The hyperassociative mind: The psychedelic experience and Merleau-Ponty’s “wild being”

Psychedelic experiences can be understood as a form of fantasy activity, offering a favorable situation for phenomenological research. Applying Merleau-Ponty's later conceptual framework from The Visible and the Invisible, along with his mescaline analyses from The Phenomenology of Perception, psychedelic visions and emotional states are discussed within the Merleau-Pontian framework of the 'wild world.' From a phenomenological viewpoint, psychedelic visions represent an ongoing sense-making and Gestalt-formation process in which the subject's elaborative activity plays a crucial role.

Study at a glance

Abstract

PurposeIn contemporary phenomenology, Dieter Lohmar has suggested that the new task of phenomenological research is to analyze the “alternative representational systems” of fantasy. In line with this program, we propose that psychedelic experience could also be suitable subject to this project subsumed under the wider category of fantasy activity. The aim of this paper is to show that psychedelic experiences offer a favorable situation to study the imagination.MethodThe paper applies the conceptual framework of the late Merleau-Ponty, developed in The Visible and the Invisible, using his mescaline analyses which have been elaborated in The Phenomenology of Perception.ResultsWe demonstrate that psychedelic visions and emotional states can be discussed within the Merleau-Pontian framework of “wild world.” From the viewpoint of phenomenology, we suggest that psychedelic visions represent an ongoing sense-making and Gestalt-formation process in which the role of the elaborative activity of the subject is cruc...