Esse quam Videre: Critical Reflections on the Use of Psilocybin as an Adjuvant in Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy

Psychology must incorporate psychedelic philosophy and Indigenous knowledge to address the ethical and technical challenges of psychedelic research. The authors argue that modern ecocidal ideologies and the regulation of psychedelics as health technologies have distanced mental health practices from Amerindian spirituality and epistemologies. Drawing on Transpersonal Ecopsychology and Gestalt Therapy from a decolonial perspective, they advocate for reintegrating people into their environment and territoriality, and for acknowledging the sacred origins of psychedelic substances. The text critiques the political erasure of Indigenous perspectives in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapies.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The ethical and technical challenges of recent research with psychedelics and the attempt to regulate them as a health technology open a new horizon for reflections on scientific development and questions about how we experience spiritual and non-ordinary experiences of consciousness and relate to nature. We understand that Psychology needs to resort to psychedelic philosophy and the knowledge of indigenous peoples. Thus, we seek to discuss the distancing of Psychology and mental health technologies in relation to Amerindian spirituality and epistemologies. We are guided by the scientific and philosophical literature that would allow such a debate without an exhaustive review of recent production, but enough to weave threads from the fields of Transpersonal Ecopsychology and Gestalt Therapy with a decolonial perspective and that went beyond the merely theoretical aspects. We also recognize a political position that is often minimized or erased by researchers of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapies and the psych community in general. In this text we will address the role of Psychology and the psychotherapist in the face of modern ecocidal and pathogenic ideologies, the importance of reintegrating people into the environment and the territoriality of which they are part, the use of health technologies and the sacred from a matrix whose background does justice to the ancestry from which they come, among other satellite topics of this debate.