SPEAKERS

The dependency of psychedelic effects on context, or set and setting, is the central axiom of psychedelic theory and practice. The fundamental, underlying reason for this crucial importance of set and setting factors is the meaning-enhancing properties of psychedelics, which are widely understood to amplify internal and external cues. Amplified and enhanced, such cues can induce dramatic effects and transformations that shape therapeutic outcomes. This defining meaning-enhancing quality of psychedelics also reveals their intriguing role in amplifying placebo response, widely understood as a form of meaning response. By enhancing meaning, psychedelics can enhance the power of placebo, thus becoming a type of super-placebo. This talk will explore the relationship between set and setting, meaning-enhancement and placebo as a central axis on which the psychedelic experience can be interpreted and understood.