Psychoanalysis and LSD-25

Translated excerpt from pages 29-30

A patient who had gone through horrific deaths during various experiences, felt, saw and was on a mountain, but without ice, lying down, with someone beside him who would later leave, who was not essential, who had the function of accompanying him.

The sky was dark blue, it was night, and there were stars as far as the eye could see. The dominant thing was two stars that crossed at a right angle. The experience was one of peace, of solitude felt as rest (which implied a rebirth).

The action of LSD 25 leads the patient to a state of prenatal regression, in which they have oceanic experiences of identity with the analyst (with the mother), with the cosmos, feeling at the peak of omnipotence; beyond time and space.

In this situation, the patient experiences the analyst as the object that contains them and, simultaneously, as the subject itself.

These omnipotent experiences express the opposite; the absolute dependence of the fetus in relation to the mother; an uncontrollable world that creates and sustains it.

During LSD 25 sessions, this double situation (omnipotence and extreme dependence) is expressed by the patient's apparent dispensability of the analyst, with whom, on the other hand, the patient simultaneously confuses with the couch, with the blanket that covers them, with themselves.

The interpretation of these fantasies, the experience of death they produce and the regression (due to disconnection with the real object; the analyst) lead to the search for contact and, consequently, the externalization of the patient's internal world occurs.

The analyst and what surrounds him acquires existence by being covered with the patient's internal world, which, when externalized, fills the objects with warmth, color, affection and images.

Cyclically, the patient "confuses" himself with the analyst and defends himself from this situation by disconnecting, but progressively, he recognizes as his own the images he places on the analyst and on things.

Disconnection is experienced in a very concrete way as death and destruction. On the other hand, the apparent connection is a fusion and this brings the fear of losing individuality.

The progressive externalization of the different objects, which are being recognized as parts of the self, make the patient finally see the analyst as his double and feel that he is the analyst.

The externalization of persecutory and idealized objects and their recognition as parts of the self, make the patient move from paranoid to depressive anxieties.

The interpretations and the reality testing manage to make the analyst be seen as a different person.

The analyst is then seen as a stranger, and the patient disconnects, returning to his mind or his body, which take the place of the uncontrollable analyst.

The interpretation of these fantasies reestablishes the connection. A patient summarized this situation in a dream after an LSD 25 session.

"I was on a warm, tropical island, surrounded by a calm sea in the company of the boyfriend I had when I was a girl. He would throw himself into the sea, if he went. The sea began to stir, there were big waves that separated me from him, I no longer saw his body but I heard his voice. Then I didn't hear his voice either and I was alone until I reached a new land and found someone who is younger and different, although I notice that he has things in common. He offers me gifts like for a girl, I realize, sadly, that I no longer like them and that I can't go back because what was before no longer exists. I'm alone and in front of someone I don't know but I'm bigger."

During the course of the experience, the patient expresses and realizes their fantasies by means of dramatization, through sensory-motor images, through visualization, and, finally, verbally.