Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, School of Public Health, University of Michigan, 1415 Washington Heights 2806 SPH II, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, USA.
Cult Med Psychiatry. 2022 Jun;46(2):322-343. doi: 10.1007/s11013-021-09708-7. Epub 2021 Mar 2.
Drawing from ethnographic research with psychedelic therapists and researchers, this article explores political tensions between two sources of efficacy within psychedelic therapy: the self and the chemical. At times researchers and therapists emphasize the specificity of chemical effects in relationship to the neurobiology of particular diagnoses. And at other times they foreground the self as the true source of an experience which is not tied to that same biochemistry. Anthropologists have long emphasized that efficacy is a historically and socially embedded category and practice. Those conversations have new valence in light of recent theorization of the chemicals as material-semiotic structures shaped by their experimental contexts. This article argues that while the empirical claims embedded in these two efficacies can and do mutually include each other, a fundamental political tension remains between the efficacious ends envisioned by each. As clinical trials develop these drugs as therapeutic agents, they do so through linking the specific effects of the chemical to particular diagnostic populations, which may enfranchise these chemicals, but not all their efficacies.
本文借鉴了迷幻治疗师和研究人员的民族志研究，探讨了迷幻疗法中两种疗效来源之间的政治紧张关系：自我和化学物质。有时，研究人员和治疗师强调化学作用的特异性与特定诊断的神经生物学有关。而在其他时候，他们则将自我作为体验的真正来源，这种体验与同一生物化学无关。人类学家早就强调，疗效是一个历史和社会背景下的分类和实践。鉴于最近对化学物质作为由实验背景塑造的物质符号结构的理论化，这些对话具有新的意义。本文认为，尽管这两种疗效中包含的经验性主张可以而且确实相互包含，但它们所设想的疗效之间仍然存在着根本性的政治紧张关系。随着临床试验将这些药物开发为治疗药物，它们通过将化学物质的特定作用与特定的诊断人群联系起来，从而使这些化学物质具有合法性，但并非所有的疗效都具有合法性。
