Abstract

It is happening:

Psychedelic augmented therapies (PAT) are moving from being some passionate academic therapists‘ underpaid after–hours activity to being everyday clinical work. This holds true both for study therapists in larger trials, who are committed to sitting in two or more day-long substance sessions per week and providers of Ketamine augmented therapies, who might see two to three patients a day – every day of the week, all year round.

While this might be only affecting a small group of practitioners today, it is heralding a development that will be relevant for all therapists trying to specialize their professional work on psychedelic therapies:

How can we uphold the immense level of emotional and personal commitment that is necessary to provide therapy involving altered states of consciousness, when we are treating patients on a day-to-day basis?

And how close can we allow ourselves to be to our patients, knowing that authentic emotional encounter is a key ingredient in these treatments?

This talk attempts to answer these questions, touching on the neuralgic points of emotional connection, personal boundaries and the threat of emerging compassion fatigue.