Abstract

Evidence suggests that psychedelic experiences can durably reduce fear of death, and some researchers think this effect is central to their increasingly well-attested therapeutic potential. But we do not yet know how these experiences reduce fear of death. The issues here are both mechanistic and epistemological. Is psychedelic therapy “simply foisting a comforting delusion on the sick and dying”, as Michael Pollan wondered? Or does it work by inducing genuine insights? Or, perhaps, by some completely different mechanism altogether – one that is non-doxastic or even non-cognitive? Various theories of psychedelic therapy have been proposed, but most have had little to say specifically about reductions in fear of death.

This is a significant omission because such reductions are (i) some of psychedelics’ best-established therapeutic effects and (ii) some of the hardest for many theories to explain. I will use reductions in fear of death as a test case for prominent theories of psychedelic therapy. The aim is to improve our understanding not only of psychedelics’ potential in psychiatric treatment, but also of their possible role(s) in the “neuroexistentialist” project described by Flanagan and Caruso: the use of research in the mind and brain sciences to find viable solutions to a putative new wave of existential anxiety attributed to advances in the mind and brain sciences.