Assisted Psychedelic Psychotherapy: Rethinking the Paradigms of Psychiatric Care?
Psychotherapy in the Third Millennium - Cross-Cutting Themes and Proposals for Reflection December 20, 2024 Eliana Mea, Paola Clemente
Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy (PAT) may offer a paradigm for describing and navigating profound transformative experiences of the self. The model challenges current psychiatric care, which has lost capacity to address psychological distress and often reduces treatment to aseptic drug prescription, emptying the therapeutic relationship of meaning. The work examines schools of thought animating the PAT debate and psychodynamic aspects underlying this approach. According to the psycholytic paradigm, psychedelic substances induce regression to non-ordinary states of consciousness where early-life conflicts may emerge, revealing ego adaptations to the environment. The question is whether such therapy can access temporary psychic deintegration and lead to new integrative modalities that broaden self-awareness.