Psychodynamic LSD experience

This is a "reliving" of basic fixations that is achieved by the use of psychedelic drugs. Individuals encounter the personal unconscious with all its infantile ego-defences. Such experience may resolve inner conflicts, and allow transpersonal realization to develop. The experience can be a painful reliving of the birth trauma, together with feelings of aggressive tension and of imminent catastrophe. The experiencer may identify with other individuals or groups - even, in some cases, with the suffering of the whole of mankind, past, present and future. Reliving the first stages of birth trauma, as uterine contractions commence, overwhelmed by total anguish, leads to a sense of total meaninglessness in life with no way out. This is followed by a second stage, as in the birth canal, when agony mounts finally breaking beyond the pain threshold; it is characterized by extremes of pain and pleasure, the world being seen as full of threats and oppression. There may be attempts at violent suicide or murder. Finally, there may be a crisis of actual ego-death, complete annihilation at all levels, followed by a sense of release, rebirth and redemption.