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.
Fieldwork in philosophy is a second-order philosophical anthropology that examines contemporary forms of the human by studying lower-level concepts and practices. Unlike Michel Foucault's historical approach, it uses anthropological fieldwork to investigate the present. The essay reconstructs Paul Rabinow's conception of this method, illustrated through case studies: the perennial philosophy of the psychedelic renaissance, neurophilosophers in a sleep laboratory, and cultural primatologists studying human nature in the African rainforest. It concludes by advocating for reimagining anthropology as fieldwork in philosophy.