Michael Albert – Psychopharmacology in an Age of Planetary Crisis
Psychopharmacology in an Age of Planetary Crisis: What Role for Psychedelics?
We live in an age of converging crises, and the fields of psychotherapy and psychopharmacology have a critical role to play in addressing them. However, these fields continue to naturalise the consumer capitalist “reality principle” that is at the root of these crises: a vision of the human as a rational, ego-centric, utility-maximising agent that is autonomous from nature and community.
Might the recent psychedelic renaissance help form the basis of a more transformative alternative? I will suggest that psychedelics have the potential to constitute an alternative paradigm of mental health and psychopharmacology, though this requires challenging the consumer capitalist reality principle head on rather than merely promoting a novel form of therapy that helps individuals adjust to the stresses of capitalist existence.
Michael Albert is a Ph.D. student at Johns Hopkins University working at the intersection of International Relations, Political Theory, and sustainability studies
Filmed at Breaking Convention 2019
Psychopharmacology in an Age of Planetary Crisis: What Role for Psychedelics?
We live in an age of converging crises, and the fields of psychotherapy and psychopharmacology have a critical role to play in addressing them. However, these fields continue to naturalise the consumer capitalist “reality principle” that is at the root of these crises: a vision of the human as a rational, ego-centric, utility-maximising agent that is autonomous from nature and community.
Might the recent psychedelic renaissance help form the basis of a more transformative alternative? I will suggest that psychedelics have the potential to constitute an alternative paradigm of mental health and psychopharmacology, though this requires challenging the consumer capitalist reality principle head on rather than merely promoting a novel form of therapy that helps individuals adjust to the stresses of capitalist existence.
Michael Albert is a Ph.D. student at Johns Hopkins University working at the intersection of International Relations, Political Theory, and sustainability studies
Filmed at Breaking Convention 2019
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