Maria Fedorova
Affiliation: University of Vienna
Category: Philosophy
Keywords: Psychedelic-assisted therapy, Psychological insight, Creative thinking, Experiential imagination
Date: Wednesday 3rd of September
Time: 18:30
Location: Room 161 (161)
View the full session: Subjective Experience
Psychedelics can be therapeutically beneficial. In particular, there is increasing evidence that these psychoactive substances can reduce symptoms of certain mental health conditions, such as addiction, depression, and existential distress in terminal illness (Letheby & Gerrans, 2024). One view is that psychedelics improve mental well-being by evoking psychological insight as part of a psychedelic experience (Noorani et al., 2018; Watts et al., 2017; Davis et al., 2020; Peill et al., 2022). Psychological insight, Chris Letheby writes, “involves some sense of gaining a new perspective: some sense of realisation, understanding, or clarity— whether it concerns one’s life, personality, and values, other people, or important relationships” (Letheby, 2021, p. 55, my italics).
We can distinguish two main aspects of psychological insight achieved under psychedelics. First, psychological insight concerns accessing an alternative experiential perspective: that of someone who is not addicted to a substance; who is not depressed or anxious; or whose identity is not defined by her illness. Another aspect of psychological insight consists in changing one’s mind: coming to believe that one could be free from pain, addiction, depression, or anxiety.
The main question is: how can one reach psychological insight while on psychedelics? The received view is that psychological insights can arise in psychedelic states because psychedelics increase cognitive flexibility, that is, they release some important unconscious constraints on cognition (Carhart-Harris & Friston, 2019; Letheby, 2021). The constraints at issue are fundamental beliefs (Letheby, 2021)—“largely unconscious, most general convictions about the world, other people, and oneself” (Grodniewicz, 2024). The belief that one has a certain personality and features characteristic of that personality is a fundamental belief (Carhart-Harris & Friston, 2019). Individuals who suffer from addiction, depression, or anxiety tend to hold negative unconscious beliefs about their personalities. Because of these beliefs, they may struggle to conceive of possibilities inconsistent with their beliefs (Letheby, 2021). In other words, negative unconscious beliefs block access to alternative experiential perspectives.
Under psychedelics, one has less confidence in fundamental beliefs, including beliefs concerning one’s personality. It should then be possible to access previously inaccessible alternative experiential perspectives in a psychedelic state. As Letheby (2021) puts it, psychological insights while on psychedelics arise because the constraints of fundamental beliefs about the self are significantly weakened. In this paper, I argue that this understanding of cognitive flexibility does not suffice to explain how individuals can achieve psychological insights during psychedelic experience. The lack of confidence in one’s old beliefs only implies that an alternative experiential perspective is accessible in principle. It does not imply that it is in fact accessed, nor that one changes one’s beliefs in light of this new perspective. Something is clearly missing. The aim of this paper is to identify the missing element in Letheby’s theory. I contend that psychological insights under psychedelics are acquired through the use of imagination—more precisely, experiential imagination.
Following Amy Kind I understand imagination broadly as the ability “to speculate about how matters might in some way be different from how they in fact are” (Kind, 2022, p.1). The exercise of this ability is a cognitive process or activity (Stuart, 2019). I define experiential imagination as the ability to speculate about what a possible experience or a possible experiential perspective could be like.
My argument goes as follows:
Premise 1: Thinking while on psychedelics that leads to psychological insight is minimally creative. Premise 2: Minimally creative thinking requires the use of imagination Conclusion 1: Therefore, thinking while on psychedelics that leads to psychological insight requires the use of imagination. Premise 3: Psychological insights under psychedelics concern possible experiential perspectives. Premise 4: The kind of imagination that is best-suited for the acquisition of psychological insight is one that aims at possible experiential perspectives. Premise 5: Experiential imagination aims at possible experiential perspectives. Conclusion 2: Therefore, psychological insights under psychedelics are acquired through the use of experiential imagination.
I advance this argument in three main steps. First, having shown that Letheby’s (2021) account of psychedelic-catalysed psychological insights is incomplete, I defend premise 1. Empirical research on the influence of psychedelics on creative thinking suggests that they can catalyse insights by inducing spontaneity, that is, by increasing mind-wandering and defocused attention (Girn et al, 2020; Mason et al, 2021; Weißner et al, 2022). In this framework, insights arise in psychedelic states due to a “hyper-associative mode of thinking” (Girn et al, 2020). However, thinking while on psychedelics is not purely spontaneous; it is deliberately constrained by one’s prior motivations and goals (Carhart-Harris et al, 2018; Haijen et al, 2018). Hence, in controlled settings, thinking under psychedelics is both spontaneous and goal-directed. But the key takeaway from psychedelic research on creativity is that thinking under psychedelics is minimally creative in that one solves one’s mental health or creative problems in novel and unexpected ways.
Second, following Dustin Stokes’ (2014) notion of imagination qua cognitive manipulation, I argue that minimally creative thinking under psychedelics requires the use of imagination, thus justifying premise 2. I first tailor Stokes’ argument for the necessity of imagination for goal-directed creative thinking to account for minimally creative thinking under psychedelics as a borderline case, in which thinking is both spontaneous and goal-directed. I propose that minimally creative thinking under psychedelics is an interplay between spontaneous uses of imagination and goal-directed uses of imagination. In the case of the former, imagination is used as free association to explore different possibilities made available by the release of unconscious constraints on cognition. In the case of the latter, imagination is used to seize upon and develop the possibilities that grab one’s attention in the course of a psychedelic experience.
Third, I defend premises 3 to 5 by examining several testimonials of patients treated for addiction, anxiety, and depression with psychedelics. The analysis of these testimonials shows that psychological insights under psychedelics are achieved through the use of experiential imagination, which simultaneously provides access to alternative experiential perspectives and justifies one’s beliefs concerning these perspectives. Lastly, I consider possible implications of my proposal for psychedelic-assisted therapy and the epistemology of imagination.