The Evolved Psychology of Psychedelic Set and Setting: Inferences Regarding the Roles of Shamanism and Entheogenic Ecopsychology

Abstract

This review illustrates the relevance of shamanism and its evolution under effects of psilocybin as a framework for identifying evolved aspects of psychedelic set and setting. Effects of 5HT2 psychedelics on serotonin, stress adaptation, visual systems and personality illustrate adaptive mechanisms through which psychedelics could have enhanced hominin evolution as an environmental factor influencing selection for features of our evolved psychology. Evolutionary psychology perspectives on ritual, shamanism and psychedelics provides bases for inferences regarding psychedelics’ likely roles in hominin evolution as exogenous neurotransmitter sources through their effects in selection for innate dispositions for psychedelic set and setting. Psychedelics stimulate ancient brain structures and innate modular thought modules, especially self-awareness, other awareness, “mind reading,” spatial and visual intelligences. The integration of these innate modules are also core features of shamanism. Cross-cultural research illustrates shamanism is an empirical phenomenon of foraging societies, with its ancient basis in collective hominid displays, ritual alterations of consciousness, and endogenous healing responses. Shamanic practices employed psychedelics and manipulated extrapharmacological effects through stimulation of serotonin and dopamine systems and augmenting processes of the reptilian and paleomammalian brains. Differences between chimpanzee maximal displays and shamanic rituals reveal a zone of proximal development in hominin evolution. The evolution of the mimetic capacity for enactment, dance, music, and imitation provided central capacities underlying shamanic performances. Other chimp-human differences in ritualized behaviors are directly related to psychedelic effects and their integration of innate modular thought processes. Psychedelics and other ritual alterations of consciousness stimulate these and other innate responses such as soul flight and death-and-rebirth experiences. These findings provided bases for making inferences regarding foundations of our evolved set, setting and psychology. Shamanic setting is eminently communal with singing, drumming, dancing and dramatic displays. Innate modular thought structures are prominent features of the set of shamanism, exemplified in animism, animal identities, perceptions of spirits, and psychological incorporation of spirit others. A shamanic-informed psychedelic therapy includes: a preparatory set with practices such as sexual abstinence, fasting and dream incubation; a set derived from innate modular cognitive capacities and their integration expressed in a relational animistic worldview; a focus on internal imagery manifesting a presentational intelligence; and spirit relations involving incorporation of animals as personal powers. Psychedelic research and treatment can adopt this shamanic biogenetic paradigm to optimize set, setting and ritual frameworks to enhance psychedelic effects.

Book Review: American Trip: Set, Setting, and the Psychedelic Experience in the Twentieth Century

“…In considering the book's chapters, the reader should remember that the social context for each chapter represents a different cultural and societal set and setting with its own specific effects on the LSD experiences of individuals taking LSD within that specific context. In this book review, “LSD” is used both for the specific compound, lysergic acid diethylamide, and to other psychedelic congeners (e.g., psilocybin, dimethyltryptamine) that act pharmacologically at serotonin receptors, especially 5-HT2AR, to mitigate serotonergic suppression of catecholaminergic (i.e., noradrenergic and dopaminergic) ergotropic arousal (Lansky, 1975 ), leading to rapture, ecstasy, introspection, synesthesia, hallucinations, telepathy, extracorporeal visitations, totem animals, past lives, death, birth, increased creativity, awareness, intensity, and “suchness” of the physical and spiritual worlds (Winkelman, 2021 ). The 10 chapters are:…”

Psychedelics, Sociality, and Human Evolution

“…This specific cost (excessively “relaxed beliefs”; see Carhart-Harris and Friston, 2019 ), coupled with the rapid onset of mental tolerance and lack of hedonic reward (craving or withdrawal) help explain why psychedelic use is normally episodic and not compulsive, with chronic use being relatively unusual ( Nichols, 2004 , 2010 ). The ontologically shocking effects of psychedelics and their meaning-enhancing properties is likely why their use commonly occurs in engineered social contexts (e.g., in intense and immersive shared experiences consisting of multimodal performances of music, ritual, and dance: Sterelny, 2018 ; Winkelman, 2021c ; also see St John, 2006 ). These factors of set (i.e., intentions, mood state, and expectations) and setting (i.e., context of ingestion, involving all sensory modes, social environment, and the set of those present) provide for protection of the psyche and integration of the experience ( Dobkin de Ríos, 1984 ; Hartogsohn, 2016 ; Lifshitz et al, 2018 ).…”

“…Psychosocial healing is a component of human cooperation that comprises empathy, mirroring, emotional contagion, self-regulation, and mentalizing; it also recruits symbolic processes requiring shared meanings of symbols ( Kohrt et al, 2020 ). Thus, besides the psychedelic substance, other ritual elements (e.g., cultural expectations, mimetic enactments, verbal displays, songs, and dances) also serve an important function in enabling healing ( Winkelman, 2008 , 2019b , 2021a , c ; Uthaug et al, 2021 ).…”

“…A wealth of ethnographic and experimental evidence suggests that religions forge solidarity and cooperation through various mechanisms and at different levels of social complexity ( Katz, 1984 ; Boehm, 1993 ; Winkelman, 2013b , 2021b ; Norenzayan et al, 2016 ; Skoggard et al, 2020 ). Early religious forms developed in the context of intense and immersive experiences of music, ritual, and dance ( Dunbar, 2017 , 2020 ), likely in combination with psychedelics ( Sterelny, 2018 ; Winkelman, 2019b , c , 2021a , c ) and other mind-altering techniques ( Rossano, 2007 , 2009 ). Dunbar (2017 , 2020) suggests these shamanic type religions based on trance-dancing evolved sometime between the appearance of archaic humans (i.e., Heidelbergensians) around 500,000 years ago and the appearance of anatomically modern humans ( Homo sapiens ) around 200,000 years ago as one of a series of behaviors that humans developed to enhance social bonding by triggering the endorphin system.…”

An Ethnological Analogy and Biogenetic Model for Interpretation of Religion and Ritual in the Past

“…Previc (2009) proposes that the human drive to seek ASC directly engages the dopamine system, which is stimulated by diverse agents and ritual conditions (also see Winkelman 2010aWinkelman , 2017a. Exogenous sources of neurotransmitters also produced ASC and contributed to the evolved psychology of shamanism (Winkelman 2021). Common to ASC is a disinhibition of dopaminergic extrapersonal brain systems, enhancing dopaminergic effects that stimulate cognitive processes key to the modern human psyche.…”