Psychedelics and the Science of Mysticism - Nathan Gorelick

This event is part of our monthly public lecture series exploring clinical and theoretical perspectives on the intersection of psychoanalysis and the study of psychedelics. Events take place on the last Wednesday of each month.

Psychedelics and the Science of Mysticism

The resurgence of laboratory research in psychedelics and the related explosion of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapies have inspired a renewed scientific interest in mysticism and mystical experiences. But what is mysticism, scientifically speaking? How can it be measured, calculated, or prescribed? Can mysticism be fit into a pill? Delivered in a medical clinic? Included in a holiday package at a jungle resort? Or is the mystical, by definition, beyond the bounds of scientific knowledge? Current as these questions are, they have been at the heart of psychedelic studies, and the psychedelic marketplace, from the beginning. Even earlier, scientific psychology was at pains to distinguish itself from the variety of mysticisms—religious or secular—that promised and often delivered relief from all manner of mental anguish. That struggle continues with psychedelics today. Join Nathan Gorelick as he explores this fraught, fascinating history and what it means for the present and future of psychedelic theory and praxis.

Nathan Gorelick is Term Assistant Professor of English at Barnard College of Columbia University in the City of New York and a Candidate in the Post-Graduate Program at Pulsion: The International Institute of Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychosomatics. His first book, The Unwritten Enlightenment (2024), details the literary history of the unconscious from the eighteenth century to the present. His next book examines the forgotten history of psychedelics in the Freudian field and what its recovery means for psychoanalysis today. He is an award-winning teacher and a widely published author whose works appear in magazines and journals including Parapraxis, Psychoanalytic Review, Continental Thought and Theory, and the International Journal of Counselling Psychology, and in numerous essay collections on psychoanalysis, philosophy, and contemporary cultural criticism.

The Psychedelic Experience Clinic is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to providing accessible and affordable psychotherapy to individuals following psychedelic experiences, and a space for the advancement of thought around the clinical phenomena resulting from psychedelic experience.

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