Analytic Explorations in Psychedelic Therapy, Winter 2023 | Online

Faculty

Course Description

Learning Objectives

• Access NOSCs (Non Ordinary States of Consciousness), without the use of substances, through music, poetry, film and literature.
• Demonstrate a phenomenological understanding of DIED (Drug Induced Ego Dissolution);
• Analyze prior dynamic concepts of the psyche, consciousness, and the process of psychotherapeutic transformation with DIED.
• Explain the differences between the concepts of “connection”/“connectedness”, as described in the psychedelic-assisted therapy literature, with the psychoanalytic processes of attachment, including, self-other boundaries, ego defenses, and ego dissolution.
• Apply the core elements of subjective change identified in psilocybin-assisted therapy for cancer-related existential distress to concepts in psychoanalytic theory and practice.
• Compare contemporary models for “defensiveness” and “reduction in defensiveness” that are commonly reported as an effect of psychedelic therapy with the psychoanalytic concepts of nature of threat, signal anxiety, and danger.
• Apply Winnicott’s concept of transitional phenomena to psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy.
• Describe how a transitional space can support the psychedelic-assisted therapist’s approach to working with drug-induced non-ordinary experience.
• Describe the concepts of “moments of meeting” as “the something more than interpretation” from the change process of psychoanalytic therapy;
• Explain how “implicit relational knowing” and “moments of meeting” may be experienced in psychedelic therapy.
• Describe what is meant by “native healing intelligence” and “inner healer” in contemporary psychedelic therapy;
• Explain how these concepts are utilized in Randomized Clinical Trials using psychedelic-assisted or MDMA-assisted therapy;
• Compare how these concepts relate to analytic approaches to psychedelic therapy.
• Compare ethical guidelines for the use of touch in recent psychedelic-assisted therapy trials to guidelines in psychoanalytic and psychodynamic therapy.
• Describe the many meanings of physical touch and emotional touch;
• Discuss the implications on transference and countertransference from the use of touch.
• Analyze the components of “flight instructions” commonly used in contemporary psychedelic-assisted therapy with the explicit goals and unconscious effects of these instructions;
• Compare shamanic models of psychedelic healing to “flight Instructions.”
• Describe the impact of eyeshades, music, headphones, and the couch in psychedelic-assisted therapy from a psychoanalytic framework.

Perks

• Registration includes access to our online classroom, course handouts, and private course discussion board. All attendees may opt to be added to our professional community email list of about 1,000 professionals who have completed this (or similar) courses with us.