On psychedelic liberalism and mad trust: towards varieties of willing in extreme experiences
BioSocieties October 4, 2025 DOI: 10.1057/s41292-025-00368-z via OpenAlex
Summary
AI-generated from the abstractThe psychotomimetic model of psychedelics claims to offer insights into both psychedelic experiences and psychosis by connecting them. A common objection distinguishes psychedelic experiences as voluntary or 'willed' and psychosis as an unwilled affliction. This distinction helps sanitize and commodify psychedelics for therapeutic use. The article draws on psychedelic therapeutics, mad studies, and phenomenological psychiatry to destabilize this opposition. Through the concept of 'willful surrender' in psychedelic therapy, it examines the roles of trust, curiosity, openness, and letting go in engaging with extreme experiences. This reveals assumptions about the liberal subject in psychedelic therapy and brings medicalization into uncomfortable proximity with boundary violations.
Study at a glance
| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Opposition politics Phenomenology philosophy Liberalism Undoing Objectivism |
| Key finding | The opposition between willed psychedelic experiences and unwilled psychosis is destabilized through the paradoxical formulation of psychedelic therapy as willful surrender, revealing assumptions about the liberal subject and boundary violations. |
Abstract
Abstract The vexed ‘psychotomimetic model’ of psychedelics claims to offer insights into both psychedelic experiences and psychosis, by weaving across these sets of experiences. One enduring opposition to the model distinguishes between psychedelic experiences as voluntary or ‘willed’, and psychosis as an affliction to be endured. This opposition is useful for projects seeking to sanitise and commodify psychedelics as part of emerging therapeutic interventions. This article draws on literature from psychedelic therapeutics, alongside mad studies, phenomenological psychiatry, and proceedings from a conference at their intersections, to destabilise the opposition between willed psychedelic experiences and unwilled psychosis. Through the paradoxical formulation of psychedelic therapy as willful surrender , I consider the central role accorded to trust, curiosity, openness, and letting go in modes of engaging with extreme experiences, whether pathologised or otherwise. In turn this reveals assumptions of the presumed liberal subject of psychedelic therapy, and brings psychedelic medicalisation into uncomfortable proximity with the very boundary violations it is seeking to avoid.