Psychopharmacology is often reduced to treating biological symptoms while ignoring patients' subjective, embodied experience. This paper proposes an enactive and embodied framework that integrates phenomenology, neuroscience, and physiology to understand how psychotropic drugs affect the entire lived body—altering emotional processing, perception, existential feelings, and the embodied sense of self. Medications shape how patients engage with their environment, which in turn influences the embodied system. The clinician's role is to mediate these embodied changes, supporting patients through shifts in self-perception and relationality. The authors advocate for phenomenological drug profiles and patient-centered interventions that account for subjective and embodied changes alongside clinical efficacy.
Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy (PAP) shows promise for treating major depressive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, but the specific role of psychotherapy within PAP remains unclear. This narrative review describes the development of PAP in Western psychiatry, outlines the standard therapeutic framework of preparation, dosing, and integration, and synthesizes findings from recent randomized controlled trials with psilocybin and MDMA. Although these trials report significant clinical benefit, they vary widely in therapeutic orientation, manualization, and therapist involvement.