*Psychoanalysis and Psychedelic Psychotherapy – A New Modern Synthesis? DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109095*

somatic conditioning. Access to such a state presents an achievement that is often the result of disciplined practice. In such a state, one is more able to be fully *present* in the core experience as an essential essence of self that resides beyond the narratives and life history held in the mind, in emotional life and in the soma. Such p*resence* is a substantial achievement and should be considered a mystical state as it is an expression of self-energy or essence that is divine in quality. The experience of heightened presence is a consonance that resonates with the life energy within and the energetics of the surrounding world. It is the single energy that animates life and could be considered the substance of existence. A singular virtue of psychedelic medicines is that they provide an immediate portal into a state of presence. Access to this state constitutes a "sweet spot" for healing; it permits resonance with the world around, like a tuning fork vibrating in sympathy with the pulse of life, at once a correction and a tuning to the frequency of life.

Many studies have recognized the value of mystical experiences that reside beyond the margins of self, the so-called "ego-dissolution" states that permit an experience of unity and oneness with the world and universe, often permitting access to knowledge of truths about oneself, the nature of reality or the Universe [19, 20]. Such experiences feel sacred in nature and contain characteristics of the so-called peak experience [21] such as a sense of unity, strong positive emotion, a feeling of transcendence, numinosity, ineffability, insights and paradoxical understandings.

In working with psychedelic medicines, the cultivation of a state of presence *through* the self allows one to access platforms of intense experience at the margins of self or beyond ego dissolution states. These unity states, however, are arrived at by the journey *through the self* not simply by bypassing the self-states. This entails the concomitant working through trauma, discovery of previously unaccessed potentials and dormant wisdom.

During states of presence, the corresponding relational field between patient and psychotherapist becomes one where the emotional contact and the intersubjective field are at once heightened and profound. The psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion captures the profundity of such states of emotional experience in which a capacity to metabolize experience by "alpha function" provided by a psychoanalyst allows for a capacity to symbolize and create meaningful connections, and to build a rich internal and external reality at the nexus of the creation of self and the world around [22]. The concept of the inextricably linked (mind)set and the setting is a recognition that the mind simultaneously creates the setting and paradoxically, through a bi-directional, mutually informing, reciprocal matrix, the setting context elaborates the formation of the mind.

In such a relational field, the Bionian directive for the psychoanalyst to maintain a stance "beyond memory and desire" [23] to permit recognition of an evolutionary process in an unfolding session captures the essence of the psychedelic psychotherapy process. Through the shared presence and witnessing functions that the session provides, along with the emotional availability and capacity to hold and follow the session flow, the psychotherapist catalyzes the corrective experience and provides the necessary nutrients and framework for creative growth and the emergence of new potentials.

For a person to emerge into their full self, to matter and to be held in regard through the mind and heart of another, is an indispensable requirement for the free unfolding of self potentials, self-regulation, individuation and the blossoming of innate creative capacities. During a session's progression, unrecognized aspects of emerging like the shape and form of clay on a potter's wheel are skillfully guided by the psychedelic psychotherapist but always driven by the patient's healing process itself.

In his Paris seminars of 1978 [24], Bion, while discussing patient selection for psycho-analysis, poetically describes the spectrum that encompasses the range between, through and beyond the self-sculpture:

*"suppose you were walking through a building and saw on the ground a pattern of colors thrown by the light coming through a window. Heredia, in the poem \*"Vitrail" (footnote), describes the effigies on the tombs: they cannot see, cannot hear, but with their eyes of stone, they see these colors spread out on the floor. As this patient is talking to me and the light falls on this conversation, what colors do you see? Do you like them? Would you like to spend more time there? Would you like to study the window through which the sunlight penetrates to find out what sort of design there is in the glass of that window?"*

Bion's work particularly, I feel, captures the tenets of psychedelic psychotherapy work through his affirmation of the following principles:

a.the value of the subjective experience,

