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

21世纪带来了英美“迷幻文艺复兴”，迷幻药物在药理和文化上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，在当今迷幻医学的叙事背后，存在着关于自我的明显的新自由主义和神经科学假设，即通过服用药理制剂，一个人可以改善自己或更好地为社会做出贡献，以及它们对大脑中专门存在的自我起作用的交互作用的想法。它的目的是在英国的背景下对这一范式进行历史化，从反主流文化的结束到现在(1974-)。我的项目不同于迄今为止专注于迷幻历史的早期章节的历史学，即20世纪50年代迷幻疗法的最初化身(Melechi，1997；Dyck，2008)，以及导致其刑事化的反文化药物使用(Lee和Shalin，1985；Grunenberg，2005；Roberts，2012)。其次，它背离了一篇关于今天迷幻疗法的心理学前景的纯科学文献(Halberstadt等人，2018年)。从这些问题出发，我提议的研究希望将今天重新活跃起来的医学对迷幻药的兴趣载入史册，并关注它所促进的自我塑造。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、政治家和迷幻者周围的科学家的语言在多大程度上表明了向神经科学/新自由主义自我的转变？“迷幻剂”一词背后的历史变迁在多大程度上改变了人们对自我和迷幻剂的理解？

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?