'Psychedelic Selves': Neoliberalism, Neuroscience, and the British Psychedelic Renaissance

21世纪带来了盎格鲁-美国的“迷幻文艺复兴”，精神药理学和文化对迷幻药物的重新迷恋，集中在它们治疗抑郁症和多动症等心理疾病的潜力上。我的项目的假设是，在今天迷幻药的叙述背后，存在着可识别的新自由主义和神经科学关于自我的假设，即通过服用药物可以改善自己或更好地为社会做出贡献，以及相互作用的想法，即它们只作用于位于大脑中的自我。它的目的是在英国的背景下，从反主流文化的结束到现在（1974-），将这种范式历史化。我的项目偏离了迄今为止专注于迷幻药历史早期章节的史学，即20世纪50年代迷幻药治疗的最初体现（Melechi, 1997; Dyck, 2008），以及导致其被定罪的反文化药物使用（Lee和Shalin, 1985; Grunenberg, 2005;Roberts, 2012）。其次，它偏离了今天关于迷幻疗法心理前景的纯科学文献（Halberstadt et al., 2018）。离开这些研究路线，我提出的研究希望将今天对迷幻药重新焕发的医学兴趣历史化，并关注它所促进的自我配置。我的目标是回答各种问题。在20世纪末和21世纪初，吸毒者、活动家、政治家和科学家围绕迷幻药的言论在多大程度上表明了一种向神经科学/新自由主义自我的转变？“迷幻药”一词含义背后的历史变迁，在多大程度上促成了对自我和迷幻药理解的转变？

The 21st century has brought with it an Anglo-American 'Psychedelic Renaissance', apsychopharmacological and cultural re-fascination with psychedelic drugs centring on their potential totreat psychological pathologies such as depression and ADHD. The hypothesis of my project is thatbehind the narrative of psychedelic medicine today lies identifiably neoliberal and neuroscientificassumptions regarding the Self, namely that via consumption of pharmacological agents one canimprove oneself or contribute better to society, and the interacting idea that they act on a Selfexclusively located in the brain. Its aim is to historicise this paradigm in the British context, from the endof the counterculture up to the present (1974-).My project departs from a historiography that hitherto has focused on earlier chapters in psychedelichistory, namely the initial incarnation of psychedelic therapy in the 1950s (Melechi, 1997; Dyck, 2008),and the countercultural drug use that led to its criminalisation (Lee and Shalin, 1985; Grunenberg, 2005;Roberts, 2012). Secondly, it departs from a purely scientific literature on the psychological prospects ofpsychedelic therapy today (Halberstadt et al., 2018). Departing from these lines of enquiry, my proposedresearch hopes to historicise today's reinvigorated medical interest in psychedelics, with attention to theconfiguration of the Self it promotes.I aim to answer various questions. To what extent did the language of drug-users, activists, politicians,and scientists around psychedelics in the late 20th and early 21st centuries indicate a shift towards aneuroscientific/neoliberal Self? To what extent did the historical flux behind the meaning of the term'psychedelics' underwrite shifts in the understanding of the Self and psychedelics?