Activity: Talk or presentation › Oral presentation
Description
This paper draws on the extraordinary study of Saint Teresa of Avila by French feminist psychoanalyst and philosopher Julia Kristeva (Thérèse mon amour, 2008) and her suggestion that there is a divergence between cerebral and embodied types of mysticism within the traditions of Christian mysticism. Aldous Huxley, in The Doors of Perception (1954), draws on the dominant, cerebral, tradition when he evokes Eckhart and St John of the Cross and generally it is this cerebral tradition which has prevailed in psychedelic studies subsequently. Moreover, this cerebral or neurocentric bias aligns well with the neurocomputationalist paradigm now dominant in the biomedical research. I argue, conversely, that we need to rediscover the embodied mysticism of the ecstatic singular body, which Teresa, in Kristeva’s reading, reveals. Reconnecting with this suppressed – and feminised – tradition of mysticism, at least in its psychoanalytic translation, in turn grounds new conceptualisation of embodied psychedelic political sensibilities.
Period
1 May 2026
Event title
Psychedelic Mysticism: Ritual, Religion, Weirdness and Integration