The book Psychonauticon. A Transdisciplinary Interpretation of Psychedelic Experiences investigates psychedelic experiences from a complex transdisciplinary perspective, connecting social anthropology, autoethnography, phenomenology of corporeality, rhizomatic analysis, neuroscience and cultural history. The aim of such approach is to interpret psychedelic experiences as bound to a specific context of use and interpretation and to show psychedelics as important nodes, i.e. crossing points of various trajectories of our existence: material, corporeal, personal, socio-cultural, and ecological.
The book is a revised translation of the Czech study Myslet z psychedelických zkušeností which was published in 2016. It is divided into five chapters. The first one, Introduction, describes the strategy of transdisciplinary interpretation. The second one, Autoethnographic prelude explores the personal and socio-cultural contexts of psychedelic praxis in Czech Republic. The third one, Methodology, analyses philosophical methods and concepts, the fourth one, Psychedelic rhizome tackles the problem of categorization of so-called "mind-altering substances", and the last chapter develops a model of the psychedelic domain.
Author(s): Vít Pokorný
Publisher: Traugott Bauts
Year: 2018
Language: English
Pages: 204
City: Prague
Tags: psychedelics, autoethnography, transdisciplinary, philosophy, LSD
Introduction 7
Autoethnographic approach 8
Psychonautic approach 11
Anthropological approach 15
Ecosemiotic approach 21
Philosophical approach 23
Autoethnographic prelude 30
The plot 30
Avant-garde, the Velvet revolution and underground 33
Philosophical apprentice 38
Socio-cultural context and psychedelic praxis 47
The impact of everyday life 51
Community of night and the way of poisons 57
Entertainment and free time 65
Rave culture 68
Meeting the Dragon 72
Methodology 75
The concept of transdisciplinarity 75
Methodological precedence of intertwining 80
To think from and to think according to psychedelic experience 85
The concept of analogy 88
Domain, field, Umwelt, niche 92
Domain 92
The Field 94
Niche and Umwelt 97
Methodological summary 102
Psychedelic rhizome 104
The concept of rhizome 104
Chemical substances 108
Alkaloids 111
Neurotransmitters 114
Entropics, disorganizers, deregulators 118
Psychedelics 128
Hallucinogens 135
Beyond naming: phantastica, psychotomimetics and Shulgin’s scale 139
Modelling the domain of psychedelic experiences 149
Application: Set and setting principles 151
Set 152
Setting 157
Onset of psychedelic effect 158
Deterritorialization of perceptual field 160
Emergence of hallucinatory field from deterritorialized perception 161
Synaesthesia and dis-aesthesia 163
Psychedelic experience of time and space 165
The supra-perceptual level of the hallucinatory field 167
Alloy 172
Fading of effects 176
Summary and conclusion
