Time：2024/2/29 Thursday 13:20-16:20
Location：國立陽明交通大學心智哲學研究所 知行樓 Room 503
Language：English
Abstract:
In the historical context of a crisis in biological psychiatry,
psychedelic drugs paired with psychotherapy are globally re-emerging in
research clinics as a potential transdiagnostic therapy for treating
mood disorders, addictions, and other forms of psychological distress.
The treatments are poised to soon shift from clinical trials to
widespread service delivery in places like Australia, North America, and
Europe, which has prompted ethical questions by social scientists and
bioethicists. Taking a broader view, we argue that the ethics of
psychedelic therapy concerns not simply how psychotherapies are
different when paired with psychedelic drugs, but how different kinds of
psychedelic therapy shape and are shaped by different values, norms,
and metaphysical commitments that amount to different forms of life.
Drawing from the published literature and interviews with seven
psychedelic therapists working in clinical trials in the United States,
Germany, Switzerland, and Australia, this talk opens the black box of
the treatments to consider the values and informal debates currently
animating the therapies. Considering questions of patient autonomy,
mechanisms of therapeutic action, and which therapies are best suited to
pair with psychedelic substances, we examine the ethics of psychedelic
therapy as a form of life. To bring this out in fuller relief, we
conclude by comparing and contrasting this emergent form of life with
ayahuasca use in Amazonian shamanism. The talk is based on work done in
collaboration with Nicolas Langlitz.
Speaker's Bio:
Alex K. Gearin, Ph.D., is an medical anthropologist who has researched
psychedelic substance using networks and practices across the globe. His
forthcoming book Global Ayahuasca: Wondrous Visions and Modern Worlds
(Stanford University Press, 2024) explores the psychoactive plant brew
“ayahuasca” in Asia, South America, and Australia. His work is featured
in Current Anthropology, Social Science and Medicine, Frontiers in Pharmacology, JRAI, and other outlets, and he is co-editor of The World Ayahuasca Diaspora: Controversies and Reinventions (Routledge, 2017). Alex is assistant professor at The University of Hong Kong.
