Ego, Death, Ego (re)Birth – What can be Said of the Psychedelic Experience?

The word psychedelic, referring to a class of substances including LSD and magic mushrooms, is a portmanteau of psyche (mind or soul) and delos (revealing). While the perceptual changes, including changes in self-perception, have been the subject of psychological exploration, there is considerably less work looking at the effects of psychedelics from a psychoanalytic perspective.

In this talk, Timmy Davis will draw on insights from Lacan to explore the subjective impact of psychedelics, in both clinical and non-clinical contexts. Building on ideas introduced in his 2020 Lacunae article, ‘New, Strange, Odd and Weird Perceptions – A Lacanian Approach to Psychedelic Experience’, Timmy will argue that psychedelic drugs have the capacity to precipitate experiences beyond the signifier and castration. These experiences can be understood to harbour the potential to both destabilise and open unforeseen possibilities for subjectivity, having clinical utility but also posing certain risks. Using clinical material from his work with The Psychedelic Experience Clinic, the presentation will conclude by elaborating a new way of conceiving the potential difficulties that can emerge in the wake of psychedelic experience, and how these difficulties relate to, and shed light upon their utility as a treatment.

Speaker

Timmy Davis is the founder of The Psychedelic Experience Clinic, director of Psychedelic Policy and Regulation at the Centre for Evidence Based Drug Policy (CEBDP), policy director at the Psilocybin Access Rights (PAR) campaign and a trainee at the Site for Contemporary Psychoanalysis. He is a contributing member of Drug Science’s Medical Psychedelics Working Group and has provided psychological support on the psilocybin for treatment resistant depression trials at Kings College London. Timmy also leads teams of volunteers in welfare and harm reduction spaces such as Boom Festival in Portugal and many music festivals in the UK. He graduated from Birkbeck, University of London with an MA in Psychoanalytic Studies and with a BA Hons in Philosophy and Religion from the university of Kent, where he was president of the psychedelic society for three years.

Publications

“Undreamt of possibilities” a genealogy of ‘psychedelic’ therapeutics – or the drugs work, but how? In Breaking Convention: Musings and Meditation on Psychedelia. Strange Attractor Press. 2025.

Psilocybin is different to other antidepressants — the Government is blocking patients who need it, in The Evening Standard. 22 Dec 2023.

THOU ART NOT THAT – Towards a Psychoanalytic Understanding of the Bad Trip, in Breaking Convention: A Seismic Shift In Psychedelia. Strange Attractor Press. 2022.

New, Strange, Odd and Weird Perceptions – A Lacanian Account of Psychedelic Experience. Lacunae. 2021.

Medicinal Use of Psilocybin: Reducing restrictions on research and treatment. Conservative Drug Policy Reform Group. 2020.

The Feminine Enshadowed: The Role of Psychedelics in Deconstructing the Gender Binary. Psychedelic Mysteries of the Feminine. Park Street Press. 2019.