Reading and Study Group | Online

Faculty

Course Description

Learning Objectives

• Describe and clinically recognize the emergence of increased interpersonal ”connectedness” as a central component of improvement from depressive disorders seen with psychedelic therapy
• Use the direct subjective experiences reported by participants in psychedelic therapy to establish and maintain abstinence in individuals with addictive disorders
• List the ways that psychedelic therapy helped individuals with cancer related anxiety regain meaning in their lives and recover from existential distress caused by their cancer diagnosis and treatment
• Describe the components of psychological rigidity and psychological flexibility and list the ways that psilocybin therapy facilitates improvement in anxiety and depressive disorders
• Explain the phenomena that occur during placebo psychedelic experiences and discuss the implications of these findings in terms of user expectation in psychedelic experiences.
• Critique the concept of creativity and microdosing of psychedelic medicines and describe how these medicines may be used to enhance creativity in the future.
• Analyze a recent research study on psychedelic and creativity to explain the historic  anecdotal reports in enhanced creativity through use of psychedelic experiences.
• Compare indigenous concepts of ayahuasca cosmology with those found in contemporary neo-shamanism, and apply this knowledge to experiences that patients report in traditional psychotherapy settings
• Revise traditional meanings of terms used in Western psychology (light, dark, healing, change, spirit) in accordance with ones that patients learn in their work in neoshamanic ayahuasca ceremonies
• Prepare to understand the meaning of purging and vomiting during ayahuasca ceremonies in ways that are radically different from the meanings commonly used for those behaviors in Western psychology.