Through acid psychiatry to acid communism. Psychedelic renaissance in psychiatry as a chance for a paradigm shift

Mark Fisher argued that repoliticizing mental illness is urgent for challenging capitalist realism. This paper develops that thought, showing how redefining issues labeled as mental illnesses could have emancipatory potential and undermine capitalist realism, linking this to the contemporary "psychedelic renaissance." Such repoliticization could be a first step toward acid communism, enabling the imagining of both the project and the path to it. Although psychedelics might shift the dominant psychiatric paradigm and reorganize mental health services, their interception by alienating and commodifying orders of psychiatry and capitalism can strengthen both systems. The institution of psychiatry thus becomes a key element preserving the status quo, making the end of capitalism unimaginable. Politicizing mental health to question capitalist realism requires deconstructing the ideology of psychiatry.

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Abstract

Mark Fisher wrote “the task of repoliticizing mental illness is an urgent one if the left wants to challenge capitalist realism.” This paper attempts to develop this thought and show how the repoliticization of issues defined as mental illnesses that could have an emancipatory potential and undermine capitalist realism could look like and how it could be related to the contemporary phenomenon of “psychedelic renaissance”. This repoliticization could constitute the first step towards acid communism – a step that would enable a comprehensive formulation of the project, the imagining of both acid communism itself as well as the road towards it. Even though psychedelics could provide an impulse for the change of the dominant psychiatric paradigm and the reorganization of mental health services, the process of the interception of these substances by the alienating and commodifying orders of psychiatry and capitalism can already be observed, so that both of the intertwined and mutually supporting orders can in fact be strengthened. From this perspective the institution of psychiatry becomes a key element preserving the status quo, which makes the imagining of the end of capitalism impossible. Politicization of mental health, that could question capitalist realism, needs to be connected with the deconstruction of the ideology of psychiatry.