Transcultural psychiatry
October 1, 2022
Christopher Timmermann, Rosalind Watts, David Dupuis
112 citations
Psychedelics can make experiences feel profoundly true and meaningful, effects that may outlast the drug. This double-edged sword can drive therapeutic benefits but also risks validating false beliefs, worldviews, or memories, potentially causing harm like false memory syndrome. As psychedelic therapy goes mainstream with strong commercial interests, these ethical challenges grow. Using examples from therapy, neo-shamanic, and research settings, the authors argue that current preparation and integration methods are insufficient. They propose a pragmatic framework centered on 'psychedelic apprenticeship,' which emphasizes validation through empathic resonance by an experienced guide or therapist, embedding the experience in historical and cultural context, and recognizing its intersubjective nature.
Transcultural psychiatry
October 1, 2022
David Dupuis
95 citations
The effects of psychedelic substances depend heavily on context. While anthropologists have favored a culturalist approach to hallucinations, how social context structures the features of visual and auditory imagery has been little explored. Using ethnographic data from a shamanic center in the Peruvian Amazon and an anthropological approach that dialogues with phenomenology and Bayesian-inspired models of social cognition, the author argues for a "socialization of hallucinations." Two levels of this socialization are distinguished: cultural background and social interactions organize not only the relationship to the hallucinogenic experience but also its very phenomenological content.
Schizophrenia Bulletin
August 5, 2020
Pantelis Leptourgos, Martin Fortier-Davy, Robin Carhart‐Harris et al.
88 citations
A multidisciplinary working group reviewed evidence on the similarities and differences between hallucinations induced by psychedelics and those occurring in schizophrenia-spectrum disorders, examining data from pharmacology, brain imaging, phenomenology, and anthropology. The authors highlight both shared features and distinct characteristics across these scales, and attempt to integrate findings using computational approaches. They conclude with recommendations for future research, emphasizing the need for further study to clarify the relationship between these types of hallucinations.
Transcultural Psychiatry
October 1, 2022
David Dupuis, Samuel Veissière
70 citations
Psychedelic substances like DMT, psilocybin, and LSD are being tested as treatments for depression, anxiety, and substance use disorder. This thematic issue examines cultural assumptions, political dimensions, and clinical and ethical implications of this renewed interest. The authors argue that psychedelics can be seen as "active super-placebos" that enhance therapeutic processes by increasing suggestibility and the influence of non-specific factors. Rather than merely freeing perception, psychedelic experiences involve meaning-making and enculturation into contextually mediated beliefs and behaviors, which can install novel constraints with potentially maladaptive consequences. The importance of clinical and epistemic integrity in framing psychedelic therapies is highlighted.
December 30, 2020
Christopher Timmermann, Rosalind Watts, David Dupuis
27 citations
preprint
Psychedelics can make people feel that specific thoughts or ideas are profoundly true and meaningful, a feeling that can last long after the drug wears off. This double-edged feature may drive therapeutic benefits but also risks validating false beliefs, memories, or worldviews, potentially leading to iatrogenic complications like false memory syndrome. The paper discusses these risks through examples in therapy, neo-shamanic rituals, and research. It proposes a pragmatic ethical framework that emphasizes embedding psychedelic experiences in historical and cultural contexts, their intersubjective nature, and a form of psychedelic apprenticeship—going beyond standard preparation and integration by centering validation through empathic resonance with an experienced guide.
Salud Colectiva
July 24, 2018
David Dupuis
17 citations
The growing Western interest in the psychoactive brew ayahuasca and participation in exotic rituals has led to a proliferation of 'shamanic centers' in the Peruvian Amazon over recent decades. Among these, the Takiwasi center is a therapeutic community that annually hosts hundreds of domestic and foreign clients. Founded by a French physician in 1992, it originally offered an alternative treatment for addiction, blending tools from Peruvian mestizo shamanism with biomedicine and clinical psychology. The institution's diachronic evolution, however, is marked by an increasing incorporation of elements from the Catholic tradition.
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
March 1, 2022
David Dupuis
15 citations
Psychedelic substances are seeing renewed therapeutic interest, but why they work remains unclear. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in a Peruvian Amazon clinic, this article proposes an anthropological explanation for their effectiveness in treating addiction. Using interactionism, narrative approaches, and cultural phenomenology, it argues that psychedelic rituals are transformative techniques of the self, leading participants to reinterpret their identity, biography, and daily behaviors through a new cultural model. The dissociative states induced by psychedelics, often viewed as side effects, are instead a driving force in therapy. Beyond neuropharmacology and psychodynamics, relational, narrative, and spiritual processes are key therapeutic mechanisms.
Journal de la Société des Américanistes
January 1, 2018
David Dupuis
15 citations
Takiwasi, an addiction treatment clinic and prominent shamanic center in the Peruvian Amazon, offers international participants retreats involving ritual emetic preparations, the psychoactive brew ayahuasca, jungle seclusion, talks, and group discussions. These activities lead participants to perceive themselves as influenced, attacked, or inhabited by usually invisible malevolent forces, with many reporting possession experiences during ayahuasca rituals. By tracing one participant's ritual journey, the author examines how participants adopt these possession motifs, their implications for symbolic identity reconstruction and collective formation, and questions the surprising role of possession within a treatment presented as shamanic.
Cahiers d anthropologie sociale
February 13, 2019
David Dupuis
8 citations
In the debate with the Wassons, Claude Lévi-Strauss argued that the hallucinogenic experience is strictly shaped by culture. Although anthropologists widely share this view, they have said little about how a social group's shared representations structure the effect of hallucinogens. This article outlines ways to understand this process, termed the "socialization of hallucinations," using ethnographic data from Takiwasi, a major shamanic center in Peruvian Amazonia that offers international clients practices inspired by local mestizo shamanism (curanderismo), notably the ritualized use of the psychedelic brew ayahuasca. The stereotyped visual hallucinations reported by participants result from progressive learning.
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
May 30, 2025
Esenia K. Cassidy, David Dupuis, Christopher Timmermann et al.
4 citations
Attachment patterns and psychedelic use jointly influence worldview transformations and enculturation processes. Both may operate through common mechanisms: heightened epistemic trust at the psychological level and heightened serotonin 2a receptor-binding with associated hyper-plastic states at the neural level. The synthesis draws on attachment-religion research, anthropological studies of Ayahuasca use in shamanic tourism, and preliminary attachment-psychedelics research. Future research directions and ethical considerations for psychedelic-assisted therapies and cross-cultural research are outlined.
Schizophrenia Bulletin
April 17, 2025
Nathan H. Heller, Frederick S. Barrett, Tobias Buchborn et al.
3 citations
Visual hallucinations in Lewy body diseases (Parkinson's disease and dementia with Lewy bodies) and those induced by serotonergic psychedelics (psilocybin, mescaline) share overlapping phenomenology and neural mechanisms, despite different underlying causes. Both conditions produce visual aberrations from minor distortions to complex hallucinations, including illusory motion and entity encounters. Neuroimaging shows a common pattern of overactive associative cortex and underactive sensory cortex. Serotonin 2A receptor modulation is involved in both: psychedelics act through 5-HT2A and 5-HT1A receptors, while in Lewy body diseases, 5-HT2A receptor upregulation correlates with increased hallucinations, and blocking it with pimavanserin reduces them. Shared cortical signatures include reduced visual evoked responses and shifts toward visual excitation.
Neuroscience of consciousness
January 1, 2026
Jonas Mago, George Deane, Lars Sandved-Smith et al.
People under the influence of psychedelics often report encountering autonomous entities such as spirits, elves, or ancestors. A neurocomputational model, grounded in the active inference framework, explains these experiences by proposing that psychedelics reduce the predictability of sensory perceptions, leading the brain to interpret both internal and external perceptions as coming from non-self agents. The model synthesizes earlier theories including the entropic brain model, computational accounts of felt presence, and sensory attenuation theories of self-other discrimination. It aims to account for how the brain supports entity encounters and for the diversity and similarity of these experiences across cultural contexts.
Journal de la Société des Américanistes
February 5, 2025
David Dupuis
The term 'ayahuasca'—meaning 'vine of the spirits' or 'vine of the dead' in Quechua—refers both to a specific plant (Banisteriopsis caapi) and to the aqueous preparation in which it is always the sole or main ingredient. This beverage, with powerful psychoactive and emetic effects, is most often used for initiatory, therapeutic, or divinatory purposes and is a central tool of Amazonian shamanisms. In 1930, the Santo Daime, a syncretic religion...