Critical Microscope Research Articles

The challenges ahead for psychedelic 'medicine'.

With the extensive public, commercial and scientific interest from what has been widely termed the psychedelic renaissance, it is important that the scientific practices and results obtained from its implementation into medicine are put under a critical microscope. While there are numerous works on the potential benefits and applications of psychedelics as medicines, relatively little has been written about the challenges this field will face when incorporated into modern medical practice. Indeed, as a new or at least revived area of investigation, psychedelic medicine has a particular set of challenges which need to be addressed. In this viewpoint, we identify a number of these challenges. First, challenges related to the design of individual research studies are discussed, particularly focusing on current practices surrounding blinding, expectancy, the use of therapy and sources of bias. Second, the broader context of the research environment is considered, including how medical science typically establishes evidence, funding bodies and the impact of psychedelics being scheduled at odds with their risk profile. Finally, we describe challenges relating to the implementation of psychedelic therapies into modern medicine, considering the social and economic context. Alongside, we provide suggestions for what could be included into current research protocols to mitigate these challenges.

Social citizenship and social psychology

AbstractThis paper outlines the concept of social citizenship, which was first theorized in the late 1940s alongside the creation of the UK welfare state and concerns citizens' rights to a basic income and standard of living. It suggests that social citizenship—particularly welfare provision—is a useful and important topic for social psychological research, albeit one that has been largely overlooked. We provide an overview of key developments in social citizenship and consider the impact of 30‐plus years of neoliberal governance in Western democracies, which has resulted in ongoing changes to how welfare rights and responsibilities are configured, such as policies that make social citizenship rights contingent on conduct. We outline social scientific work that examines these shifting ideas of citizenship, personhood, welfare, and conditionality and make the case for a critical discursive psychological approach, which we illustrate with a brief empirical example. We suggest that critical discursive social psychology is particularly well‐placed to examine how psychological assumptions are built into both policy and lay discourse and how these can legitimate interventions designed to work on the conduct of the unemployed, such as therapeutic and behavior change initiatives. Finally, we argue that psychology is faced with a choice; while there are opportunities for the discipline to contribute to the design and implementation of such initiatives, to do so requires accepting the basic values of the underpinning neoliberal agenda. Instead, it is vital to place these assumptions under the critical microscope and explore how they work to obscure structural disadvantage.

Tempo(e)rality

Tempo(e)rality