Psychedelic Therapy: A Treatment in Search of a Disorder (CIIS Lecture Series)

From the event organizer, CIIS:

A lecture with Dr. Jeffrey Guss, in the CIIS Main Building

Bringing psychedelic therapy into a contemporary medical/psychotherapy culture poses numerous challenges and opportunities. States of intoxication and dissociation are rarely considered to be adaptive or therapeutic in modern psychotherapy contexts, yet both are a central part of the psychedelic healing experience. Their occurrence in a therapeutic setting can raise considerable anxiety and caution.

Shamanic wisdom receives respect in most psychedelic cultures, but its language and processes often seem exotic and are easily misunderstood in medical/therapy settings. This talk explores both intoxication and dissociation, striving to understand how we can better define their place in our eclectic psychedelic therapy, drawing on shamanic practice as a source of wisdom, and asking how we can weave together the world of indigenous psychedelic shamanism with a model of action for psychedelic therapy that fits meaningfully into a modern context.

Jeffrey Guss, MD is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst with specialization in addictive disorders and psychotherapy. He is Co-Principal Investigator and the Director of Therapist Training for the  NYU Psilocybin Cancer Anxiety Project. Dr. Guss is developing a model for training therapists for cancer related therapy trials, as well as imagining clinical practice with psilocybin-assisted therapy. He maintains a psychotherapy based practice in New York City and is a graduate of the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis.

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