Dr Christine Hauskeller is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Exeter. She is a philosopher of medicine and ethics. Christine has examined evidence production in clinical trials and has a special interest in constellations of knowledge and power, of epistemology and normativity. Christine co-founded the Exeter Transdisciplinary Research Group Psychedelic Studies. Relevant publications include Philosophy and Psychedelics. Frameworks of Exceptional Experience (Bloomsbury 2022) and the journal issue Critical Psychedelic Studies in Interdisciplinary Science Reviews (2023).

Directing the Experience: Music in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy

Stan Grof spoke of psychedelics as “unspecific amplifiers”. Lisa Summer, who creates playlists for clinical trials, called psychedelic-assisted therapy a music therapy.  Beginning with practices in Indigenous cultures, facilitated psychedelic experiences are usually supported by song and sound. Music is part of the container and a tool guiding the experience. But the ethical and therapeutic quality of psychotherapy depends on the safeguarding of patient autonomy. I discuss if the melange of standardization requirements and, sometimes quite ideological, dispositions and music tastes of trial coordinators may allow participants in psychedelic-assisted therapy trials space to evolve their own cognitive and emotional self-determination.