The Oxford Handbook of Psychedelic, Religious, Spiritual, and Mystical Experiences
December 18, 2024
Aaron D. Cherniak, Robin Carhart-Harris, Joel Gruneau Brulin et al.
2 citations
A theoretical synthesis of attachment theory and the REBUS neuroscientific model offers an organizing framework for psychedelic science. Attachment theory holds that people develop internal working models (IWMs) of relational experiences that function as predictive models shaping social and emotional worlds. Effective psychedelic interventions may induce a hyper-plastic neural state that, supported by corrective relational experiences, facilitates rapid learning and revision of IWMs toward greater security. Three proposals guide future research: individual differences in attachment security predict psychedelic phenomenology and integration; increasing attachment security may be a clinical outcome; and clinical utility involves attachment-related dynamics such as connectedness and alleviation of worries.
The Oxford Handbook of Psychedelic, Religious, Spiritual, and Mystical Experiences
May 22, 2024
Daniel Meling, Milan Scheidegger
2 citations
Two competing views on psychedelic experiences—realism, which sees them as revealing a pre-given world, and idealism, which sees them as projections of a pre-given mind—both rely on grasping and representations. An enactive approach offers an alternative that moves beyond these assumptions, emphasizing observer relativity and context dependency without grounding experience in either the world or the self. The chapter argues for this perspective and discusses its implications for understanding the common core of psychedelic experiences, the role of hallucinogens in enactive theory, and the relationship between direct experience and belief.
The Oxford Handbook of Psychedelic, Religious, Spiritual, and Mystical Experiences
June 20, 2024
Josh Brahinsky, Michael Lifshitz, Tanya Marie Luhrmann
1 citation
Working back and forth between neuroscientific methods and ethnographic phenomenology can inspire new ways of thinking. A neurophenomenological project investigated the evangelical Christian practice of speaking in tongues. After several years of ethnographic participant observation in tongues-speaking churches and careful interviews with tongues-speakers, the researchers developed a neuroimaging experiment to capture what they heard. Their interdisciplinary approach revealed shifts in the experience of speaking in tongues, which they call "dropping in." Combining ethnographic phenomenology and neuroscience brought a deeper understanding of tongues prayer in unexpected ways.
The Oxford Handbook of Psychedelic, Religious, Spiritual, and Mystical Experiences
November 19, 2024
Anne Koch
The concept of efficacy in religious practices, such as intercessory prayer and healing rituals, is grounded in both theory and individual experience. It involves causality, belief, and intentionality, and is examined through predictive mind and embodied cognition, relating to how religions construct the 'really real'. The paper explores how people acquire or abandon beliefs based on apparent evidence, drawing on placebo research, ritual theory, aesthetics of religion, and cognitive science. Aesthetic categories like aestheticscapes, time perception, absorption, ritual enactment, evaluation, synchronous speech, and tool use are used to understand components of efficacy, including belief systems as expectations, prediction precision, familiarity with healing narratives, healer charisma, and collective alignment.
The Oxford Handbook of Psychedelic, Religious, Spiritual, and Mystical Experiences
November 19, 2024
Géraldine Carranante, Michiel van Elk
Scientific study of altered states of consciousness (ASCs) has been hampered by disagreements over measurement tools and by conceptual problems with existing typologies—trigger-based, phenomenology-based, attribution-based, neurobiological, and psychopathological—which struggle to clearly demarcate different states. The authors propose a network-based classification method that treats ASCs as a network of nodes, where clusters of states can be identified. This approach offers flexibility: nodes can include experiential, contextual, social, and biological features. Network models allow calculation of properties like centrality and outperform current conceptual frameworks for organizing research, enabling more precise results and better interdisciplinary communication.