A striking feature of psychedelics is their ability to increase attribution of truth and meaningfulness to specific contents and ideas experienced, which may persist long after psychedelic effects have subsided. We propose that processes underlying conferral of meaning and truth in psychedelic experiences may act as a double-edged sword: while these may drive important therapeutic benefits, they also raise important considerations regarding the validation and mediation of knowledge gained during these experiences. Specifically, the ability of psychedelics to induce noetic feelings of revelation may enhance the significance and attribution of reality to specific beliefs, worldviews, and apparent memories which might exacerbate the risk of iatrogenic complications that other psychotherapeutic approaches have historically faced, such as false memory syndrome. These considerations are timely, as the use of psychedelics is becoming increasingly mainstream, in an environment marked by the emergence of strong commercial interest for psychedelic therapy. We elaborate on these ethical challenges via three examples illustrating issues of validation and mediation in therapeutic, neo-shamanic and research contexts involving psychedelic use. Finally, we propose a pragmatic framework to attend to these challenges based on an ethical approach which considers the embeddedness of psychedelic experiences within larger historical and cultural contexts, their intersubjective character and the use of practices which we conceptualise here as forms of psychedelic apprenticeship. This notion of apprenticeship goes beyond current approaches of preparation and integration by stressing the central importance of validation practices based on empathic resonance by an experienced therapist or guide.

The recent renaissance of psychedelic science has reignited interest in the similarity of drug-induced experiences to those more commonly observed in psychiatric contexts such as the schizophrenia-spectrum. This report from a multidisciplinary working group of the International Consortium on Hallucinations Research (ICHR) addresses this issue, putting special emphasis on hallucinatory experiences. We review evidence collected at different scales of understanding, from pharmacology to brain-imaging, phenomenology and anthropology, highlighting similarities and differences between hallucinations under psychedelics and in the schizophrenia-spectrum disorders. Finally, we attempt to integrate these findings using computational approaches and conclude with recommendations for future research.

The effects of so-called “psychedelic” or “hallucinogenic” substances are known for their strong conditionality on context. While the so-called culturalist approach to the study of hallucinations has won the favor of anthropologists, the vectors by which the features of visual and auditory imagery are structured by social context have been so far little explored. Using ethnographic data collected in a shamanic center of the Peruvian Amazon and an anthropological approach dialoguing with phenomenology and recent models of social cognition of Bayesian inspiration, I aim to shed light on the nature of these dynamics through an approach I call the “socialization of hallucinations.” Distinguishing two levels of socialization of hallucinations, I argue that cultural background and social interactions organize the relationship not only to the hallucinogenic experience, but also to its very phenomenological content. I account for the underpinnings of the socialization of hallucinations proposing such candidate factors as the education of attention, the categorization of perceptions, and the shaping of emotions and expectations. Considering psychedelic experiences in the light of their noetic properties and cognitive penetrability debates, I show that they are powerful vectors of cultural transmission. I question the ethical stakes of this claim, at a time when the use of psychedelics is becoming increasingly popular in the global North. I finally emphasize the importance of better understanding the extrapharmacological factors of the psychedelic experience and its subjective implications, and sketch out the basis for an interdisciplinary methodology in order to do so.

A striking feature of psychedelics is their ability to increase attribution of truth and meaningfulness to specific contents and ideas experienced, which may persist long after psychedelic effects have subsided. We propose that processes underlying conferral of meaning and truth in psychedelic experiences may act as a double-edged sword: while these may drive important therapeutic benefits, they also raise important considerations regarding the validation and mediation of knowledge gained during these experiences. Specifically, the ability of psychedelics to induce noetic feelings of revelation may enhance the significance and attribution of reality of specific beliefs, worldviews, and apparent memories which might exacerbate the risk of iatrogenic complications that other psychotherapeutic approaches have historically faced, such as false memory syndrome. These considerations are timely, as the use of psychedelics is becoming increasingly mainstream, in an environment marked by the emergence of strong commercial interest for psychedelic therapy. We elaborate on these ethical challenges via three examples illustrating issues of validation and mediation in therapeutic, neo-shamanic and research contexts involving psychedelic use. Finally, we propose a pragmatic framework to attend to these challenges based on an ethical approach which considers the embeddedness of psychedelic experiences within larger historical and cultural contexts, their intersubjective character and the use of practices which we conceptualise here as forms of psychedelic apprenticeship. This notion of apprenticeship goes beyond current approaches of preparation and integration by stressing the central importance of validation practices based on empathic resonance by an experienced therapist or guide.

The use of psychedelics in the collective rituals of numerous indigenous groups suggests that these substances are powerful catalysts of social affiliation, enculturation, and belief transmission. This feature has recently been highlighted as part of the renewed interest in psychedelics in Euro-American societies, and seen as a previously underestimated vector of their therapeutic properties. The property of psychedelics to increase feelings of collective belonging and transmission of specific cultural values or beliefs raise, however, complex ethical questions in the context of the globalization of these substances. In the past decades, this property has been perceived as problematic by anticult movements and public authorities of some European countries, claiming that these substances could be used for “mental manipulation.” Despite the fact that this notion has been widely criticized by the scientific community, alternative perspectives on how psychedelic experience supports enculturation and social affiliation have been yet little explored. Beyond the political issues that underlie it, the re-emergence of the concept of “psychedelic brainwashing” can then be read as the consequence of the fact that the dynamic through which psychedelic experience supports persuasion is still poorly understood. Beyond the unscientific and politically controversed notion of brainwashing, how to think the role of psychedelics in the dynamics of transmission of belief and its ethical stakes? Drawing on data collected in a shamanic center in the Peruvian Amazon, this article addresses this question through an ethnographic case-study. Proposing the state of hypersuggestibility induced by psychedelics as the main factor making the substances powerful tools for belief transmission, I show that it is also paradoxically in its capacity to produce doubt, ambivalence, and reflexivity that psychedelics support enculturation. I argue that, far from the brainwashing model, this dynamic is giving a central place to the agency of the recipient, showing that it is ultimately on the recipient’s efforts to test the object of belief through an experiential verification process that the dynamic of psychedelic enculturation relies on. Finally, I explore the permanence and the conditions of sustainability of the social affiliation emerging from these practices and outline the ethical stakes of these observations.

El creciente interés de los occidentales por la bebida psicotrópica ayahuasca y la participacion en rituales exóticos ha llevado en las últimas décadas a la multiplicación de los “centros chamánicos” en la Amazonía peruana. Entre estos, el centro Takiwasi es una comunidad terapéutica que acoge cada año a cientos de clientes nacionales y extranjeros. Esta institución, creada por un médico francés en 1992, fue originalmente destinada a proponer una alternativa terapéutica para el tratamiento de la adicción, y se caracterizaba por el uso de ciertas herramientas del chamanismo mestizo peruano articuladas con la biomedicina y la psicología clínica. La evolución diacrónica de la institución está, sin embargo, marcada por la creciente utilización de elementos de la tradición católica. Examino aquí la hipótesis de que estas transformaciones pueden ser interpretadas como los efectos de la globalización del uso de la ayahuasca y sus consecuencias jurídicas y políticas. De este modo, el caso de Takiwasi subraya el papel jugado por las tradiciones religiosas y el campo médico en la construcción, la legitimación y el mantenimiento de las prácticas nuevas e híbridas que se multiplican alrededor del uso de la ayahuasca.

L'ayahuasca et son ombre. L'apprentissage de la possession dans un centre chamanique d'Amazonie péruvienne The Ayahuasca's shadow. Learning to be possessed in a shamanic centre of the Peruvian Amazon El Ayahuasca y su sombra. El aprendizaje de la posesión en un centro chamánico en la Amazonía peruana

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