Well the topics on this board lately sure have been stupid... What does everyone think about the potiential that LSD has as a psyhoanalytical tool? What is the nature of the effects of lsd on the human soul? How are the effects produced? I always felt like lsd can be used to help stimulate spiritual growth as well as healing, if used under the right circumstances. But perhaps it could also have negative effects on a person's mind as well if it was used in a bad setting that produced a bad trip. A good trip however seems to have a huge potential for growth and healing. Although I believe that using psychedelics to 'do work on yourself' might be a bit of a strange idea. I always had the best trips when I took lsd in addition to improve what was already going on in my set and setting, not as a way to improve my mind state or 'set.' But I was always comfortable if no after effects were produced. i.e. using acid when I am already in a good set and setting just to 'have a trip' and then I would learn things about myself and about life and how to improve as a person, but the self-improvement was not the goal, rather a side-effect. What does everyone else think about this?
Scientists have for the first time scanned the brains of people using LSD and found the psychedelic drug frees the brain to become less compartmentalized and more like the mind of a baby.A research team led by scientists at Imperial College London said that while normally the brain works on independent networks performing separate functions such as vision, movement and hearing, under LSD the separateness of these networks breaks down, leading to a more unified system. "In many ways, the brain in the LSD state resembles the state our brains were in when we were infants: free and unconstrained," said Robin Cahart-Harris, who led the study. "This also makes sense when we consider the hyper-emotional and imaginative nature of an infant's mind." The findings, published on Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal, also showed that when the volunteers took LSD, many extra brain areas - not just the visual cortex - contributed to visual processing. This could explain the complex visual hallucinations that are often associated with the LSD state, the scientists said. Carhart-Harris, a researcher at Imperial's department of medicine said the experience also seemed to be linked to "improvements in well-being" after the drug's effects subside, suggesting the findings may one day lead to psychedelic compounds being used to treat psychiatric disorders. Such drugs could be particularly useful in mental disorders where negative thought patterns have become entrenched, the scientists explained, such as in depression or addiction. "For the first time, we can really see what's happening in the brain during the psychedelic state, and can better understand why LSD (Lysergic acid diethylamide) had such a profound impact on self-awareness," said David Nutt, a professor of neuropsychopharmacology who worked with Carhart-Harris. "This could have great implications for psychiatry." The Imperial team worked alongside the Beckley Foundation, a British-based group that backs scientific research into the potential medical benefits of psychoactive substances. This study, funded by Beckley and by public donations through a crowdfunding platform, involved 20 healthy volunteers, each of whom received both LSD and a placebo, and all of whom were deemed psychologically and physically healthy. All the volunteers had previously taken some type of psychedelic drug. During controlled and supervised experiments in a specialist research center, each volunteer was given an injection of either 75 micrograms of LSD, or a placebo. Their brains were then scanned using various techniques, including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and magnetoencephalography (MEG). Using these techniques allowed the scientists to study activity in the whole brain by monitoring blood flow and electrical activity. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-science-psychedelic-idUSKCN0X82B2
I think LSD has vast potential as a psychoanalytic tool. I find it a great catalyst for promoting novelty and/or multiplicity in ways of thinking. It seems, for me, in my "normal" state of consciousness, I have a much more linear scope of thinking when I am contemplating various phenomena, but on LSD my mind tends to encompass more variation, from dichotomies in thinking about different circumstances, to integrating my heightened senses, to entertaining the flat out bizarre and abstract brought on by altered perceptions. These variations can at times all be free flowing, rapid fire types of mental states and don't necessarily feel isolated nor perhaps comprehensive. I often refer to my thoughts feeling "fractured" at times on LSD, which I mean that it almost seems as if the thinking process is deconstructed and I'm approaching it from this viewpoint of having to think what exactly thought is. I find that LSD can unseat our normal approach to reality, this involves the structure(s) of things we find around us. The most obvious example of this would be the visual hallucinations/distortions, so say watching tree leaves shift and dance into different shapes provides new context to how we experience the sensation and phenomena. Hearing music with sounds seemingly spaced out in a mix in a way you had never heard before, perhaps a certain instrument all of a sudden seems to have this extra type of flange effect or distortion to it. Time is often perceived in radically different ways, all these aspects, which are by no means comprehensive of the experience I think can be a catalyst for a significantly heightened appreciation and connection with the phenomena, perhaps helping us understanding something better about ourselves and insights into the micro and macro processes of the world at large. A particularly fascinating thing for me about LSD compared to certain other drugs that also may push the boundaries of consciousness, say something like Ketamine, is the ability to remain cognizant. While perhaps not unimpaired, LSD does seem to allow for a relatively lucid headspace, where at times, I often cannot really differentiate the effects of the drug from my homeostatic mental state. LSD often seems to saturate my mind thoroughly, usually without impairing me in a way that I am rendered unresponsive to the outside world or have significant difficulties with things like motor coordination, whereas with many other strong mind altering chems such as the aforementioned Ketamine, those types of effects tend to be the norm. I think this can also bolster the psychoanalytic capacities because you don't necessarily just feel "fucked up" and detached or removed from your sober self. In regards to how effects are produced, to add on to the article above, neurotransmitters that are implicated to be involved in emotional processing are involved in LSD's pharmacological action, this likely explains much of the strong emotional responses LSD tends to be a catalyst for. I believe there is still much that is not understood upon LSD's mechanisms of action and aside from recent research such as what is alluded to in the article above, since the scheduling of LSD, nearly 50 years ago, research of it's effects have primarily been relegated to lab animals. Brain Scanning techniques and neuroscience has come a long way in that timespan, so it'll be interesting to see if research continues. I find it difficult to say a lot about LSD, or psychedelics in general for that matter, based solely on the neurochemistry aspects of it. It's certainly useful knowledge to gain, as I think that perhaps it can help us understand various other aspects of the brain and mind, which we may not be privvy to by other means, but at the same time, LSD shares it's main mechanisms of actions with other psychedelics, yet I find it to be quite unique, so it seems there is this gestalt type effect with LSD and other psychedelics, where the whole of the LSD experience seems to be more than the particular components of brain alterations that happen to occur to comprise it.
Well.. I sure have done LSD so... I think LSD is unpredictable, even dangerous. It's not something you can really do recreationally. But in a clinical setting perhaps it could be used to make interpretations about one's own psyche. But I don't know how a psychotherapist would find it useful. I found that there are certain barriers to communication skills when under the influence of the drug, such that talking to a psychoanalyst would be tedious and difficult. It would be hard to describe what I was experiencing and I would be distracted.
If I never took LSD I would think what it's capable of is not possible for a human to experience. LSD blows the doors wide away from human psychology, it's the stuff of Gods. Smaller doses with carefully not pretreating with something like white lotus extract and sure it could be ok for psychology. The problem is people can realize what they are capable of and not really be in control of their destiny. A powerful feeling of well being and freedom of thought is always risky and dangerous. I think it's best used for shamanic purposes, realizing that there is much more to the cosmos within us all.
I think OP means a Psychoanalysis that encompasses personal exploration of one's own conscious and subconscious and the manifestation of the psyche. But.. even for a clinical setting, I think that perhaps what might be most useful is the ability for the patient to leave sparse notes during his and her trip and then sometime in the following day(s) the patient could explain and integrate the experience with the therapist. I wouldn't say this is too far removed from something like dream analysis but perhaps could be something even more substantial for a couple reasons: 1) The ability to be awake during the experience, to do things like write notes. 2) Dreams are often less continuous and can be significantly more fragmented in perception than the LSD experience.
LSD can be fragmented, that's a symptom of a bummer. They used LSD for interrogation and perhaps they still would. Something interesting can occur with LSD and the mirror neuron phenomena. It can change the power structure but I have little experience with that particular. Who knows what all a mind could do with drugs such as LSD. I think one difficulty is maintain a mission, abandon all hope ye who dosage.
Many people have done well in psychedelic-assisted therapy. Much of the research concerns psychedelics at the end of life, where both LSD and psilocybin have been used with good outcomes. There is also data and information on psychedelics and MDMA in other therapeutic situations. Therapy using psychedelics doesn't look the same as what is sometimes envisioned as therapy - with the patient talking and the therapist providing some degree of guidance through the process of 50 minute hours once or twice/week. LOL. The advantage of psilocybin is shorter duration of action. Mushrooms in a healing environment and guides (who also were tripping) were helpful to me in a time of terrible grief. An excellent resource for understanding psychedelic-assisted therapy is The Secret Chief Revealed - conversations with an experienced psychedelic therapist, a real underground pioneer. Read free at MAPS website: http://www.maps.org/images/pdf/books/scr/scr.pdf
Most likely, but it's something that is know for breaking down an individuals normal state of mind, meaning it's not always a great representation of the sober mind's state of well being. Just a point of view to consider. In my opinion it's something that can't be put into a science to be blunt. It's a fact that it's an amazing tool for the individual to grow in an abstract manner however. I would like to see more work done with it in a psychoanalytical manner though, there seems to be a lot of potential.
I've found that LSD produces a are far more intellectual analysis of life compared to other organic entheogens such as mushrooms, iboga, and baby woodrose. It seems to exhibit the same rigorous formulaic approach of modern science that LSD was derived from, which I suggest offers a reflection into the nature of contemporary patriarchal thought patterns. Laser point clarity and objectivity. I vouch for it as a tool to catalyse the creative-analytical processes of bringing abstract data into alignment to suggest or define a clear map of all information that has been circling our sphere of awareness prior to ingestion. Unfortunately, I feel that unless the individual is well enough equipped to deal with integrating these intensely powerful energies, it can result in mental trauma that may be repressed or not even acknowledged. Also, unfortunately(sorry dudes and dudettes), I strongly feel that most(closer to all) westerners are not experienced enough in dealing with these types of experiences. Infants with weapons. There is a resurgence of tried and practised primitive knowledge and integration which is fortunately weaving a much needed platform of stability inside our culture, however a lot of it is still intangible for most due to a dependence on external abstract stimulation i.e. internet, television, pornography, cell phones etc.. Moving away from these addictions can bring us closer to our inherent organic stability, which in turn will enable us to process these unbelievably powerful openings more effectively.
