The mystic trip: how psychedelic research fell for mysticism.

Summary

The term 'mysticism' in psychedelic research is outdated and misleading, rooted in the flawed and unexamined ideas of Walter Stace and Walter Pahnke. The paper critiques this legacy through an archaeological re-evaluation of foundational texts and a genealogical tracing of how 'mysticism' became normalized in second-generation psychedelic research. It advocates renaming the Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ) to the Psychedelic Experience Questionnaire (PEQ), aligning with Pahnke's later five-part typology of psychedelic experience. This change would free the instrument from a dubious quasi-religious construct that forces therapeutic outcomes into a narrow framework.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This paper critiques the use of the term "mysticism" in psychedelic research, arguing its continued use is outdated and misleading. It highlights the confusion stemming from the historical context of "mysticism," particularly through the works of Walter Stace and Walter Pahnke, whose ideas have shaped the psychedelic discourse despite being flawed and largely unexamined. The paper is divided into two parts: the first is an archaeology that re-evaluates these foundational texts that misled psychedelic discourse; the second is a genealogy that traces how the concept of "mysticism", with its religious roots, became attached to "psychedelics" and became normalised in second generation psychedelic research. It advocates for rebranding the Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ) to the Psychedelic Experience Questionnaire (PEQ), emphasising that this change accords nicely with the idea of Psychedelic Experience which Walter Pahnke developed in his later research, as a five-part typology, and liberates the instrument from the hangover of a dubious legacy in which the correlation between therapeutic outcomes and mystical experiences invites psychedelic experiences to be shoehorned into a very particular and peculiar quasi-religious construct.