“Culture and psychedelic psychotherapy: Ethnic and racial themes from three black women therapists”

Summary

Psychedelic medicine's promise rests on novel explanations of illness as much as on novel treatments. Non-ordinary states of consciousness induced by psychedelics reveal the self as a historically, culturally, and socially constituted fiction, not an unchanging entity. For three African American women therapists acting as clients, healing occurred through embodied remembrance and reconnection with personal and collective narratives, including embodied collective trauma. Psychedelics remove protective shields, creating radical vulnerability that, with a skilled therapist, becomes the ground for healing. Racialized oppression powerfully shaped the authors' experiences.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The promise that Psychedelic Medicine holds for debilitating, treatment-resistant, disorders rests as much upon novel explanations of illness as it does upon novel treatments. If actu-alized, Psychedelic Medicine will revolutionize heath care and theories of healing. Psychedelic medicine ’ s unintended consequences may prove to be just as far-reaching, as non-ordinary states of consciousness, induced by psychedelics, raise fundamental questions about knowledge, our place in the world, and about reality itself. In particular, such states reveal the anthropocentric fi ction of an ontologically distinct Self at the heart of individual, social and ecological malaise. As the testimonies of the three authors (who, though trained therapists, assumed the role of clients in this study) reveal, psychedelic healing is an inextricably embodied process, informed by historical, social and cultural factors, and tied to community both present and past, visible and invisible. Healing occurs, at least in part, through the remembrance of and re-connection with “ things past ”— a recovering and interweaving of one ’ s personal narrative with one ’ s collective narrative, including embodied collective trauma. That the authors at the center of this study are African American women was not inci-dental to their psychedelic experiences, any more than it is accidental to their everyday embodied ways of being. The “ I ” at the center of their experiences is not an unchanging entity or substance, but a historically, culturally, and socially constituted one. And, as the experiences revealed, it is one powerfully shaped by the experience of racialized oppression. Psychedelics make short work of our pretense to self-sufficiency by removing protective shields, often forcefully, and leaving us exposed. While this can be a place of radical vulnerability, it is also, as the testimonials here show, the ground out of which healing emerges. With the presence of a skilled therapist, we can come to identify fear as nothing more than the desperate

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