Ketamine-Enhanced Psychotherapy: Preliminary Clinical Observations on its Effects in Treating Death Anxiety

Abstract

Ketamine, a dissociative anesthetic commonly used by US physicians, has recently been shown to be a powerful anti-depressant and is also capable of eliciting transpersonal experiences that can be transformative. Although currently approved in the US only for use as an anesthetic, physicians there can legally prescribe it off-label to treat various psychological/ psychiatric problems and it has been used for these non-anesthetic purposes in Argentina, Iran, Mexico, Russia, and the UK, as well as in the US. The literature on using ketamine psychotherapeutically is reviewed and two case studies using ketamine-enhanced psychotherapy (KEP) for treating death anxiety in terminally-ill people are reported. The potential importance of beginning formal research on using KEP during end-of-life for those suffering death anxiety is emphasized.

Beyond Mind III: Further Steps to a Metatranspersonal Philosophy and Psychology (Continuation of the Discussion on the Three Best Known Transpersonal Paradigms, with a Focus on Washburn and Grof )

“…I, p. 344): each of them held so firmly to his partial view, taking it to be the exact, absolute view of totality, that they quarreled bitterly, unable to come to an agreement as to the nature of the object before them. The same story is told in the Tathagatagarbhasutra of the Third Promulgation, as follows (Dudjom Rinpoche, 1991, vol (Capriles, 1994, 2007, etc. ), because of the radical difference between the digital code of the process that in the Project for a Scientific Psychology of 1895 Freud called secondary (based on the computations of the left cerebral hemisphere) and the analog code of the process that he called primary (based on the computations of the right hemisphere), the action of consciousness in terms of the former is very often read inversely in the latter-which causes it to yield effects diametrically opposed to the ones intended, as is proper to the samsaric "reverse law" or "law of inverted effect" reviewed toward the end of the last chapter of Capriles (2007a [Vol.…”

“…In its turn, Dzogchen-qua-Fruit-at least in our time-can only manifest as a result of the neutralization of all propensities for delusion through the latter's repeated, constant spontaneous liberation in optimal conditions (which are those discussed in Beyond Mind [Capriles, 2000a] and other works of mine [e.g. Capriles, 1986, 2000c, 2007] and which include a high energetic-volume-determining-the-scope-of-awareness, the transformation of contradiction into conflict and so on). When in the Upadeshavarga or Menngagde series of Dzogchen teachings, a practitioner who has received transmission / direct introduction applies the secret oral instructions of Tekchö, spontaneous liberation may take place through the blessings of the Master, of the Lineage, and through these of the Supreme Source.…”

“…Moreover, whereas opiates are not deemed to have any psychotherapeutic potential, ketamine has been reported to have a therapeutic potential in the field of thanatology, in the treatment of alcoholism, and in that of psychiatric disorders (cf. Kolp, Young, Friedman, Krupitsky, Jansen, & O'Connor, 2007, among many other works, some of which are cited by these authors).…”

“…It is a pure observing self that is different and separate from the observed, which according to Wilber in this fulcrum does not identify with the latter. The hermeneutical analysis, carried out in Capriles (2006a, 2007), of Wilber's descriptions of this fulcrum and of the "pith instructions" he gave as a means for realizing the witness or sakshin, demonstrated it not to be the reGnition of the dharmakaya aspect (or of any other aspect, for that matter) of the nondual primordial awareness of the Dzogchen teachings (cf. note 1 to this paper, where the analysis in question is reproduced), which, just like the witness, is not one with or equal to the phenomena that in samsara appear as object, yet unlike the witness it is proven not to be separate or different from these phenomena.…”

“…In Capriles (2006, 2007) I used abundant scriptural quotations to prove that Mahayana, Vajrayana and Dzogchen forms of Buddhism assert the condition of nirvana, whether manifesting transitorily on the Path 12 or definitively as the Fruit, not to involve the subject-object duality (a duality that as we have seen does not occur even in the neutral base-of-all), and hence not to involve a mental subject that may either identify with this or that, or-like the witness or sakshin in this fulcrum-not identify with anything and therefore keep aloof from the movements of prakriti (i.e. of whatever in samsara appears as object).…”