Samuli Kangaslampi

Samuli Kangaslampi, PhD, licensed clinical psychologist, works as university lecturer in clinical psychology at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Tampere University, and as senior researcher at INVEST, University of Turku, both in Finland. He also acts as chairperson of the Finnish Psychotrauma Society, vice chairperson of the Finnish Association for Psychedelic Research, and board member of the Finnish Psychological Society.

His research focuses on psychological trauma and the treatment of trauma-related symptoms, stress and development, autobiographical memory, as well as psychedelics. In relation to psychedelics, he has published on mystical-type experiences, the potential application of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD to adolescents, methodological issues in psychedelic research, and on the effects of psychedelics on memories and memory recall.

Psychedelic and traumatic experiences

In my talk, I explore the complex relationship between psychedelics and trauma. I will discuss recent evidence and arguments that some prolonged difficulties after using psychedelics are best understood as traumatization – in some rare circumstances, psychedelics can indeed cause psychological trauma. However, I will also present new findings on how recalling past traumatic experiences and avoided memories under psychedelics may be linked with therapeutic processes – psychedelics may also have potential to heal psychological trauma. Further complicating the matter, it appears psychedelics could also induce memories of apparent past traumatic events that in fact never took place. Finally, I will discuss some surprising similarities between traumatic and psychedelic experiences and what psychedelic research and psychotraumatology can learn from each other.