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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1469559

My Bad, You Got This: Witnessing, therapist attitude and the synergy between psychedelics and inner healing intelligence in the treatment of trauma

Provisionally accepted
Lawrence Fischman Lawrence Fischman *
  • Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, Tufts University, Boston, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies) sponsored MDMA-assisted therapy protocol has had greater success in treating trauma in preliminary clinical trials than any prior psychotherapeutic, pharmacologic, or combined approach. It is predicated on a synergy between drug action and the participant's inner healing intelligence. The latter is only described indirectly by analogy with the body's capacity to heal itself, and the treatment is characterized as a means of activating or accessing this capacity. What enables this rather mysterious-sounding process to work so well? I suggest that the therapist's full commitment to, and trust in this treatment framework, along with the medication's subjective enhancement of trust, encourages individuals who have suffered trauma and have difficulty trusting others to engage the therapist as a kind of witness. I discuss parallels between the therapeutic attitude implied in the inner healing intelligence model and the therapeutic attitude of witnessing in the resolution of dissociative enactment in relational psychoanalysis. Trusting the healing capacity of one's inner healing intelligence is dynamically equivalent to trusting the relational process. This makes trusting one's inner healing intelligence a process of feeling witnessed. In both settings, the therapist's willingness to acknowledge her technical limitations or failings, coupled with a conviction that the participant/patient's primary need in processing trauma is to feel witnessed, facilitates the integration of dissociated experience.

    Keywords: Inner Healing Intelligence, Trauma, MDMA-assisted therapy, psychedelics, relational psychoanalysis, Witnessing, dissociation, Therapist Attitude

    Received: 24 Jul 2024; Accepted: 03 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Fischman. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Lawrence Fischman, Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, Tufts University, Boston, United States

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