> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://ghost.psymposia.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The Deluded Beliefs of Psychedelic Therapy Advocates - URL: https://ghost.psymposia.com/the-deluded-beliefs-of-psychedelic-therapy-advocates/ - Published: 2026-10-06T12:00:18.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-06T12:11:12.000Z - Description: The crew discusses two presenters at the September 14, 2026 FDA public hearing on psychedelics, and the way that Silicon Valley and new age pseudoscience are coming together to create the back bone of the psychedelic therapy industry's ideology. - Author: Mike Elliott - Tags: Videos, #youtube, #youtube-transcript The crew discusses two presenters at the September 14, 2026 FDA public hearing on psychedelics, and the way that Silicon Valley and new age pseudoscience are coming together to create the back bone of the psychedelic therapy industry's ideology. ## Transcript *This transcript was generated automatically from YouTube's captions, then cleaned up by removing filler words, repeated words and background sounds. It may still contain errors.* [\[00:00\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=0s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) At onement in the therapeutic diad is contingent on the therapist's ability to cultivate deep emotional interconnectedness. This the experience of atonement is similar to the phenomenon of resonance between musical instruments. These are ideas that popped into these people's brains. They were reinforced because they were an echo chamber and they have formalized into some practice. This is just a religious practice. This is just like and it's become like some orthodox dogmatic like view that they have of this is what happens when you take psychedelics and we do our we wave our arms over you. And Harvey Schwarz who's who works with Veronica Gold who's at Polaris has talked about how these types of networks amongst the different underground therapy school groups are have encouraged each other to believe that they have extra sensory powers of perception. [\[00:54\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=54s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) So there's this quote where he says, "I've seen this happen on retreats where therapists who had previously been more nontranspersonal, so that spiritual level of reality, actually open up to this more intuitive gift or intuitive ability they have." This is like to shepherd encourage people to go in with their own delusions that they've had about the drug space. You're tripping. you're with someone and you have like it feels like a mind meld or you have a lot of what I would say in a normal rational sober state or they're hallucinations that would be like a friend of yours encouraging you to go deeper into those hallucinations or the yes you actually were there like that that is the true one state. [\[01:46\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=106s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) That the FDA hosted this big psychedelic public hearing. There were a few of the speakers comments that we wanted to watch and break down in more detail. And one of those was Jennese Herzburg who was a trainer and consultant on the lyos therapeutics trials is the co-founder of the psychedelic therapy alliance and a co-founder and executive director of sage integrative health which is a mental health and wellness provider that does ketamine therapy and I believe is looking to roll out psychedelic therapies when they are available to the public. [\[02:32\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=152s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Thank you. I'm Jennese Herszburg, co-founder of Sage Integrative Health, Alchemy Community Therapy Center, and the Psychedelic Therapy Alliance. I have financial interest in psychedelic therapy training and clinical care. I'm speaking on behalf of the leadership of the Psychedelic Therapy Alliance, a professional association of experienced psychedelic therapists, researchers, trainers, and supervisors who have collectively delivered tens of thousands of hours of psychedelic assisted therapy in clinical trials and real world practice. I'd like to make three points. First, our collective experience tells us that a trained, skilled therapist or guide is essential to safe and effective psychedelic therapy. were concerned about the movement towards removing the therapist from treatment. Recent research has relabeled therapists as dosing session monitors. [\[03:22\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=202s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Yet, they are required to be licensed clinicians and rely on their therapeutic training. And I think we can pause it really quick just to comment on her first point there. Nay, you mentioned something in chat as we were watching. Yeah. So she mentioned the tens of thousands of hours of collective experience and that's a tell that this group has mostly extensive experience in the underground because there were not enough clinical trials for that many hours to be in the clinical trial context which tracks with a lot else that we know about Jennese Herszburg's and her kind of general advocacy for this underground therapy model. Yeah. Which she'll get into a little bit further as the clip continues here. therapists as dosing session monitors. Yet, they are required to be licensed clinicians and rely on their therapeutic training. [\[04:11\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=251s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) We urge the FDA to proceed with caution before allowing these medicines to be dispensed without a competent guide present. Second, therapeutic touch must remain available to those who need it. Not everyone requires touch, but for some it's foundational to healing. We're appalled by the ethical violations and sexual misconduct by several prominent psychedelic therapists, including one in MAPS phase 2 research, and we share the concern that this could recur as the field grows. At the same time, we don't believe it's ethical to categorically deny a client's request for a hand to hold while processing trauma. In these vulnerable states, refusing all physical comfort can be experienced as abandonment. Do we want to comment on that? I know when we were watching this hearing you mentioned that that was one of the only things that the panel of FDA specialists reacted to from the speakers. [\[05:03\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=303s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Yeah. So the at the front of the room there was a long table with a bunch of people from FDA but also representatives from other federal agencies were also there. In that section she was just talking about where she described the abuse that occurred during phase 2\. the table was that it was the only time I saw during the whole hearing where the people at the table were emphatically nodding along about how unacceptable the phase 2 abuse was. And I just find this whole situation with Jennese egregious because it is recuperating our critique in order to say that there must be the type of touch that her group is advocating for which we have extensively shown is the mechanism by which that abuse happened. [\[05:58\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=358s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And so it's making it seem like they are the safe and ethical qualified therapists when actually they are insisting on maintaining the sorts of telepathic connection through touch and exacerbating people's amplifying people's traumatic experiences through touch in their writings. Yeah, it's notable that she specifies handholding because that's the one thing that they all consistently go back to when they discuss this in public is, oh, we shouldn't be denying the right of or we shouldn't be denying the experience of holding a client's hand while they're under these therapies. And that was kind of the same argument that was being made at the same time the abuse was happening. [\[06:44\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=404s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And it's like when you read what is actually allowed and when you read what they're actually attempting to put into practice, it's simply not just handholding as they like to go back to in public. Yeah. And to reiterate, I mean, there has been no reckoning with the types of touch that they have long been advocating for. And so to me, they are completely disqualified to be people who are making a case for a specific type of touch being allowed in these contexts. And she mentions it as like, oh, these patients can assume abandonment. They can make it feels like they're being abandoned during these therapies. But as far as I'm aware, there's not evidence at all about any no research has been done on how much people want touch during these, you know, therapies. [\[07:30\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=450s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) There there have been some like qualitative interview like feedback from people who have been through the trials but they have already been primed with people like that saying you'll be abandoned you'll feel abandoned if you're not given like touch in this way and this is the rationale so it's not any kind of meaningful research right yeah just to Russ's point this is what they tell the public is the handholding thing and during the phase that the Richardson mentioned in Donna Dryer abuse with Megan Buisan, the phase two abuse, the phase 2 abuse. One of the reasons that that was never pointed out or it was never flagged about everything I'm not going to describe the whole video, but every everything that was going on in that video like that was seen as sort of normal within their practice. [\[08:24\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=504s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) That wasn't seen as abusive at all. Right? So like this is what they were doing. This is a practice that has been normalized. Spooning, gagging, pressuring, what was that? Restraining. Yeah. These techniques were normalized within the underground and specifically within the MAPS kind of network of underground therapists and then they were, you know, blown up with the New York magazine release of all that. And now it is. Yeah. it's just been recuperated and I thought that like the recuperation was kind of like distributed throughout a lot of speakers here. There was some sort of nod to the risk or we're going to take the risk a little bit more seriously. [\[09:11\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=551s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) I think it was generally feel like plausible deniability type thing sort of I don't think many of them take this seriously at all. Yeah. Yeah. It's the same vibe that Jennese brought. We were appalled by this abuse and yet we were also the trainers in this trial and we think that touch should still exist. I'm always sort of baffled by the solution that they come up with which is that touch is integral to the therapy and needs to remain an option as opposed to touch should be something that's discussed in the informed consent process and discussed upfront with patients. that just like in most other psychological medical settings is not going to be utilized because there can be crossing of boundaries and that's something that's generally understood in like a psychotherapy con like you're not going to go to talk therapy and have your therapist like rubbing your shoulders and stuff like that. [\[10:09\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=609s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) It's like a very common thing and to me it seems like an obvious solution that the therapist before any kind of tripping starts just says we have a responsibility not to cross your boundaries and to respect your personal space and a professional boundary of our own to maintain. There is no abandonment happening here and we don't want you to understand it that way in the midst of a trip or anything. we just have to be upfront about this kind of stuff in order to treat you properly in this professional setting. Well, and I think part of the issue here is that they're not being forthcoming about their true beliefs. Like this community of practice believes that they are healing people through their own like love and their own personal spiritual evolution. [\[10:56\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=656s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) So touch is a vehicle for that spiritual loving transmission. It's not just like this is a nurse at your bedside who's trying to comfort you. And the fact that they're not admitting that publicly when they do in their writings and their podcast conversations is another red flag around this. I mean they even create graphics to explain the importance of this kind of touch and this kind of therapeutic relationship. I know you had singled out a graphic from one of Genese's chapters in what was the book it was integral psychedelic therapy and we should probably say a quick word about that because it was such a huge part of our you know perspective you know my perspective at when I presented to the FDA advisory committee back in 2024 specifically because they included a chapter in that anthology by Veronica Gold where Gold was advocating for the exact abusive methodology that led to the [\[11:57\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=717s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Phase 2 abuse describing, you know, a patient who was screaming out in distress and saying, you know, no. And then the meanwhile, the therapist is still applying pressure and reenacting the assault despite what the patient is verbalizing. That was really concerning. That was published in that book. And then Jennese has her own chapter in there that's also equally concerning in different ways. So, we'll take a quick look here before we get back to the video of some of the text from this chapter. I'm just going to share my screen here. So, we just wanted to look at some of the text from this and we can read through it. She specifically gets into things like the relational field and things like that. And if you want to get a better picture of what some of the mainstream psychedelic therapists are talking about when they discuss these things, we put out a great talk by Nishay on sort of psychedelic telepathy in these therapy contexts. [\[12:53\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=773s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) You can check that out for more detailed explanation of some of this stuff. But Nishay, can you give us a quick rundown of what they mean by a relational field? Yeah. Well, and what's so challenging about text like this is that there's so many metaphors and like weird references that it can be hard. What? No, I'm just laughing at the text what you're talking about. I thought it was a typo instead of each plant. I didn't realize she was going to go that hardcore into the metaphoring. Yeah. No, and it's like some of this when we first read this before the advisory committee meeting, I was sharing like I'm like disbelieving notes from it to our group chat and it it's almost like they are wearing a like a VR AR headset and they they're looking at their patients and they believe that they can like scan intuitively what it is that's going on, what's emerging from their transpersonal ancestral trauma. traumas as things from like other spiritual dimensions and then [\[13:55\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=835s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) They are like pruning and metabolizing the trauma and doing all of this like multi-dimensional stuff when they're from my perspective this is all just a complicated culty belief system that they have built up in their heads like it's essentially premised on telepathy the idea that you can take a lot of drugs yourself especially under the initiatory oversight of a more expensive or a more experienced therapist who has themselves taken a lot of drugs and then cultivate this spiritual capacity to attune to the inner experience of your client. And so they're describing that here. Yeah. For any audio listeners, the text we're looking at here from Genesis chapter begins with the therapist. [\[14:45\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=885s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) The therapist's quote unquote tending of the relational field is analogous to tending a garden. First, we attune to the condition and needs of each plant by taking its aesthetic presentation, the qualities present in the soil, stem, leaves, flowers, and fruit by opening our hearts to their displays of image, vibrancy, fragrant einations, and any other communications. We might enter a state of embodied presence and notice how we feel as we take the plant in. We can then respond to the needs and communications we perceive by trimming away dead leaves, watering, offering nourishment, and providing appropriate environmental conditions, and harvesting the fruit. There's a lot of bananas stuff in here that I feel like is worth like talking about. [\[15:31\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=931s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Do we want to kind of popcorn it? So, I read the first one. Somebody else jump in on the second, then we'll just kind of go around the circle. I'll do it. Even though reading this \[expletive\] gives me bad feelings. I mean during the like in the leadup to like FDA and after the 2024 FDA and then in like the year afterwards we where we were writing the psychedelic syndicate. We would just go through so many of their writings and I think a lot of people who were supportive of psychedelic therapy I would put the number extremely high have never read the primary like source materials at all. If they do, some of them do and they just like it glazes over because it's so like it's so bizarre that they don't really take it seriously. [\[16:19\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=979s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Yeah. For those Yeah. I think most people have actually never read like the writings of the Midhoffers or like the people who are really central to like evangelizing, you know, the psychedelic gospel according to maps like never read what they're actually saying. And so much of it is just like \[expletive\] crazy \[expletive\] All right, so I'll read this one. Likewise, the therapist tends the relational field through receptivity and responsiveness to the aesthetics of the emergent expressions of the therapist client encounter. The relational field is perceptible through mindful observation of the client and therapist's emotional experience and expression, somatic sensations, revery, thought processes, flow of subtle energies and non-verbal cues, I.e. [\[17:11\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=1031s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Facial expressions, gaze, skin tone, subtle movements, nervous ticks, etc. Can I just can we stop there for a second? I mean that list it's like they believe that they have developed the capacity to like read what's coming up inside their own bodies like their own vibes about things and to interpret the significance of body language of strangers whose backgrounds they do not know well and it's just a completely bananas pseudoscientific assumption to make. It's like this DMT state mixed with some matrix state and now and they're like the scanner and this \[expletive\] going on and they're like in the they're now in the relational field \[laughter\] and they're in the process of attuning to this \[expletive\] hyperdimensional scanner thing and they're supposed to like see everything that's coming up and simultaneously through their own internal feelings be able to like identify like disruptions in the force and then they're like going [\[18:12\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=1092s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) To like and then they gobble up they met metabolize the trauma that you like gobble it metaphysically. Yeah. Yeah. Skin tone is a wild addition to that list to me. \[laughter\] It's like are they talking about like if they get flushed or something or are they like I'm just imagine they're like turning blue for some reason or I don't know. I'll continue. Sensitive attention to the aesthetics of the co-created field enables the therapist to cultiv cultivate empathic attunement, modulate effective exchanges and levels of arousal, support the containment and metabolization of trauma related affect and identify and attend to emergent transfer transference reactions and enactments. [\[18:58\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=1138s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) This is really hard \[expletive\] to read. And it's like it's not possible for a human to be able to make the amount of calculations in the moment that this paragraph like actually says. \[laughter\] There's like \[expletive\] a thousand variables here in like concepts that are not existent in reality other than the reality of their own minds. They believe that they can they believe that they are superheroes who are here to like liberate humanity. Yeah. Well, and they once again recuperate the language that is actually important in criticizing them in my opinion, which is this what they say at the end here, attend to emergent transference reactions, which just speaking to transference in like a medical professional context. That's like transference and counter transference is like you know what either what the patient brings to the session and projects onto the therapist or what the therapist brings to the session projects onto the patient. [\[19:55\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=1195s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And that's literally what they're describing here, right? Which is the therapist bringing their intuition into the session to interpret the client and they're saying they're attending to that which is just obviously not true to me by what they're writing. they're actually doing, right? Well, it's usually used in the sense of like romantic feeling. I feel like I'm sure that's not the general meaning, but or parental feelings or bad experience with your father. You project that onto your male therapist or vice versa or you had a child that died by suicide or something. You know, those things that you bring to the session. Yeah. Well, that that's part of it and that is exactly Russ, you're right that they build in the language that would make it sound like they're attentive to power dynamics and that sort of thing, but they build also in a loophole for themselves, which is that they say that they have like part of that cultivated spiritual capacity is also the capacity to discern the difference between like what's coming up [\[20:56\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=1256s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) For them and what's part of the relational field in the process and what's coming up for the other person. like they believe that they can make those distinctions when clearly they can't based \[laughter\] on these descriptions. As you're saying, it's actually they've predence assumptions so far that they have realized the pure intuition for some reason to interpret the patients inner workings. It's not it's definitely not their own transference at play there, but it's like that requires a level of belief in pure intuition that I think is irresponsible to bring into these settings. And counter to all of the research on intuition and bias and that kind of \[laughter\] thing. The way that we can mistake our own judgments for, you know, coming from the outside over and over again. [\[21:44\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=1304s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Yeah, there's so many reasons to be concerned about this belief system and psychedelic therapy. Yeah. And the word enactments scares me because those are the traumatic reenactments. Exactly. That's so they're attending to these emergent transference reactions and enactments and then they enact them, you know. Yeah. knowing the appropriate way to respond, which in many cases under this kind of graphian influenced therapy framework is amplifying the distress by engaging as the perpetrator in order to purge the trauma. Are you going to read Are you going to read that paragraph that I left off? I've been waiting for I've been \[laughter\] waiting for it. Okay. At onement in the therapeutic diad is contingent on the therapist's ability to cultivate deep emotional interconnectedness. [\[22:34\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=1354s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) This the experience of atonement is similar to the phenomenon of resonance between musical instruments. And then goes on to say consider a tuning fork used to tune a piano. Striking the fork against a solid surface will set it vibrating at a specific frequency producing a reference pitch. The relevant string on a piano can then be adjusted, tightened or loosened so that the string resonates at the same frequency so that the pitches match. In fact, if the vibrating fork is to put in is put in proximity with the tuned string, this will then begin to vibrate with the same frequency, the two are said to be in resonance. So, drawing a parallel to the psychotherapy process, Camry adds that the resonance is a form of attunement among elements or agents in a field which in turn amplifies the field's emergent properties. [\[23:20\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=1400s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) These properties include synchronicity, emotionally resonant counter and transference, empathic revery, concordant sematic experience, co-regulation, telepathic thoughts, and other subtle field phenomena. They literally admit it. How does this is like these several paragraphs are like the definition of pseudocience 100%. I actually assigned this to my students to when I was teaching pseudocience and we kind of we walked through it. This is exactly why nay and we have come to the conclusion that this is a therapy cult cuz it is these beliefs are like solidified and exported to the entire field and it's not that the people who are practicing this they might not even like realize they might not even realize what it is that they're internalizing or practicing like the origins of it. [\[24:17\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=1457s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) But yeah, I don't know. Something that's bugging me about it, too, is how they keep using this language of like this relational like this two-way street. It's this diad, but then are very explicit about how the therapist is the garden tender. It like there's a super explicit power dynamic that the therapist is the one that knows how to like read your mind literally. It's like such beyond \[expletive\] hubris. I have a plant science background. Like I actually studied plant science like to even let's just go with this. Let's just go with this metaphor. To think that you as like a gardener or a gardener like can control all of the variables is just that's hubris alone. [\[25:02\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=1502s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) You can control some of the settings. So how much you water at yeah looking at the plants observing the plants. You're not gonna There's a lot of variables that you're just not going to be able to control for at all. To think that you're the \[expletive\] master who's going to be able to like have a perfect harvest or not have a certain type of bug or something like that is is is absurd. Well, then there's that the tuning fork metaphor as well is bizarre because just because you can have sympathetic resonance happening in a physical object in the string does not mean that you can as a therapist refine this tool of your intuition to accurately resonate in a way that makes your telepathic sense a valid read of what's going on for your patient. [\[25:54\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=1554s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And the problem though is that because these communities are initiated in the underground, you can have very persuasive experiences that then you're given this interpret interpretive lens around it and then people can strongly believe it. So a lot of these people I mean they I they strongly believe it because that's how cults work. It's like a self-encclosed ideological system that that provides explanations for everything in a way that doesn't allow you to see other ways of looking at the situation. And that's extremely dangerous for the vulnerable people that are seeking out psychedelic therapy. And these people, these underground therapists are not the ones who should be determining any kinds of guidelines around therapeutic practice. Yeah. I just don't know what like a tuning fork or gardening has anything to do with giving like in a doctor patient setting like or therapeutic setting giving a person drugs for a trauma where like [\[26:56\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=1616s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Other than a metaphor because it sounded good to you what does this have to do with \[expletive\] anything? I don't get I think that's the metaphor itself is is a tool to be more convincing. It's the use of story, right? Like to be able That's the trick. Yeah. Maybe we want to jump back in and wrap some of this up here. So, we just finished this paragraph here. It goes on, as psychedelic medicines generate an upwelling of the client's unconscious processes, the vibrations of these literally use the word vibrations is wild to me. The vibrations of these expressions saturate the shared space of the relational field with a broad range of empathetic possibilities. The amplification of unformulated affect evoked by psychedelic medicines heightens the probability that these will affect the therapist's inner experience. [\[27:49\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=1669s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) When these frequencies are empathetically met by the psychedelic therapist's open and receptive mind, a strong form of intersubjective resonance and attunement between client and therapist takes shape and a highly dynamic relational field emerges. This is what I'm talking about when I'm talking about the like transference and transference stuff, right? Like they're just putting a different spin on this experience to say it good actually. Yeah. Yeah. think that their counter transference is like an accurate like read. They're beyond counter transference is all they're saying. And we'll just finish it. This is the last paragraph we have. In relational psychedelic therapy, the therapist aims to use their resonant counter resonant \[laughter\] counter transference feelings. [\[28:35\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=1715s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) The therapist aims to use their resonant counter transference feelings, sematic and energetic experiences, unbidden reveries, and intuitive perceptions to join the client in deep emotional connectedness. Carefully tending the relational field gives the therapist access to a multi-dimensional framework and approach for helping the client contain, metabolize and understand the raw emotional intensity and meaningful implications embedded in the psychedelic visions in their psychedelic visions unformulated emotional and sematic experiences unconscious interpersonal dynamics and verbal expressions. This is why I mean this book integral psychedelic therapy is one of the most important books to understand the psychedelic renaissance because this is where the mask comes off and they actually describe what it is they do and what they believe and it's so overt. [\[29:28\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=1768s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) It's everything that we've been saying that they do because we only said it upon researching this for years and piecing everything together. And just one other point that I'll make that I mentioned as well in the telepathy talk on our channel is that this is at the expense of anyone who's not in their inroup most of all. So people who have like differences socioeconomic, you know, backgrounds that are more from poverty, people who are not in this kind of new age spiritual belief system, other cultures. If your vibe check of someone is an accurate read of what's going on for them, it's a vector for you to project your own biased assumptions and feel like that's a actual readout of something wrong with the other person when it's just you being an \[expletive\] Right. [\[30:19\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=1819s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Right. And if as like really interested in reading primary material here and in instead of just like assuming what psychedelic therapy is, I would really recommend their paper, the conceptual framework for the therapeutic approach used in phase three trials of MDMA assisted therapy for PTSD. It it's essentially what we just read like several hundred times. it just it's just over and over and over again like these concepts, but it's more euphemistic than this. So, it's helpful to read this kind of like kind of look at their more overt examples because that chapter was still them talking to the FDA. And so they kind of loosely describe some stuff that integral psychedelic therapy provides more concerning details about, but it just shows how much this was the model that they were building out the MDMA clinical trials to promote. [\[31:17\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=1877s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And that was actually from Rick Doblin, the founder of MAPS. His whole mission was not just about MDMA. It was in order to, you know, get this therapy model out to the masses. Yeah. And when we talk about the influence of integral psychedelic therapy, it's not like this was just some random book that came out like we said this was an essay by Jennese who we were watching speak at the FDA hearings and who was a trainer for the LOS trials. It also involved a number of other trainers for the Lake Coast trials writing essays on their techniques and things like that and I believe had editorial leadership from people leading the Lake Coast maps trials. Is that correct? Yeah. So she was Jennese was a trainer for the other therapists. [\[32:05\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=1925s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) There were a bunch of people involved who were maps connected and in some way and then the endorsements on the book came from like Rick Doblin and Michael Mhoer who did the maps therapy model protocol and just as a final note about like how these dynamics like harm people because this is very common in all kinds of cults where it's like the cult leader or people who are high up in the cult that have this spiritual connection to a level of reality that is more true than what other people are able to access. Any kind of disagreement with that truth holder who's connected to the transpersonal field is a sign of a problem in the person. And there's not like a so it's just such a dangerous model to teach people because it gives the tools to really \[expletive\] with people and like to blame them for anything that the pure person connected to spirituality is not vibing with in the moment. [\[33:07\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=1987s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) So maybe as a last thing we could just show that picture from this chapter as a kind of an indication of that. Yeah, they've gone so far as to illustrate these concepts that we were just discussing. So for our video watchers here, this is the inside of the relational field. You've got the transpersonal field on the very outside working your way into the cultural field setting. And then the relational field that's the conscious consciousness and communication interacting with one of one another and the unconscious and communication interacting with one another. There the therapist is represented by a chalice and the client is represented by like a vase or a water holder pouring out material that would go into the chalice. Yeah. And so it's like the immediate setting of the session surrounded by the cultural field and then the broader transpersonal field and they're porous all of those levels. [\[33:59\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=2039s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) So it's like the transpersonal field is able to communicate through the cultural field, the setting and like the intuition of the therapist of the relational field in that dosing session. Is this sort of like the mind meld or the at onement in the center where they're like one and the same or like the same? There's like a vortex in the middle. Do you see that? It's like spinning together. Yeah. Yeah. I think this is like the main reason why MAPS has, you know, grasped so hard and advocated so much for the therapy to be included in all of this. It's not just about the and obviously like on the surface they say, yeah, the treatment is going to be much more effective with the therapy, but it's not just about that. There's another level that it's not just about the drug. [\[34:48\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=2088s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) It's about ex them exporting their like ideology, their cultic view, their model out into the world, you know, and just to we've touched on this before, but it just I think there's more context for it now that we've talked this through. So this was the therapists talking in like kind of this association that underground group of therapists talking to Jules Evans and the quote from ecstatic integration says the community of maps therapists is still reeling from the FDA rejection. We went in with so much trust and excitement. Now we feel like paras we were all traumatized by what happened and by Psymposia's mission against us and I don't think we've recovered. Resilient has been strangely hostile to therapists who worked on the trials. [\[35:34\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=2134s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) They say they'll only work with academic centers and they want to minimize the psychotherapy component like the other drug companies. So these underground therapists are now saying this is an issue with like the corporatization and money seeeking like side of the field kind of wanting to cut costs. But there's a huge component of this that smart money quote unquote doesn't want to be involved with these cultists anymore. It's like we alerted the public to the fact that this was a cult and now the cultists are, you know, upset about having lost their power. Any competent pharmaceutical company with a legal team understands that that what we just read is \[expletive\] nonsense. Gibberish nonsense. And it represents like it's a huge liability. [\[36:20\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=2180s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) It will probably be submitted to a court one day 100%. Like just a little tangent here, but if anybody like watched the Lindsay Clancy trial, there was a lot of interesting testimony from mental health pro healthcare providers and stuff like that and experts. The case was essentially like a battle of experts between one another. When I was watching it, I was saying I was shooting some messages on like our chat. It's like I can see in the future where some type of psychedelic therapy like this goes haywire and that person is on the stand like testifying to like the practices that they did and oh my god like any even somewhat competent lawyer is going to be able to just dismantle like their theory of change here. [\[37:12\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=2232s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Yeah. You mean the their at oneness didn't go over correctly? And there's no scientific basis for any of these claims or most of these claims. They're nonsense. I don't I can't say it in any other way. Like these are ideas that popped into these people's brains. They were reinforced because they were an echo chamber and they have formalized into some practice. This is just a religious practice. This is just like and it's become like some orthodox dogmatic like view that they have of this is what happens when you take psychedelics and we do our we wave our arms over you. It's and the thing is yeah the drug might actually be having positive effects underneath all that but this isn't real. [\[37:57\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=2277s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) It's not because the therapist is telepathic right? Imagine that like imagine that court scene. It's like I was tending your honor. I was tending the relational field with my telepathy. Like it's really I was tuning I was in tuning like a gardener or a guitar player does with their bandmates. Yeah. Well, and to the point of the echo chamber. Oh, sorry Nor, you got something? I was going to say it just makes me like upset like reading these paragraphs and it was like people came at us for just exposing this \[expletive\] They have never even read this. I guarantee most of our critics have never even read the primary source materials that like the practitioners themselves. E they either they know it and believe it or they've never been exposed to it. [\[38:46\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=2326s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Like I've said that a lot. I was the first person in my research to find out as much about what they were actually doing who didn't believe it already. The investors in Lose, my belief, this is my belief, the investors in Lost that they ended up bringing in had no idea what they were investing in. They had no idea that this was it was like this kind of Scientology type woo that company that they were investing in because this is so hard to wrap your mind around if you haven't like spent a lot of time with what they're actually doing. And so they invested in they bought the \[expletive\] that Rick was selling them. And it on one level it makes sense. [\[39:32\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=2372s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Yeah. The world is in a mental health crisis like this, you know, the data look good, blah blah blah, but yeah, let's invest in it. Seems like the time is now, right? And they get it and it blows up in their face and they're like, "What the \[expletive\] was this?" And so now they've gone back and they've now done due diligence. I'm assuming like some kind of halfass like retroactive due diligence that they that they've done. And you know, I think that comment that you read, Niche, is is interesting because it shows that I'm assuming that due diligence that they I don't even want to call it due diligence. It's not due diligence. It's like it's not due diligence after like you didn't audit it properly, right? But I'm assuming that they've now like looked back at the practices and the people who were doing this and like we want no part of that. [\[40:23\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=2423s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) I don't know if that's exactly true. Yeah. I don't know if it's true. I don't have like, you know, I'm not a fly on the wall of their negotiations and whatnot that's going on, but I can't imagine that any like legal team or any competent business person is is going to like endorse what was going on, right? And not only this, it's what what's wild about all of this to me is it's like the same people who are pushing these views, they're the same people who were like compiling the data, you know, it's it it's like it's not just Yeah. Yeah. And this is what like the former employees who were our sources were telling us you know it's like these were the people who were responsible for like rapidly trying to scale up like a professional side of the company you know data safety all these other things the whole commercialization process. [\[41:21\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=2481s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Yeah. Which is complicated and it requires serious people. This is not a serious person you know. No. And to the point that you made earlier about echo chambers, niche shared a clip earlier today from a psychedelics today interview with Genese that I think is notable as notable towards what we've been talking about here, which was that a lot of these kind of psychedelic wellness clinics that were taking off in I believe the California area were the Bay Area. Yeah, the kind of Bay Area were all collaborating with one another and all sort of sharing best practices when they were taking off the ground. So, I'll just play that real quick. Then, so, you know, that was a big part of what I see as my own training was actually with colleagues. [\[42:12\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=2532s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) We kind of early on there were a group of different ketamine assisted therapy clinics who we were all launching at the same time. Sage and Polaris and healing realms and teos all clinics in the Bay Area. We were supported by Raquel Bennett of Korea who had trained us all. And so we came together and had a consultation group and also a practice group and started to kind of practice using these medicines in kind of novel ways and you know understanding better how to sit with folks before stepping into actually doing the work. And I'm very passionate about this personally that you really should only be holding space and guiding people in realms that you know yourself. And I realize that that's complicated. [\[42:57\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=2577s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) I realize that you know there some people have medical reasons for not being able to you know delve into certain realms or explore certain medicines and there are also many many ways to access altered states of consciousness. So just wanted to share that to show that the these are at least two clinics that we've talked about pretty problematic practices with before. But between what Jennese Hburg has described as her foundational kind of beliefs behind this therapy and her work with Sage and then Veronica Gold who was sort of spotlighted in Nache's M MDMA hearing commentary as problematic practices also laid out in integral psychedelic therapy through Polaris and Harvey Schwarz who's who works with Veronica Gold who's at Polaris has talked about how these types of networks amongst the different underground therapy school groups are have encouraged each other to believe that they have extra sensory powers of perception. [\[43:57\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=2637s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) So there's this quote where he says, "I've seen this happen on retreats where therapists who had previously been more nontranspersonal, so that spiritual level of reality, actually open up to this more intuitive gift or intuitive ability they have, and then they start going through a big identity crisis around like, well, what if I go back and tell my colleagues, mainstream therapist colleagues back home that I'm, you know, hearing ancestral voices or, you know, picking up things, which means telepathically. And so I think there's a lot of support needed for therapists who are going through the transformation to become psychedelic therapists. So he's talking about this type of a network that she just described. This is like to shepherd and encourage people to go in with their own delusions that they've had about the drug space, right? [\[44:45\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=2685s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Like you do you know this has happened to me before. You're tripping. you're with someone and you have like it feels like a mind meld or you have a lot of what I would say in a normal rational sober state are they're hallucinations they are delusions you should in my opinion you when you kind of come to and you come back and you integrate that you should treat that like altered state with a lot of \[expletive\] suspicion right what it seems like he's doing there and what you read Niche is that would be like a friend of yours encouraging you to go deeper into those hallucinations or the yes you actually were there like that that is the true one state go deeper in with that and then you eventually convince yourself and I think you've pointed this out you can correct me if I'm wrong here nay but essentially in what's the ventriloquist example with facil oh wait what [\[45:47\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=2747s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) With yeah exactly with facilitated communication like convincing yourself, you know, in your ability now to act as a vessel for their communications. Totally. I mean, it's like a psychopanic chatbot saying like it's not psychosis, you're actually enlightened. And you know, now there it's like and there there are cases that we know of where it's like that's not just amongst therapists training each other, it's also how some of them communicate with their clients. Yeah, I think Jennese has given us a lot to think about in her twominut talk even. So maybe we can wrap that up. I think there's about 30 seconds left of her clip and then I think we can I think we can jump into Justice Justice League thing. I don't think we'll have quite as much to say about his, but I think it's interesting to go over if we have time. [\[46:34\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=2794s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) I think we stopped her testimony right about here, so we'll play it. I think she was just getting around to her third point. Rather than ban touch outright, we recommend a certifying body requiring every guide to complete training in ethics, consent, power dynamics, and therapeutic touch. Third, many protocol elements, including dose, session frequency, treatment length, and total number of sessions were standardized for the needs of controlled trials. In real world practice, these should be decided case by case, not locked into a rigid protocol. These decisions should rest with treating practitioners, not be dictated by trial sponsors. I'll include a written statement that includes a client's narrative about the impact of therapeutic touch. Thank you very much. [\[47:21\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=2841s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Thank you, Jennese. Next, in the certifying body, they want the certifying body to be comprised of them. And this is what they were explicitly trying to do in Oregon. Yeah. That's what I was going to say. You can read more in the psychedelic syndicate on that if you want to go deeper. Yeah, totally. And that's what I was going to say is the in a two-minute pitch to the FDA. That that all sounds okay, right? Like maybe like a little bit of handholding and there should be focus on the abuse that's happened in the past and there should be certifying bodies that stress ethics and consent, right? like th those themselves aren't bad suggestions, but then you start digging into the speaker and what they actually believe around these things and the fact that they want to be involved in what is and isn't okay in these scenarios is alarming to say the least. [\[48:15\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=2895s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Yeah, it sounds great if you're not informed just like autism causing vaccines sounds great if you're not informed. Right. Yeah. And so unless anybody has anything else on that particular talk, I think we've got one more that we wanted to watch through from someone named Justice League, who I don't know if you all were familiar with him prior to this. This was my first encounter with Justice League. Yeah. He came up when I did the South by Southwest talk with Matthew Johnson at this was a few years ago during the Q Q&A. he kind of ran up and then used it as a speech for the same topics that he's presenting here, which was not at all related to the conversation we were having. So, yeah, I had heard this before. Well, again, speaks to how people were using this hearing. [\[49:03\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=2943s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) So, I'll play his testimony real quick. Next, I'll recognize Justice League. Hello. Thank you for allowing me to be here. It's a very exciting day. My name is Justice League. I'm founder and inventor of Therapod. We're developing enriched environments informed by real-time biometrics in support of psychedelic medicine. When you walked into this room, something shifted in your body. Whether you noticed it or not, the flicker of a light, the edge of a table, the sounds, the silence, all of it leaves fingerprints in the nervous system. Now, imagine walking into this room on LSD. I just got to pause real quick. [\[49:50\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=2990s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) I think these two clips relate to one another in \[laughter\] a way that I didn't even realize when I cut them. Yeah. Which is he's discussing that setting portion of that illustration we just looked at, which is the way that the setting bleeds into the transpersonal bleeds into the relational field. So yeah, cringe is killing me. Every element in the envirment in the environment is is taken into consideration with psychedelic treatment. This isn't take a pill and call me in the morning. It's take a pill and have an experience. Sessions run 6 to 12 hours. Ibegan's cardiac risk window extends days beyond the dose. And through all of it, the person responsible for safety is largely using one tool, observation. [\[50:35\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=3035s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) These providers aren't pumping platelets into the body. They're pumping music into the ears and having to wing it when the trouble arises. But new technology exists. Research grade wearables, controllable room elements. We all have smart homes, right? And learning systems can be recorded to in both streams. What the body did and what the room did. The body reveals what the person can't say. and the practitioner can seize it without breaking the session. The room adjusts. I just got to say this is like this is the tech like Silicon Valley influence that's become like so prevalent in the space meshing with the new age belief system that we just went over from \[laughter\] 100%. [\[51:23\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=3083s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Yeah. And I fully also did not make that connection but that's exactly right. before stress becomes crisis. Capture setting, light, sound, temperature as standard data elements in supervised care can be taught across sites and scaled from evidence. The only reason I'm here today is because I experienced this firsthand in 2019, giving my mother with a rare form of Alzheimer's that was causing her go blind, high doses of psilocybin. She would often stutter, unable to dress herself, find the kitchen, and the next day she was not just dressed, she was singing and dancing through the kitchen. The new future of protocols will involve more than an eye mask and headphones. [\[52:10\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=3130s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) We got a lot to be excited about. Look, your guidance that pause there. Sorry. I just in my head I'm like he just realized that he just admitted to something pretty insane in a government \[laughter\] hearing. Yeah, I don't think that he has any insight about that. \[laughter\] No. It released in July requires two monitors and a physician within 15 minutes, but it says nothing about the room. So setting continues to be the field's largest unmeasured variable just as it was when Ram Das was still Richard Albert. And as of today as psychedelics are the element no one is addressing. You know, when it's addressed, just time to address the room. Now, it's time to address the room. Do you think his mom consented? You think his mom like Yeah. [\[52:57\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=3177s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Go ahead. Well, the reason I sounded like she didn't really have the capacity to consent from that description. And so that's part of the reason I wanted to look at this because it connects to our Tyler Black conversation where we discuss this like enthusiastic push into dosing the elderly people who don't have the capacity to consent with these types of stories that will drive other people to experiment with high doses with their own family members. So yeah, very concerning. Do you think he was monitoring her vitals \[laughter\] during this high? It was, you know, like probably not. Yeah. Maybe make \[laughter\] it with that. Not within like a medical kit. Yeah. But I think I mean I think I said what I thought of that clip as it was going, which is this. [\[53:44\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=3224s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) It's that meshing of the new age and the Silicon Valley tech scene that's coming together to and just grift culture industry. Just like internet grift culture like what's this thing called? Theropod. Yeah. which I can't help but also think back to our the sort of fictionalized scene we wrote for the psychedelic syndicate of Steve Gervson's future idealized psychedelic therapy through AI with a human watching the door and multiple screens to make sure nobody's leaving their sort of pod that's monitoring all their vitals and their heart rate and skin tone flushness all that kind of stuff like the what they imagine is going to come in the future. is is psychedelic therapy within a theropod monitored by AI systems. [\[54:29\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=3269s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) That's disturbing. One of my favorite details about Steve Jervis from your report is his statement that like it's inevitable and like the na the natural thing to do or something to have like you know in the near future psychedelic therapy won't even be like overseen by humans you know this will still be done but it will be like AI like bots. Yeah. Just to prefet this, the implications of this convergence of psychedelics, AI, and surveillance become clear when examining the future that PSFC's Steve Jervson envisions for psychedelic therapy. Quote, "There's no reason in the world that it needs to be a human in the room holding your hand for 28 24 to 48 hours." He told Spirit Territory, describing a future where AI would handle psychedelic therapy, while humans, quote, the lowest cost labor you can imagine, served as backup for physical emergencies. [\[55:22\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=3322s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) All right. So, now here's your dramatization of it, which I loved. In Steve Jervson's future, a clinic's observation room might flicker with feeds from thermal cameras, motion sensors, and biometric monitors tracking patients in isolated pods. An underpaid technician without medical training keeps her eyes fixed on the monitors, while a palunteer surveillance module tracks her gaze to ensure constant vigilance. In pod 7, a middle-aged man rides on his mat, pupils dilated as the AI therapist speaks in a carefully modulated voice, drawing from training data that includes Grock's revised corpus of human psychology. Tears begin streaming down the patients face while the AI responds with what its musk curated training deemed appropriate, a mixture of radical self-reliance philosophy and warnings about adopting a victim mindset. [\[56:10\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u2ImpIWzw&t=3370s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) The technician watches the man curl into himself while the surveillance systems green outline confir confirms he is within acceptable movement parameters. When the patient cries out, "Don't do this to me." The AI continues its approach while the technician stays in her chair. Human intervention is authorized only if the patient tries to breach the pod door.