Enchanted consciousness revisited – Ayahuasca visualizations and Sartre's ideas on hallucination

This paper extends Sartre's concept of enchanted consciousness by integrating insights from psychedelic research. It first examines contradictions in Sartre's mescaline experiment and limits of his phenomenological analysis of hallucination. Then it argues that Benny Shanon's typology of ayahuasca hallucinations, grounded in phenomenological cognitive psychology, reveals aspects of enchanted consciousness Sartre missed. The phenomenon of double bookkeeping from phenomenological psychiatry illustrates delusional world characteristics. Comparing pathological double bookkeeping with psychedelic bookkeeping expands the idea of enchanted consciousness. Finally, Sartre's views on hallucination are updated, defining captivated consciousness through psychedelic double bookkeeping.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Abstract The aim of the paper is to complement Sartre's concept of enchanted consciousness. The first section of the paper studies the contradictions inherent in Sartre's mescaline experiment and the limits of his phenomenological analysis of hallucination. The second section argues that Benny Shanon's phenomenological cognitive psychology, which is based on the typology of ayahuasca hallucinations, can contribute to the phenomenological analysis of hallucinations and reveal some aspects of the enchanted consciousness that Sartre failed to discover. The third section examines the phenomenon of double bookkeeping, which originated in phenomenological psychiatry, and illustrates the characteristics of the delusional world. The fourth section expands the idea of enchanted consciousness through Shanon's study on ayahuasca hallucinations and provides a comparison between the pathological double bookkeeping and the so-called psychedelic bookkeeping. Finally, the last section actualizes Sartre's views on hallucination and offers a new way to define captivated consciousness through psychedelic double bookkeeping.