Seeing oneself through the eyes of another: A look at psychedelic insight

ABSTRACT

A young man who was destroying his life with alcohol had a remarkable, unexpected change in perspective after drinking Robitussin in desperation. His experience had the hallmarks of a state of ego dissolution commonly seen with psychedelic drugs. He felt he could see himself “objectively, from a third-party perspective.” After this psychedelic experience, he stopped drinking. I apply four models (Solms, Friston/Carhart-Harris, Stern, and Fonagy) to explore how and why this experience, in which he had a sense of seeing himself through the eyes of another, was so transformative. The models reveal surprising areas of convergence. This phenomenon, or something like it, plays a crucial role in forming one's sense of self during development, and changing one's sense of self in psychotherapy. Looking at the young man's experience with these models in mind sheds light on the nature of psychedelic insight, which in turn sheds light on the models themselves. Psychedelics engender regression to earlier modes of perception and feeling that characterize pre-verbal self-with-other experience, which fade when defense mechanisms begin to distort objectivity, and language, paradoxically, limits what one can share. Seeing one's self through the eyes of another may be an implied mechanism of change even when not overtly recognized. With this model in mind, the attuned psychedelic-assisted therapist may discern its presence (or perhaps even its telling absence), in the shadows or contours of primary process material, and may, through its interpretation, enable the subject to see himself more clearly.

KEYWORDS:

• Psychedelic state
• ego dissolution
• noetic sense
• affect attunement
• epistemic trust
• vitality affect

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The framework of viewing pathologic behavior in addiction not as the result of faulty reasoning (broken inference), but as a reasonable response to a suboptimal generative model is remarkably consonant with Fonagy et al.’s framework of epistemic mistrust and the pathological behavior it may engender as a rational response to a suboptimal generative model, that the potential sources of culturally useful information are unreliable (see below).

2 I have parenthesized certain sentences because they are more likely to occur during re-integration following a psychedelic experience than during one.

3 It is admittedly difficult to distinguish whether the unconscious sense of assurance one derives from continuous attunement is felt as being “cared about,” which has self-esteem implications, or simply feeling “safe,” which would be more in line with attachment theory.