of health technologies and the sacred from a matrix whose background does justice to the ancestry from which they come, among other satellite topics of this debate.