Over the past few months I've been doing extensive research about the therapeutic potential of psychedelic drugs, and LSD in particular, and I am somewhat baffled by the lack of understanding that modern science has of how LSD really solves psychological problems.
The opinions seem to be split up into two groups. First you have the people who deny the therapeutic potential of LSD, or attribute it to some kind of placebo effect. Then on the other side you have the people who seem to have been carried away by their own psychedelic fantasies and present this radically new worldview that is so right and revolutionary in many aspects, but fails to connect with reality in other aspects. This second group invariably explains LSD's healing potential as the cause of a spiritual experience or breakthrough (aside from Timothy Leary, who thinks we are descendants from aliens and our primary instinctive impulse is to send DNA to other planets so we can reincarnate there once this planet dies).
Stanislav Grof, for example, believes in an immaterial, imaginal (not the same as imaginary), but nonetheless real world inhabited by mythical archetypes, that is revealed to us during high-dose LSD visions. This archetypal realm is shown to us alongside sensory information about the past of our present lives, about our birth [he calls this the POSTNATAL and PERINATAL level of our consciousness](this part seems plausible), our previous incarnations, our ancestors, events happening in the present world outside the reach of our senses, and events that happened in the past and are not genetically related to us [together with the archetypal realm this is the TRANSPERSONAL level](this seems less plausible, but I would be prepared to believe it were it not that he presents credible evidence for it alongside crazy concoctions that should resemble analogies with his personal life, which leaves me in doubt whether he might have made up the credible evidence). Also, his only evidence that the archetypal realm exists is that it is shown in the same visions as those where previous incarnations etc. are shown.
What Grof does next is organize all these postnatal, perinatal and transpersonal experiences into four categaries, each of them related to one of the consecutive stages of birth. I understand that he has to do this to provide some kind of systematic order in the data, but he can only do this keeping in mind that the real relations and structures between these experiences are infinitely more complex. He doesn't keep that in mind. Instead, he uses these four categories to prove that the archetypal realm determines which experiences will occur during a psychedelic session at a given time, AND determines the movements of the planets. According to Grof this means that the planets move synchronously with psychological processes in our minds, or in other words, astrology can provide information on the human psyche.
Grof is convinced that by going through postnatal memories, into perinatal memories, into the transpersonal, archetypal, spiritual realm and being confronted with the divine consciousness a person will obtain spiritual healing. So according to him this is the therapeutic potential of LSD. I've elaborately explained his viewpoint because it's the one I've elaborately studied, and every other theory I've come across seems to be a variation of it.
The problem with these theories is that although there is often no evidence supporting substantial parts of it, there is evidence supporting other parts of it, and there is no evidence disproving them. Especially not now science is still struggling to find answers for problems caused by quantum mechanics and a lack of knowledge about consciousness, to name only two. But that a gap of evidence leaves room for speculation doesn't mean that a random speculation, however logical it might seem, is necesseraly true.
Personally, I choose to believe in a cosmic consciousness, but not as Grof describes it as 'the Creative Principle of the World', but simply as a unity between every consciousness in this universe that serves as a fundament for the material world. According to me the world creates itself through the gradual Darwinian and conscious (as described by Bruce Lipton) evolution of every seperate life form that inhabits it, not because some divine intelligence constructs it this way. I am aware that this is only a belief and am more than prepared to adapt it as soon as new evidence arises that disproves it. I'm strongly inclined to believe that Grof wouldn't adapt his theory.
I'm also having a hard time believing that the transpersonal phenomena Grof describes are real, and aren't simply visualisations of individual memories and knowledge. The power of human fantasy and creativity in that regard, and especially under influence of such a powerful psychedelic drug as LSD in such high doses, is unquestionable. But even if they were real, I wouldn't accept Grof's explanation of them, because frankly believing in his explanation of it makes me question his and my own sanity and puts me under considerable stress.
In addition to all my previous criticism of Grof, I also have serious doubts about his development of Holotropic Breathwork as a substitute for LSD. I can't see how hyperventilation bears any resemblance to an LSD experience. The fact that he uses Holotropic Breathwork for personal financial gain and influence, and refuses to even answer to criticism of this method (for example by Kate Thomas) and expels people that uphold this criticism from his Holotropic Breathwork workshops without stating any valid reason, makes me question his motives.
But this is beside the point. The point is that neither he nor his colleagues present any real, detailed theory on how exactly LSD provides therapy for psychological problems. So instead, I have developed my own.
I have this crazy idea that things might not be as complicated as they seem. For the sake of making things easy we will hypothetically split up the human psyche into two components (although this division doesn't really exist): cognitions and emotions. Cognitions are thoughts and memories of thoughts, and are often accompanied by memories of sensory information. These cognitions are distorted by emotions, or alternatively you could say that these distorted cognitions have caused the emotions. You can't really seperate the two from each other because they occur simultaneously.
Maybe it's easier to understand when I explain how these cognitions and emotions are formed. Your senses inform you of an external event. You will automatically form a cognition and an accompanying emotion (in a way that resembles cognitive and emotional formation patterns you have developed earlier). The nature of the emotion will influence the nature of the cognitions you produce in addition to the first cognition, and the nature of these new cognitions will influence the nature of the emotion(s) you are feeling.
Being in control of you own thoughts, however, you can disobey this pattern. You can create cognitions that are in conflict with the emotion you are feeling, and if you support these cognitions with enough logic and repeat them a certain amount of times it will replace earlier cognitions and start causing a different emotion.
So if we see the psyche as a complex structure of cognitions and emotions that reaches back to our earliest memories, we will discover that certain cognitions cause positive emotions and other cognitions cause negative emotions, and that this structure largely determines which new cognitions and emotional reactions we will create in response to new sensory information, and whether this response will be healthy or not.
The power of LSD is that it magnifies our cognitions and feelings as though we're looking at them through a microscope, and allows us to single out the cognitions that cause negative emotions and negative reactions to new situations. Not only that, it also makes us much more suggestible to new, 'healthy' cognitions to replace the old, 'sick' cognitions. When you're sober it often takes weeks to convince yourself of a new cognition, under the influence of LSD it might only take several seconds.
Having singled and 'healed' most of your negative cognitions, and eliminated almost every negative emotional response, you'll have a attained a state of inner harmony. It's important that you can't reach perfection in this regard, you can't trace down every negative cognition. But this isn't necessary, either, because harmony implies the perfect balance between perfection and imperfection. Otherwise you would constantly be busy with looking for negative cognitions and that would become some kind of an obsession, which isn't healthy either.
Now, the cognitive and emotional structure of your psyche determines how you behave, and having healed it you will be able to behave in a healthy way toward other people and you will also attain harmony in the external world. You will have loving, caring, respectful relations with other people, you will create a situation for yourself where you avoid addiction, provide material welfare for yourself and the people in your surroundings, etc.
Having done that, you might find the need to re-affirm your newly found values by encompassing them into one general worldview to provide additional certainty and bliss. You may do so by chosing a religion that you find plausible and that fits in with your beliefs, but making your own one up will probably be more appropriate because then you can make it correspond properly with all your earlier cognitions, including scientific knowledge, and you will also escape dogmatic churches, demanding priests, etc. Et voila, you have a new positive cognition, this time with divine aspirations. The corresponding emotion will be spiritual ecstasy, cosmic unity, you name it, your brain's got it. Enjoy.
[Is there any scientist you know of who might support this theory? Because I'm only 17 years old and haven't heard a thing about this yet anywhere, but it makes me happy and seems a lot more plausible than the other explanations that are going around so I'm not planning to change my opinion unless someone reaaaally disproves it... Although some affirmation could do me good
also I apologize for my terrible language and grammar, I'd be suprised if anyone really understands what I wrote here, but it's 5 A.M. by now and I'm getting pretty tired which is why I didn't spend much time esthetically perfectionalizing this text. I will, however, adapt it once I'm in a less sleepy state. Peace and love ^^ ]
I would like to add that if you are suffering from any mental problems yourself it would not be a good idea to try and solve them yourself through psychedelic therapy... Of course, everybody is slightly mentally ill, which explains why most people feel better and more amiable after a trip, but if you're suffering from something more severe the amplification of your negative cognitions and emotions might be more than you can handle. I had a terrible bad trip myself recently and not having the presence of a therapist is really not very helpful. So ...don't try this at home, lol