Psychedelic Psychoanalysis: Transformations of the Self

Abstract

ABSTRACT As the use of psychedelic agents become a part of mental health treatment, psychoanalysts have the challenge of theorizing how they affect the psyche and the relational field, as well as how they might become part of an analytic process. In this paper, I explore three aspects of psychedelic experience and some ways we might start to understand them in analytic terms. I discuss states of consciousness, transformations to psyche-soma, and the relationally mediated nature of transformational experience. I also describe a case in which I used the psychedelic agent ketamine in the context of a long-term psychoanalysis. This case illustrates ways that psychedelic psychoanalysis can be useful in repairing early attachment wounds, facilitate the healing of transgenerational ancestral trauma, as well as intensify and complicate the transference/countertransference matrix.