Guruism and Cultic Social Dynamics in Psychedelic Practices and Organisations

Jules Evans; Joseph Holcomb Adams

doi:10.1007/7854_2024_535

Guruism and Cultic Social Dynamics in Psychedelic Practices and Organisations

Curr Top Behav Neurosci. 2025 Jan 4. doi: 10.1007/7854_2024_535. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Jules Evans¹, Joseph Holcomb Adams²

Affiliations

¹ Centre for the History of Emotions, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK. jevans@challengingpsychedelicexperiences.com.
² Psychedelic Advisory Committee on Ethics at the SHINE Collective, Berkely, CA, USA.

PMID: 39753997
DOI: 10.1007/7854_2024_535

Abstract

This chapter explores the risks of guruism and cultic social dynamics in organisations that work with psychedelic drugs, which include therapist offices, clinics, research departments, retreat centres, training programmes, NGOs, underground ceremonies and new religious movements. It has been hypothesised, and argued by experienced practitioners, that psychedelics can increase suggestibility, amplify transference and facilitate an intense form of projective mechanisms in the recipients. They may thereby lead to ego-inflation and feelings of grandiosity and omnipotence in those giving the drugs and intensify cultic social dynamics in psychedelic communities - all of which can create conditions that make cases of harm and misconduct more likely to occur and go unreported. This chapter briefly introduces the terms 'guruism' and 'cultic social dynamics' and how these dynamics can lead to harm and abuse and then discusses how psychedelic drugs might amplify these processes, before outlining possible safeguards.

Keywords: Cults; Ethics; Guruism; Psychedelic; Suggestibility.