Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD-25) and Ego Functions

Touching and being touched: where knowing and feeling meet

“…This may lead to exaggerated focus on the embodied self, and eventually to a dissociation of the observing and participating selves. This is similar to the early stages of psychedelic-induced ego dissolution described by Savage (1955) and Klee (1963) , in which subjects become conscious of somatic sensations and processes that are normally automatic, ignored.…”

Psychedelics, Meditation, and Self-Consciousness

“…This phenomenon is known as drug-induced ego dissolution (DIED); it is described a loss of one's sense of self and self-world boundaries, together with a concomitant oceanic feeling of “oneness” or “unity” (Letheby and Gerrans, 2017 ; Millière, 2017 ; Nour and Carhart-Harris, 2017 ). Such effects on self-consciousness had already been reported in early studies with mescaline (Mayer-Gross and Stein, 1926 ; Beringer, 1927 ; Guttmann and Maclay, 1937 ), LSD (Anderson and Rawnsley, 1954 ; Savage, 1955 ; Von Mering et al, 1955 ; Bercel et al, 1956 ; Klee, 1963 ; Sedman and Kenna, 1964 ; Pahnke and Richards, 1966 ) and psilocybin (Rümmele and Gnirss, 1961 ; Pahnke, 1966 ). Recent studies have sought to investigate the neural correlates of DIED, using correlations between questionnaire items and neuroimaging data.…”

Dreams, Hallucinogenic Drug States, and Schizophrenia: A Psychological and Biological Comparison

“…Freud (1900, p. 295;1915, p. 199) observed that in dreams and in schizophrenia words undergo condensation and displacement via the primary process; this produces the neologisms and other transformations which characterize schizophrenic speech. The same transformations have been observed in LSD states (Savage and Cholden 1956;Klee 1963;Grinspoon and Bakalar 1979). Fliess (1953) observed that the dreamer treats verbal residues in the manner of a schizophrenic-words are not conceived as symbols of objects, but as objects themselves.…”