A new article published in the Journal of Psychedelic Studies warns that psychedelic therapy, as it is being embraced in Western psychology, risks losing its transformative potential. The study, led by Emilia Sanabria of France and Luís Fernando Tófoli of Brazil, critiques the way integration—the process of making sense of and applying psychedelic experiences—is becoming an individualized, commodified service that mirrors the dominant psychiatric approach to mental health.
The authors argue that this model, emerging in the Global North, disconnects psychedelics from their historically communal and relational contexts. Rather than engaging with the structural causes of distress, psychedelic therapy is being shaped into a marketable tool, neatly packaged for personal development. At its core, they contend, the Western model of integration prioritizes self-discipline, personal insight, and the idea of an individual “hero’s journey” over collective healing.
“What, we wonder, would theories of psychedelic integration look like if the core theme of Campbell’s ‘Monomyth’ had been that meaningful transformation is an inherently collective process?” they ask.
In contrast to traditions in the Global South, where psychedelics are often understood through shared rituals and collective meaning-making, Western psychology treats them as another intervention in an already medicalized system. The result, the authors warn, is a process that risks becoming another consumer product that reinforces the same neoliberal, individualistic values that contribute to distress in the first place.
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Based upon my experience, the “Global North[‘s] psy industries’ goal seems to be to “disconnect…” everyone and everything “from their historically communal and relational contexts.” Since the American paternalistic DSM deluded industries have a faustian, albeit multi-billion dollar, systemic child abuse and rape covering up system, in cahoots with the mainstream paternalistic religions (at least my ex-religion and former doctors, et al, do).
And I do have written medical and legal evidence that “the Western [psy industries’] model of integration” does 100% the opposite of prioritizing “self-discipline, personal insight, and the idea of an individual ‘hero’s journey.'”
Quite to the contrary, today’s Western psychological industry defames people with scientifically “invalid” DSM disorders, and neurotoxic poisons innocent others. (Please see my other prior comments on MiA for corroborating evidence of this.)
The “invalid” DSM deluded “Western” psychological and psychiatric industries also systemically deny the personal insight of innocent others, do not repent and pay for their obvious malpractice, and then try to steal more than everything from innocent others with appalling conservatorship contracts, to prevent us from writing our own ‘hero’s journey” stories.
Thus I do agree, “psychedelic therapy [should] break from the patterns of traditional psychiatry and offer genuinely transformative possibilities.”
However, this would require a conscious effort to prevent the replication of existing power imbalances, “particularly between the Global North[‘s]” psychological and psychiatric industries ‘patients,’ and themselves, “but also with the Global South[‘s],” hopefully more insightful … and less systemically corrupted …and hopefully more common sense based, non-DSM deluded, “mental health professionals.”
God help us, South America, since the DSM deluded of the US (which is a lot of people), are destroying the US, and their goal – with their “global mental health” initiatives does seem to want to take the DSM deluded “mental health professionals'” desire to neurotoxic poison all people, within all countries – worldwide.
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Good article. In Colorado, “magic mushrooms” were legalized for medical use in 2022. The state passed legislation allowing for the regulated use of psilocybin for therapeutic purposes under the supervision of licensed facilitators. Ish. The plan is still in the process of being rolled out.
Somehow it conjures up a Monty Python moment in The Meaning of Life—when the head master is teaching sex education.
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Hey smoky sisters – I am the wind here to drive you very far away. You prayed prey, and now the curve of the Earth will take you away. Don’t insult me in your dreams.
Are you a free & natural human, or a socially conditioned meat & bone machine? Or the necessary confusion & self-conflict involved in trying to be both at the same time? If the latter, one of you must die first. Which will it be?
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I’m personally disgusted by these companies that pedal psychedelic therapy to the masses.
I was using Better U and they would berate me with advertisements even after I switched to another more affordable company.
Is it better than anti-depressants? Absolutely. But seeing a psychiatrist that would push a wellness coach (typically a dude with generic advice) was massively unhelpful. I also had to then pay out of pocket for my least favorite zoom calls in the world with her.
And we see how these drugs delude techies to act more anti-socially. Even for me I recognize this change and have now stopped ketamine. I’m not convinced it will ever help. Only a tool for white people to disassociate from reality and their crimes.
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Excellent article.
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