Psychedelic Healing: Psychedelics, Psychotherapy, and Change

This is my first entry in my new blog, "Psychedelic Healing: Psychotherapy, Psychedelics, and Change" and I'm very excited to begin what I hope will be a dialog important to both me and you all. Of course, I can't do that without you and without your heartfelt voice, so feel free to say what's on your mind - I look forward to learning with you.

As a first entry, I'd like to introduce myself. Here's my bio:

Neal M. Goldsmith, Ph.D., is a New York and Sag Harbor-based psychotherapist specializing in psychospiritual development. He is a psychologist, author, and public speaker with particular expertise in psychedelic psychotherapy. (A six-minute clip of Dr. Goldsmith's "Fusion of Spirit and Science" can be found at: http://vimeo.com/7517009).

Dr. Goldsmith has a (non-psychedelic) psychotherapy practice in Manhattan and Sag Harbor, NY and can be reached via his Web site, http://www.nealgoldsmith.com.

His book, Psychedelic Healing: The Promise of Entheogens for Psychotherapy and Spiritual Development, will be out in January (http://store.innertraditions.com/Product.jmdx?action=displayDetail&id=3632&searchString=978-1-59477-250-4).

So, why have I titled this blog, "Psychedelic Healing: Psychedelics, Psychotherapy, and Change"?

It's because I want to discuss some intriguing questions about the effectiveness of psychotherapy, and whether psychedelic therapy a useful tool for lasting change in adults. Specifically, can psychedelic therapy:

o Repair malfunctions in natural development?
o Speed up the natural developmental process?
o Trigger immediate transformative change into novel areas?

What do we mean by change? Maturation? Development through a series of stages? What about transformation? Is change even the right goal for psychedelic therapy? Might release be a more appropriate objective?

To understand the process of personality development and how psychedelic therapy facilitates maturation, we must return psychology to its origins in the study of the psyche, or soul, and outline a psychotherapy based on "psycheology" - a clinical philosophy based on development, not pathology, and focused on love, unity, and the perfect nature of the soul.

Finally, I want to discuss the long-term implications for a society that embraces the psycheology worldview and integrates the mature use of psychedelics to facilitate psychospiritual development on the individual and societal levels.

Sounds like a pretty big agenda - but I think we're up to it! Any questions or suggestions for this blog and it's direction...? I look forward to learning and growing with you!