Psychologist, PhD
University Lecturer @ Tampere University
Researching trauma, PTSD, psychedelics, autobiographical memory
More at https://kangaslampi.net
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In this new commentary, @kangaslampi.bsky.social and I argue against viewing the psychedelic experience as a "biomarker" and challenge reductionistic drug-centered framings that obscure key psychosocial determinants of psychedelic therapy outcome, most notably psychotherapeutic processes.
LINK ⬇️
Is the psychedelic experience a pharmacodynamic biomarker? Or do psychotherapeutic processes matter? Comment with @trpwolff.bsky.social on the recent Goodwin et al. (2025) paper now available online in the Journal of Affective Disorders: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
The most important takeaway: "Considering the increased interest in the use of psychedelics in therapeutic contexts, there is an urgent need for research on how these drugs can affect the encoding, storage, and retrieval of memories."
Main points: Dozens of papers over the decades mention the possibility that psychedelics could recover repressed memories. However, few include explanations for how they could do so, none provide reliable empirical evidence that they do, and most don't define what they mean by repressed memories.
Out today in Psychopharmacology: Our scoping review on recovery of repressed memories under psychedelics, spearheaded by Anne-Fiona Griesfeller and Lotte Kooman:
doi.org/10.1007/s002...
We would approach the authors' tentative suggestion that psilocybin could be a treatment for dissociative amnesia with great caution. More generally, we advise against any sort of psychedelic-assisted recovered-memory therapy (which, to be clear, the authors were not explicitly suggesting).
Strong alliance, weak conclusions: Comment on Goodwin et al. (2026) “The role of therapeutic alliance in psilocybin treatment for treatment-resistant depression”
osf.io/preprints/ps...
Many thanks to my coauthors Rick Zeifman, @kangaslampi.bsky.social & @moeswisdom.bsky.social
Critical commentary on a recent paper reporting emergence of dissociated traumatic memories during psilocybin treatment now out in the Journal of Eating Disorders, with @trpwolff.bsky.social, @manojdoss.bsky.social, Lilian Kloft-Heller, and @henryotgaar.bsky.social.
doi.org/10.1186/s403...
The original authors did not show that these were specifically cases of emergence de novo of dissociated memories and did not fully consider alternative explanations that we discuss. We caution against the suggestion of preparing patients for the possible emergence of forgotten material beforehand.