What secrets hide in your subconscious?

This is the story of Claudio Naranjo, a psychedelic psychiatrist who used psychedelic therapy to unlock the deep-rooted origins of his patients' problems.

If you needed further evidence of Freud's theories of repressed memories causing present-day neurosis, this it. The Healing Journey sits strongly alongside books like Stanislav Grof's book LSD Psychotherapy. Indeed, Grof himself has written the introduction to The Healing Journey — which was a nice surprise when we opened it.

This book is unusual because Naranjo has described very specific case-studies where he used LSD, MDA, MMDA, Harmaline and Ibogaine to peel back layers of the human subconscious and assist in the healing of his patients. The book includes actual transcripts of psychedelic sessions and the long-term outcome of the treatments. This is one of the few times we have encountered such detailed transcripts.

As you might expect, if you are a student of depth-psychology, the typical process of healing first involves regression to childhood experiences that formed a particular world-view. The patient is then able, as an adult, to bring understanding and awareness to these early programatic sub-routines. The result is a kind of magical re-parenting where the patient is able to be present with the child aspect of themselves during various traumatic moments in the past and unknot the emotional messes that resulted from them.

Choices of direction

Naranjo observes clinical differences between his chemicals of choice for therapy. He notes that MDA (similar to MDMA), seems to entail "the remembering of certain events" from a distance while LSD often catalyses "age regression" and "a shift to the pre-verbal mode of mental functioning characteristic of early childhood". In other words, Naranjo found that MDA gives improved access to memory, while LSD is likely to throw a person into those emotional states.

We can broadly attest to this in our research too.

LSD tends to be a more difficult tool to work with because memory states are more likely to be acted out, and it can be harder to decipher exactly what is being processed and how the experience can be supported.

Naranjo describes how his patients often make recoveries that would have been impossible with conventional talk-therapy. However he also offers talk therapy to patients as an adjunct to their psychedelic therapy and, so, his approach is hybrid.

Verdict

It was a delight to discover this book. It's a treasure based on the cover art alone. But, if you are a serious psychedelic-healer, The Healing Journey is a thrill. Although the premise is not new (uncover the root traumas and heal them), because of the detailed case studies, and actual transcripts from sessions, Naranjo's book offers a rare insight into how a psychedelic therapist actually conducts sessions, and how material emerges from the subconscious.

Kali's international book-finding department located this book in Canada and it will be available for sale in our psychedelic bookshop Kali, in Berlin. Or you are welcome to sit in the shop and read it for free.