Psychedelics & Psychosis

Phoebe Friesen (Assistant Professor, McGill University)
Dirk Corstens (Social Psychiatrist & Psychotherapist)
Chelsea Rose (Executive Director of Zendo Project)

Tuesday 14 May, 8PM CET (7PM GMT, 2PM EST, 11AM PST)

Online (OPEN Community Platform)

Experiences of psychedelics and psychosis were deeply entangled in scientific practices in the mid-20th century. After psychedelic research shut down in the 1960s and 1970s, however, these two phenomena became disentangled. In the decades following, the science of psychosis transformed, shedding the language of psychoanalysis, and adopting the new scientific veneer of psychiatry.

Today, as psychedelic science re-emerges, the research programs surrounding psychosis and psychedelics now stand in stark contrast. In particular, they respond to questions related to what is worth measuring, what is worth investigating, and how we ought to respond to these experiences in very different ways. While psychedelic research includes scales that seek to capture experiences of mysticism, meaningfulness, and ego dissolution, research related to psychosis focuses on the measurement of pathological symptoms and functioning. Research into psychosis primarily seeks universal and reductionist causal explanations and interventions, while psychedelic research embraces the importance of set and setting in shaping unique experiences. Responses to psychedelic crisis involve warmth, compassion, and support, while responses to psychotic experiences often involve restraint, seclusion, and weapons.

What can this comparison teach us about how psychiatry might shift in order to better understand, measure, and respond to experiences of psychosis? What alternative forms of research, care, and community are already moving in these directions (e.g. the Hearing Voices Network, Soteria, Open Dialogue)?

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ABOUT THE SPEAKERs

Phoebe Friesen is a philosopher and medical ethicist, working within the Department of Equity, Ethics, and Policy and the Department of Social Studies of Medicine at McGill University. Her work engages with ethical and epistemic issues related to the production and implementation of knowledge in the health sciences, drawing on feminist philosophy of science, ethics scholarship, and methodologies from the social sciences.

Dr. Dirk Corstens works as a psychiatrist and psychotherapist in the Netherlands, focusing on Peer-supported Open Dialogue/psychosis and Hearing Voices. He has over 30 years of experience in the field, working with cognitive and schema therapy as well as psychodynamic therapy, and is a part of the Hearing Voices Movement. In addition, dr. Corstens has published several academic papers on these topics, advocating for clinical approach to voices that focuses on understanding the meaning or purpose of the voices. This is also reflected in the way he approaches his own patients.

Click here for the speakers LinkedIn page!

Chelsea Rose (she/her) graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles Honors College with a B.A. in psychology in 2007, and received her master’s degree in Integral Counseling Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies in 2012. She has a passion for harm reduction as a therapeutic and practical approach to drug use and abuse prevention. Chelsea has worked with the Zendo Project, providing psychedelic peer support at events around the world, since 2013. Chelsea also manages the reagent drug testing kit program at DanceSafe, a public health organization focused on safety in the night life community. Additionally, she supervises the Crisis Response Team in Nevada County, supporting clients who come into the emergency room in psychiatric crisis. She lives in the Sierra foothills of California with her husband, three children, and their Basenji pup named Mochi.

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