Psychedelic Press Blog — psychiatry

Abstract The fields of psychology and psychopharmacology have developed along surprisingly divergent historical trajectories, given their shared clinical endpoint. The subsequent schism between drug and psychotherapeutic treatments is artificial, and exaggerated by continued ignorance on both sides of the debate. In fact, such distinctions are relatively contemporary. There exists a rich history of shared psychotherapeutic-drug assisted clinical practices in pre-history and non-Western cultures using the psychedelic (hallucinogenic) drugs. These practices were re-invented in the 1950s and 1960s in Western medicine and are now enjoying a renaissance in contemporary research. It is postulated in this article that further development of psychedelic...

Author Ben Sessa is a psychiatrist, and his novel starts with a psychiatrist character, Dr Robert Austell, having a violent fantasy where he cuts a patient’s throat with a scalpel and nonchalantly watches her bleed to death. The reader can be forgiven for momentarily wandering just how autobiographical the work is, and indeed whether such things are the norm within the psychiatric profession! But of course this slasher opening is a piece of black comedy in order to set up the jaded, disillusioned Austell as someone who – like the majority of the working population – is bored with his job and...

Dr Ben Sessa has just written a novel called To Fathom Hell or Soar Angelic. The story follows the journey of a conventional, conservative, NHS psychiatrist, Dr Robert Austell, as he breaks free of that mould and learns to challenge the traditional medical model. The transformation occurs when he accidentally stumbles upon the field of psychedelic therapy and meets the enigmatic, Californian maverick, Dr Joseph Langley. Soon a small farm in Somerset is transformed into a hotbed of psychedelic research, as personal and social growth emerges amongst a plethora of psychedelic therapeutic wonders. Ben is the author of several novels...