Integrating the ineffable: a social phenomenological analysis of the psychedelic experience
Date
2019
Authors
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
There has been a renewed and growing interest in psychedelic drugs in the 21st
century. Drawing on social-phenomenology, cognitive sociology, and ‘set and setting’
theory, I delineate how individuals use socially defined frameworks of understanding
to attribute meaning to psychedelic experiences. These frameworks refer to the ‘ready-made’ schemes that structure subjective experience of objects, people, and a variety of
other phenomena. Hence, I investigate how experiences with psychedelic drugs are
meaningfully integrated into everyday understandings of reality. The main question
guiding this thesis is: How do users of psychedelic drugs reconcile the experience with
everyday waking consciousness and social reality? I attempt to answer this question in
three phases that will 1) describe the quality of the psychedelic experience, 2) identify
how individuals integrate the experience into everyday life, and 3) outline what these
experiences can tell us about the social construction of everyday reality in the United
States. This study uses conventional and directed content analysis of accounts
originally collected between the years 1960-1964 as part of the Harvard Psilocybin
Project. Specifically, I analyze over 200 narrative reports from 100 individuals
collected from the Timothy Leary Papers archival collection held at the New York
Public Library. These reports recount experiences with psilocybin, mescaline, and
LSD. Using this data to describe the character of psychedelic experiences, how
individuals integrate these experiences into everyday life, and what constitutes valid
knowledge in the United States, I hope to ‘demystify’ the psychedelic experience and
generate more useful ways of thinking about psychoactive substances.