Psychedelics and Psychotherapy: Clinical and Ethical Considerations for Psychedelic Assisted Therapy (PAT)

As this work moves forward from research settings and towards potential wider therapeutic use in the future, we face significant difficulties and ethical conundrums. How can we work with expanded states in ways that are safe, ethical, and skilful?  What are the potential benefits and adverse effects of such treatments? How can we develop adequate training models in support of this work? What is the paradigm shift that supports the healing potential of expanded states?  

The current revival of psychedelic research has been shifting the discourse around psychedelic substances from drugs to medicines, from magic bullets to a relational treatment and from getting high to getting healed. Counsellors and psychotherapists are increasingly working with people seeking integration following psychedelic journeys with ayahuasca in South America, legal psilocybin retreats in the Netherlands, or even underground settings, that may have been poorly supported or integrated. Developing our understanding of expanded states as practitioners can support us in offering adequate containers for processing these experiences in growthful ways.  

The approach that we will describe in this event follows the model we have developed at the Institute of Psychedelic Therapy that we have named Depth Relational Process.  We will highlight the way in which psychedelic therapy reaches a depth of psyche that engages with early experience, but the therapeutic relationship is of primary importance and proper integration is required to optimise the possibility of transformational change.