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Confrontation with the Unconscious: Jungian Depth Psychology and Psychedelic Experience
An exploration of the use the of psychedelics and Jung's work on trauma, the shadow, psychosis, and psychospiritual transformation.
Carl Gustav Jung pioneered the transformative potential of the deep unconscious. Psychedelic substances provide direct and powerful access to this inner world. How, then, might Jungian psychology help us to better understand the nature of psychedelic experiences? And how might psychedelics assist the movement toward psychological transformation described by Jung?
Jungian depth psychology and psychedelic psychotherapy are both concerned with coming to terms with unconscious drives, complexes, and symbolic images. Unaware of significant evidence for the safe clinical use of psychedelic drugs, Jung himself remained wary of psychedelics and staunchly opposed their therapeutic use. His bias has prevented Jungians from objectively considering the benefits as well as the risks of using psychedelics for psychological healing and growth.
Confrontation with the Unconscious intertwines psychedelic research, personal accounts of psychedelic experiences, and C. G. Jung's work on trauma, the shadow, psychosis, and psychospiritual transformation - including Jung's own confrontation with the unconscious - to show the relevance of Jung's penetrating insights to the work of Stanislav Grof, Ann Shulgin, Ronald Sandison, Margot Cutner, among other psychedelic and transpersonal researchers, and to demonstrate the great value of Jung's penetrating insights for understanding difficult psychedelic experiences and promoting safe and effective psychedelic exploration and psychotherapy.
Carl Gustav Jung pioneered the transformative potential of the deep unconscious. Psychedelic substances provide direct and powerful access to this inner world. How, then, might Jungian psychology help us to better understand the nature of psychedelic experiences? And how might psychedelics assist the movement toward psychological transformation described by Jung?
Jungian depth psychology and psychedelic psychotherapy are both concerned with coming to terms with unconscious drives, complexes, and symbolic images. Unaware of significant evidence for the safe clinical use of psychedelic drugs, Jung himself remained wary of psychedelics and staunchly opposed their therapeutic use. His bias has prevented Jungians from objectively considering the benefits as well as the risks of using psychedelics for psychological healing and growth.
Confrontation with the Unconscious intertwines psychedelic research, personal accounts of psychedelic experiences, and C. G. Jung's work on trauma, the shadow, psychosis, and psychospiritual transformation - including Jung's own confrontation with the unconscious - to show the relevance of Jung's penetrating insights to the work of Stanislav Grof, Ann Shulgin, Ronald Sandison, Margot Cutner, among other psychedelic and transpersonal researchers, and to demonstrate the great value of Jung's penetrating insights for understanding difficult psychedelic experiences and promoting safe and effective psychedelic exploration and psychotherapy.
252 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 6, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 30, 2020
Ever since reading Jung, I couldn't help but draw parallels with the psychedelic experience. In fact, nothing seems not to adapt as a framework. But somehow I never seemed to encounter much material about psychedelics and Jung. When I originally saw this book many years ago, it was the only one of its kind. And many years later, it's still the only one I can find.
The beginning of the book starts with a brief history of psychedelic research and then lays some foundation of Jung's concepts and principles. Afterward, he finally dives into more direct comparisons. I liked how he made use of the psychotomimetic model of psychedelics. This is usually told of how psychedelics were first used but quickly dismissed. The psychedelic experience is most certainly not reduceable to a psychotic episode, but nevertheless, some similarities in phenomenology cannot be dismissed, and the author explores this in-depth in a way that I found enlightening.
I said that Jung and psychedelics seem to be a perfect match, and in many ways they are. However, they are also something hard to reconcile, because Jung himself discouraged psychedelic use. He stated that it manifested too much of the unconscious, and most people would not be able to integrate such content successfully. On one hand, Jung only lived in the very early stages of psychedelics. He didn't live to see the incredible research that was done in the 50s and 60s, and again more recently in the last couple of decades. Given how therapeutic it is for many people who are otherwise considered hopeless, it seems that Jung over-stated the difficulty in integrating the experience. Nevertheless, his caution is undoubtedly wise for anyone that has used them, and given that integration is such a big part of the experience, there is more than a grain of truth in his statement. This conflict is explored throughout the book, and I found that it balances both perspectives well and remains open-minded.
The main connection that the author makes between Jungian psychology and psychedelics is the manifestation of the collective unconscious and more importantly the integration of the shadow, particularly in cases of trauma. Many bad experiences are the manifestation of one's shadow and the difficulty in accepting that aspect of the personality. Furthermore, that manifestation tends to be externalized, and he draws parallels of this with the demonic experiences that some people go through. And just like in Jungian psychology the shadow needs to be accepted and integrated for a successful personality transformation, in the psychedelic experience it is also widely agreed that the user needs to accept the experience, even when negative, in order to be able to transcend it.
It goes into a lot of depth into specific aspects of psychotherapy, which I wasn't really expecting it. It discusses different schools of thought of how to approach psychedelic therapy, referencing therapists with vast experience in the field before they were banned.
I really enjoyed that many specific cases of psychedelic therapy were included, so that the Jungian framework can be seen in actual therapy rather than being an abstract and theoretical approach. The author also discusses his own experiences and his own journey, which I also found helpful and interesting to read. This could have easily overwhelmed the book and made it too personal, but he avoids this pitfall and his experience is just one among many that is used to illustrate the connection to Jung's psychology. All of this made me think of the book as very well rounding and not too dogmatic about which aspects of Jung are explored and which interpretation is the correct one.
The only thing I disliked about the book was that it was so heavy about psychotherapy. To be fair this is completely understandable given that Jung was a psychotherapist. However, I view Jung as much a philosopher as a psychologist. If anything, even more so. So seeing Jung's thought reduced to therapy was a bit disappointing to me. Likewise, a lot of the book was focused on negatives experiences and their therapeutic effect. This is of course incredibly important, but it always felt it's missing the other piece. It rarely explored the more mystical aspects of psychedelics and how they relate to Jung's thought, which was my main interest.
Nevertheless, I still found it very worth reading, and the connection between Jungian psychotherapy and the psychedelic experience was explored in-depth from several different angles. Even if you're just interested in Jung without having experience or interest in psychedelics, I think this will still provide useful insights into successful therapy and personality transformation. On the other hand, if you're interested in psychedelics but aren't familiar with Jung, this might be too much of a jump. While an introduction is provided, I'm not sure if that's enough, and one might get a little lost. Being familiar with Jung's thought and depth psychology in general is recommended to get the best of the book.
"I only know there is no point in wishing to know more of the collective unconscious than one gets through dreams and intuition. The more you know of it, the greater and heavier becomes our moral burden, because the unconscious contents transform themselves into your individual tasks and duties as soon as they begin to become conscious. Do you want to increase loneliness and misunderstanding? Do you want to find more and more complications and increasing responsibilities? You get enough of it. "
- Carl Jung
The beginning of the book starts with a brief history of psychedelic research and then lays some foundation of Jung's concepts and principles. Afterward, he finally dives into more direct comparisons. I liked how he made use of the psychotomimetic model of psychedelics. This is usually told of how psychedelics were first used but quickly dismissed. The psychedelic experience is most certainly not reduceable to a psychotic episode, but nevertheless, some similarities in phenomenology cannot be dismissed, and the author explores this in-depth in a way that I found enlightening.
I said that Jung and psychedelics seem to be a perfect match, and in many ways they are. However, they are also something hard to reconcile, because Jung himself discouraged psychedelic use. He stated that it manifested too much of the unconscious, and most people would not be able to integrate such content successfully. On one hand, Jung only lived in the very early stages of psychedelics. He didn't live to see the incredible research that was done in the 50s and 60s, and again more recently in the last couple of decades. Given how therapeutic it is for many people who are otherwise considered hopeless, it seems that Jung over-stated the difficulty in integrating the experience. Nevertheless, his caution is undoubtedly wise for anyone that has used them, and given that integration is such a big part of the experience, there is more than a grain of truth in his statement. This conflict is explored throughout the book, and I found that it balances both perspectives well and remains open-minded.
The main connection that the author makes between Jungian psychology and psychedelics is the manifestation of the collective unconscious and more importantly the integration of the shadow, particularly in cases of trauma. Many bad experiences are the manifestation of one's shadow and the difficulty in accepting that aspect of the personality. Furthermore, that manifestation tends to be externalized, and he draws parallels of this with the demonic experiences that some people go through. And just like in Jungian psychology the shadow needs to be accepted and integrated for a successful personality transformation, in the psychedelic experience it is also widely agreed that the user needs to accept the experience, even when negative, in order to be able to transcend it.
It goes into a lot of depth into specific aspects of psychotherapy, which I wasn't really expecting it. It discusses different schools of thought of how to approach psychedelic therapy, referencing therapists with vast experience in the field before they were banned.
I really enjoyed that many specific cases of psychedelic therapy were included, so that the Jungian framework can be seen in actual therapy rather than being an abstract and theoretical approach. The author also discusses his own experiences and his own journey, which I also found helpful and interesting to read. This could have easily overwhelmed the book and made it too personal, but he avoids this pitfall and his experience is just one among many that is used to illustrate the connection to Jung's psychology. All of this made me think of the book as very well rounding and not too dogmatic about which aspects of Jung are explored and which interpretation is the correct one.
The only thing I disliked about the book was that it was so heavy about psychotherapy. To be fair this is completely understandable given that Jung was a psychotherapist. However, I view Jung as much a philosopher as a psychologist. If anything, even more so. So seeing Jung's thought reduced to therapy was a bit disappointing to me. Likewise, a lot of the book was focused on negatives experiences and their therapeutic effect. This is of course incredibly important, but it always felt it's missing the other piece. It rarely explored the more mystical aspects of psychedelics and how they relate to Jung's thought, which was my main interest.
Nevertheless, I still found it very worth reading, and the connection between Jungian psychotherapy and the psychedelic experience was explored in-depth from several different angles. Even if you're just interested in Jung without having experience or interest in psychedelics, I think this will still provide useful insights into successful therapy and personality transformation. On the other hand, if you're interested in psychedelics but aren't familiar with Jung, this might be too much of a jump. While an introduction is provided, I'm not sure if that's enough, and one might get a little lost. Being familiar with Jung's thought and depth psychology in general is recommended to get the best of the book.
"I only know there is no point in wishing to know more of the collective unconscious than one gets through dreams and intuition. The more you know of it, the greater and heavier becomes our moral burden, because the unconscious contents transform themselves into your individual tasks and duties as soon as they begin to become conscious. Do you want to increase loneliness and misunderstanding? Do you want to find more and more complications and increasing responsibilities? You get enough of it. "
- Carl Jung
March 17, 2022
Exceptional inquiry on how the psychedelic experience can be perceived through the lens of Jungian depth psychology.
As the writer notes, many Jungians have a negative bias towards psychedelics, mainly because of Jung's own critical attitude towards the subject. Hill focuses mainly on psychotherapy in this book and gives a fair description of both the proponents and opponents of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy.
The greatest value this book had to offer to me was the detailed technical examination of how psychedelics can bring unconscious content to conscious awareness in a very similar manner as with more traditional Jungian methods such as dream analysis and active imagination. Due to this technical approach, it becomes clear why Jung himself was very cautious with the subject of psychedelics. Hill does a good job of explaining why he does not fully align with Jung's critique and proposes how we can move forward from here.
With the rise of psychedelic companies in recent years, also psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy is getting a lot of attention and is bound to enter mainstream awareness in the coming decade. Although I personally perceive this as a positive development, I also believe that many are naively jumping on the psychedelic bandwagon and are overlooking the potential negative implications of high-dose psychedelic experiences that Jung tried to warn against. Especially for professionals operating in the field of psychedelic therapy, this book is a must-read to get a clear grip on the transformative potential (both positive and negative) psychedelics hold.
As the writer notes, many Jungians have a negative bias towards psychedelics, mainly because of Jung's own critical attitude towards the subject. Hill focuses mainly on psychotherapy in this book and gives a fair description of both the proponents and opponents of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy.
The greatest value this book had to offer to me was the detailed technical examination of how psychedelics can bring unconscious content to conscious awareness in a very similar manner as with more traditional Jungian methods such as dream analysis and active imagination. Due to this technical approach, it becomes clear why Jung himself was very cautious with the subject of psychedelics. Hill does a good job of explaining why he does not fully align with Jung's critique and proposes how we can move forward from here.
With the rise of psychedelic companies in recent years, also psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy is getting a lot of attention and is bound to enter mainstream awareness in the coming decade. Although I personally perceive this as a positive development, I also believe that many are naively jumping on the psychedelic bandwagon and are overlooking the potential negative implications of high-dose psychedelic experiences that Jung tried to warn against. Especially for professionals operating in the field of psychedelic therapy, this book is a must-read to get a clear grip on the transformative potential (both positive and negative) psychedelics hold.
November 19, 2019
As the title states, this book is a groundbreaking investigation of the overlap between Jungian psychology and the psychedelic experience. Scott J. Hill began his journeying with psychedelics in the 70s, and became compelled by the darkness of his trips. As a previous atheist, he suddenly found himself overtaken by visions of heaven and hell, with little tools to bring sense, nor light to his experiences. The best source of wisdom he found in the works of C.G. Jung.
In the book, he gives a personal account of his own experiences, as well as an introduction to the basis of Jungian psychology. Despite the sheer terror that Hill experienced, according to his accounts, he promotes psychedelics as a legitimate way of exploring the psyche, something which Jung argued against. In addition, Hill explores the notion of the archetypes, relevance of dreams and understanding of symbols; all things invaluable for anyone interested in altered states of consciousness.
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in gaining some understanding of how psychedelics may act in our psyche. Be the trip 'good' or 'bad', it is recommended to have a framework (or two) which to entertain while dosing off to hyperspace.
In the book, he gives a personal account of his own experiences, as well as an introduction to the basis of Jungian psychology. Despite the sheer terror that Hill experienced, according to his accounts, he promotes psychedelics as a legitimate way of exploring the psyche, something which Jung argued against. In addition, Hill explores the notion of the archetypes, relevance of dreams and understanding of symbols; all things invaluable for anyone interested in altered states of consciousness.
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in gaining some understanding of how psychedelics may act in our psyche. Be the trip 'good' or 'bad', it is recommended to have a framework (or two) which to entertain while dosing off to hyperspace.
April 27, 2018
Intriguing look at Integration
What many ppl complain of as a “bad trip” w drugs, may be the keys to their psyche’s repression that prevents their larger integration into the world.
This book argues for psychedelic induced psychotherapy and a Jungian interpretation of what arises in the psyche.
The negative imagery of a bad trip is only negative as it is foreign, but as the symbols are understood in connection to oneself, they lose their charge and a person becomes lighter. The conscious has repressed the underlying emotion for so long that only imagery can emerge as signal to the problem. But for this to occur, the conscious mind must be disconnected from the unconscious with psychedelic use.
Very thought provoking
What many ppl complain of as a “bad trip” w drugs, may be the keys to their psyche’s repression that prevents their larger integration into the world.
This book argues for psychedelic induced psychotherapy and a Jungian interpretation of what arises in the psyche.
The negative imagery of a bad trip is only negative as it is foreign, but as the symbols are understood in connection to oneself, they lose their charge and a person becomes lighter. The conscious has repressed the underlying emotion for so long that only imagery can emerge as signal to the problem. But for this to occur, the conscious mind must be disconnected from the unconscious with psychedelic use.
Very thought provoking
September 20, 2016
Absolutely incredible read, exciting, thorough and insightful. 10/10 would bang.
June 24, 2025
A good intro to Jungian theory in regards ti understanding experiences with psychedelics, especially difficult experiences. Written in a somewhat dry academic style, which also gives it some gravitas, but I would have appreciated hearing more from the writer in first person regarding his experiences that drive him to research and write the book, and his personal conclusions.
Noted that Hillman/archetypal psychology is not mentioned at all, although Suicide and The Soul was published maybe 20-30 years before this book? I think Hillman might have something to say here…..
Noted that Hillman/archetypal psychology is not mentioned at all, although Suicide and The Soul was published maybe 20-30 years before this book? I think Hillman might have something to say here…..
March 22, 2020
Jediná kniha, na kterou jsem narazil, co propojuje tyto dvě témata.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews