Jason K. Day is a PhD candidate in Philosophy and Doc.CH scholar at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. His dissertation research is on the phenomenology of psychedelic experiences, with a special focus on changes to attention. They have also written on the topics of Buddhist philosophy and anarchism. They are further interested in political and legal debates surrounding the recreational use of psychedelics.

Contraction of Consciousness: The Phenomenology of an Neglected Feature of Psychedelic Experiences

Perhaps the most popular characterisation of psychedelic experiences is that they entail a profound ‘expansion of consciousness.’ Though this a fair characterisation in many respects (e.g., regarding the extraordinarily enhanced clarity and detail of appearances), its correlate ‘contraction of consciousness’ has received comparatively little attention. Based on a phenomenological qualitative study of 1,800 trip reports, I will detail the various ways in which psychedelics commonly induce an extraordinary concentration or reduction – i.e., ‘contraction’ – of consciousness, explicate these in terms of changes to attention, and suggest how to accordingly balance out the popular characterisation of psychedelic experiences as consciousness expanding.