The Ethics of Caring in Psychedelic Therapy with Kylea Taylor

My unofficial Vital Study Zine #10 with observations from Vital Psychedelic Training and recent happenings in the space

From Phantom VII by Neil Krug

“We don’t rush to sign up for ethics classes,” says Kylea Taylor, a storied therapist who’s become the conscience of the psychedelic renaissance.

But you’d be surprised, she says: “All our great tales and stories are concerned with dilemma, redemption and ethical themes. The field can be surprisingly interesting and worthwhile, plus you learn a lot about yourself.”

‘Ethics is the study of relationship’ says Taylor’s website for her InnerEthics program detailed in her respected book The Ethics of Caring. If we are defined by our interactions, then ethics are a crucial part of our existence. Taylor, I’ll point out, is no out of touch pharisee. Graduating in marriage and family therapy in the late 1960s, she worked as an addiction specialist throughout the 1970s including nine years in a residential rehab. She’s been with the Grof Foundation since the 1990s having trained there since 1984 (she calls them “Stan and Christina” at one point which is way cool).

“Self-compassion and self-work are absolutely key”

These days it’s not only addiction counsellors and psychedelic pioneers who sometimes deal with tricky individuals. Not for nothing are self-books with titles like The Five Types of People Who Will Ruin Your Life all the rage. It turns out that ‘drawing boundaries’ which we’ve all been told is the secret to negotiating life by our (childless, spouseless, mostly jobless) therapists, doesn’t actually work against bastards. Or if not bastards then the folk who’ve worked out they can make their ethics up as they go along, mostly – in a world where God is dead and Alfred North Whitehead is yet to be a household name. 

“Ethical relationships are the relationships that are healing”

Taylor tells of an acquaintance, a qualified and licensed female therapist, who dabbled with holotropic breath work and shagged a long-term male client who she’d had an intense session with. He sued her and she lost everything. “Why did this happen to a good, well-intentioned, well-trained therapist?” says Taylor, “because we need to discover as much as we can about our motivations, be completely sensitive to client safety, and educate ourselves about extraordinary states.”

It’s not difficult to accept that psychedelic drug use and exotic religious ceremonies might get a bit sketchy sometimes. Denizens of the underground learn to pick their way around the gloom; some though trip over, into the murk. Go down into the Power Trip podcast rabbit hole for New York Magazine’s exposé series covering both the nascent scene and recent trials at MAPS, where perfection is absent even in the most optimistic of scenarios. 

“If clients feel trust they’ll be more willing to go into strange spaces”

Because we are human, reminds Taylor. She’s trained with Stanislav Grof’s Foundation since 1984. He wrote in LSD Therapy that we should strive to be more than human nonetheless, and Taylor thinks so too. 

“Self-compassion and self-work are absolutely key,” says Taylor, who advised on MAPS’ new Code of Ethics. Current ethical codes don’t examine therapist motivations, and certainly not higher states of consciousness. While we must grill ourselves on our own weaknesses, we mustn’t overly admonish ourselves for mistakes in a new, difficult arena. 

“We turn up the volume in psychedelic therapy. All internal and relational dynamics present have more impact for the client. Thoughts, words, feelings and intuitions affect the client and the therapist, much more than in a regular therapy session,” warns Taylor. Kundalini is one of her fields and she advises to look out for spiritual emergencies of both the dramatic and everyday kind: “realisation of cognitive dissonance can be a huge shock for many.”

Self-work leads to self-realisation, self-compassion, stronger boundaries, and a finer relationship with others. It makes a psychedelic therapist better at their job.

“Ethical relationships are the relationships that are healing. If clients feel trust they’ll be more willing to go into strange spaces and approach difficult feelings,” says Taylor.

Here’s what else I flagged up, colour-coded to Vital’s themes of Approach, Therapy, Space Holding, Medical and Integration.

Power to Empower

Approach

Inner journeys require deft guidance deployed with subtlety

From Seascapes by Paul Rosteau published by Loose Joints

Talismanic underground figure Leo ‘The Secret Chief’ Zef began his psychedelic guide self-training using talk therapy in his voyagers’ sessions.

Eventually he wrote, “I realised I didn’t know what they needed and neither did they. Something inside them did. Just leave ‘em alone!”

Photos of the general public tripping in blindfold-and-headphones under strip lighting prompts revulsion in recreational users – or it did in myself, certainly.

Stanislav Grof, ‘The godfather of LSD’ according to its inventor Albert Hoffman, who ‘nobody has contributed as much to the development of my problem child’ explains in his landmark work LSD Therapy that he went through a similar thought process as a researcher in the 1960s and 70s. 

The simultaneous model,‘psycholytic therapy’ Grof says does have its advantages compared to regular psychoanalysis, cutting treatment times by a third. But the doses he believes are too regular and possibly too small. Most importantly, the open-ended process has no focus on the rigorous analysis and integration of insights. 

“It will seem weird to them. Normalise. Don’t pathologise”

Grof concluded that ‘psychedelic therapy’ which features three to four regular therapy sessions punctuated by high dose experiences where the patient mostly corresponds with their inner healer, 

While skilful guidance by the therapists can make impact, this requires elegance and subtlety. 

Vital Week Ten lecturer Kylea Taylor has worked for Grof Transpersonal Training since the 1990s. Like veteran Dr Bill Richards back in Week Four, she says the number one thing to keep in mind is the existence, and the potency, of the inner healer. In an ethical context this means trusting the client’s relationship with the process more than yourself. 

“Work at the speed of safety. Move at the speed of trust”

Creating a sense of permission to unfold, “the power to empower” is a very different role to that of the modern psychotherapist, who in my own experience prefers their narrative to any individual ones. Let alone any insight dispensed by cosmic visions.

“Normalise, don’t pathologise,” says Taylor, “It will seem weird to them, outside their own frame of reference.” While I absolutely agree this will be true for some voyagers, I’m inclined to believe plenty of others will find their fantastical visions more compelling than a grim raking over of their early childhood, accompanied by a gentle shaming of any non-narrative impulses. Get out the Soul Collage, which is like a ‘make your own Red Book kit’.

“Think, ‘How can I support this client to take their next step into freedom, where they can be fully who they are?’” Says Taylor, again echoing Bill Richards who worked alongside Grof for many years, this time with his ‘cosmic midwife’ allusion. Providing examples, stories and suggested reading are more appropriate than Freudian psychoanalysis, which can seem terribly pompous when you’re tripping. Just like all cokeheads. Stop gabbling like one right now: “Part of good attunement is not knowing what’s going on with them and attuning nonetheless,” says Taylor. 

And don’t rush it, despite the promises of miracle cures. “Work at the speed of safety… move at the speed of trust. Especially with clients who have a different life experience.”

Who’s therapy is it anyway?

Therapy

Probe your own intentions, for the floor of the abyss is littered with wounded healers

From Phantom VII by Neil Krug

The will to power exists even in the most open hearts: “Every ethical misstep has a healing impulse,” says therapist ethics expert Kylea Taylor.

73.9% of therapeutic professionals entered the field due to their personal history. The ‘wounded healer concept was flagged by Carl Jung, who wrote "A good half of every treatment that probes at all deeply consists in the doctor's examining himself... it is his own hurt that gives a measure of his power to heal.”

A psychedelic guide must wrangle with their reasons for being in the space. Achievement, hoping the voyager enjoys a significant experience, is a forgivable impulse; influence too if we’re being as honest like both the medicine, and the guide’s role, demand.

“Mistakes are an opportunity for improvement and change”

But the guide isn’t drilling the patient like a sports coach. Complementing the voyager’s experience is akin to dancing with them, says Taylor in the deft analogy she uses in her book The Ethics of Caring.

“We do best in the dance when we are not ahead of ourselves,” she explains of letting the process and the client lead this technicolour two-step, “we are able to know what we need to know in the moment.” One must be instinctively aware of one’s dance partner, the music and the dance floor. “A foot in the client’s world and the other in our role of providing safety,” illustrates Taylor, “The container is the ballroom; others are dancing there too… it’s set and setting, preparation, relationship, and relational dynamics – and the psychedelic space itself.”

The effortless presence of mind honed in meditation is considered the number one skill required for psychedelic therapists, claims Taylor’s presentation, and she is consulting for two different written codes of ethics currently in development. Taylor calls this ‘bi-modal’ consciousness. To me it seems quite demanding; out of reach of many perhaps. “Unawareness leads to missteps and sore toes,” says Taylor, “but mistakes are an opportunity for improvement and change.”

Nothing beats lived experience

Space

Only by learning on the job can guides figure out how to deliver ethical psychedelic therapy

From ས་གཞི་སྔོན་པོ་འགྱུར། (The Earth Turned Green) by Shen Xin at the Swiss Institute in New York until August 28

There’s no substitute for first-hand learning with psychedelic therapy says its number one ethics coach Kylea Taylor.

Like sparring in combat sports, you can hit as many punchbags as you like but nothing beats the real thing.

“Transference and intensity are triggers. What we’re trying to use emotionally, and what we connect to, can stir up our own sensations,” says Taylor.

Only the act itself can provide the level of intensity and pressure to identify the areas where we need to improve, and do better. Yes, that’s Maria Sabina’s lilt you can hear fading into the background music to this article, as we ponder for a moment how psychedelic therapy evokes the indigenous lifestyle where there is no school and the only knowledge is directly acquired.

Back to minding your Ps and Qs at the ketamine clinic. “We will get even more familiar with our own unknown material,” says Taylor of the necessity to walk the walk.

“Be conscious of feelings in your body, energy… an opening of the trauma capsule within you”

Because noticing when you’re off on your hamster wheel is hard. “We can’t focus back on the plan cos we don’ even know that we aren’t focussed on the plan,” says Taylor.

To give one example, in complex post-traumatic stress disorder blockbuster From Surviving to Thriving Pete Walker describes the inner critic as ‘sneaky’. Just when you think you’ve got tabs on it, the utter bastard finds a way to express itself that even one’s Vital-trained, shadow-integrated self doesn’t put into the ‘twattish behaviour’ category – yet. Other ingrained patterns can be equally polymorphous. 

“Trigger management is the most noticeable area of sitting,” says Taylor who first began working with the Grof Foundation in 1984, “When we are sitting in a psychedelic session we are much more likely to have deep brain responses than in a regular talk therapy session. The older parts of our brain react much faster. If we are deeply triggered the reptile brain won’t consult the neocortex for what we learned in the ethics class.” For example: the amygdala fear response deep inside the oldest part of the human brain still has complete control over the senses of touch, smell and taste, only deigning to consult the past 200 million years of evolution on sights and sounds. 

“The more self work you do, the more you’ll recognise… and extend self-compassion”

Stanislav Grof calls our internal mini-narratives ‘systems of condensed experience’ or COEX. “We must choose to come out of the COEX capsule and refocus on the client,” says Taylor, using the phrase “in process” to describe a therapist essentially acting out with the best of intentions.

Compulsive behaviour of all levels is notoriously gruelling to identify and heal. Lack of awareness is intrinsic, and complete: like a dream, anger, or a PTSD flashback. So is humanity under pressure – the compulsion to succeed with a patient who reminds the therapist of the son they ‘failed’ to ‘save’, or the instinct to share a positive ideology.

“Try to be conscious of feelings in your body, an energy; the opening of the trauma capsule within you,” says Taylor. As ever, “The more self work you do, the more you’ll recognise… and extend self-compassion.”

Unconditionally loving cuddles: Yes or No?

Medical

What if the patient would benefit from a clasp of the shoulder or supportive hug? Easy tiger…

Ravers in east London

Don’t put it past anyone’s shadow self not to get off with a pilled-up patient.

That’s the message from therapy ethics expert, transpersonal psychologist and addiction counsellor Kylea Taylor.

I’d hate to wipe any glamorous, lifestyle magazine-sheen from the Vital Student Zine. Yet seeing as this is ‘The Ethics Issue’ of Unofficial Vital Student ‘Zine it’d be remiss of me not to mention the sordid revelations to have swept the psychedelic space of late. 

First fell Francoise Borat, the French figure fancied by many more than myself. Women like Maria Papasyrou, Adele LaFrance, Celia Morgan and Reanne Crane are tackling the least agreeable and most necessary areas of the psychedelic renaissance right now, and Borat pioneered that. Investigations showed she lived up to her femme fatale archetype.

The scandal also exposed the wellbeing industry’s appalling lack of oversight, from passing your email address on to cat charities to… not actually removing famous people from your public register after you’d struck them from the official register for shagging clients. The stink was mostly coming from Bourzat’s hubby Aharon Grossbard in the form of detailed and sustained allegations by counsellor, campaigner and award-winning blogger Will Hall.

“Have a safe word. Even if it’s just: Stop”

Next, just when you were thinking some boomers may be OK, MAPS therapist dyad Richard Yensen and Donna Dryer blotted the saintly org’s copybook during landmark 2015 trails. It’s worth watching the CCTV. Trial subject Meaghan Buisson, a PTSD sufferer who took the edge off her condition with a career in the tough sport of inline speed skating, then moved near the couple as her only option to continue treatment. Yensen and her slept together during the period.

In 2022, welcome to a world of headlines like A psychedelic therapist allegedly took millions from a Holocaust survivor, highlighting worries about elders taking hallucinogens. Campaigning website Psymposia which produced the Power Trip podcast with New York Magazine that brought many of these stories to a wider audience, does a sterling if militant job of sniffing out stuff like this.

Thing is, some patients really would like a hug during MDMA therapy. Recreational users might sympathise. Written and thoroughly discussed pre-agreements are the done thing, says Taylor. 

“Have the safe word, even if it’s just ‘stop’, and tell the patient, ‘Remember you can say stop’ even when you’re merely putting a blanket over them,” advises Taylor, “a lot of people are recommending a dual consent process involving a written agreement on touch, that is sacred and not changed in the middle of the session.” 

The subject should be fully felt through: “Explain the reasons why they might want it, and might not want it, and that if they say no now, they won’t get touched in the session,” says Taylor. California bioenergetics bodywork teachers have legal license to handle clients when required. 

Strictly unconditionally loving cuddles can be a productive part of emotional breakthrough, release and recovery, say many therapists.

“A third agreement is ‘If you do ask me to touch you in the session, I will’,” suggests Taylor, “If they do want that, then watch out for obvious gestures suggesting they might require physical comforting. If their body language suggests it, then you might – for example – touch the back of their hand, and read their reaction.”

It’s a jungle out there and not all accusations, unfortunately, carry complete legitimacy. Professionals in an area as unpredictable as psychology, let alone shamanism, expect accusation of some sort eventually according to Vital students in the field. Soccer players in the UK are advised to simply stay away from any form of ‘nightlife’ as it’s known in sporting circles, and most now do.

Impeccable you

Integration

It’s not enough to simply do good as psychedelic therapist. Better look good on the CCTV too

This is jazz musician Sun Ra, definitely don’t turn up for a client’s first session dressed like this. Unless it’s your thing and they totally expect it.

“The whole field of psychedelic therapy is at stake,” says Ethics of Caring author Kylea Taylor.

Taylor graduated in marriage and family counselling, started on addiction services in 1970s, and worked in the transpersonal sector since the mid-1980s. I should think she’s seen it all.

“We have to be impeccable, like supreme court justices – not just what we are doing but what it looks like we are doing.” An attitude bordering on the priestly seems to be required of the would-be 21st century shaman. 

Back at the ancient initiation, everybody in the village was in attendance and could keep vigil on one another: “Likewise in a holotropic breath work session where there are several sitters, and the issue of substance use is void,” says Taylor. The very modern trend for online ceremonies, with huddles, couples and individuals on a video call, offers a robust container of sorts, if a slightly dystopian one.

“The role requires impeccable preparation for the client’s work in an extraordinary state”

I pointed out during the Q&A session after a Vital webinar on harm prevention at dance festivals, etiquette between ravers developed organically and quickly in the heady early days of underground, intentional, ceremonial, group sacramental MDMA usage, during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

That seems like very long ago. In the psychedelic therapy rooms, a new code of behaviour must be established during an age when there are few universal codes; and this in itself has become so confusing that it’s tempting just to assume everyone is following ours. Plus get terribly upset when we find out they aren’t.

No wonder ‘trust’ has become the professional buzzword of choice. Fortune magazine just launched a newsletter dedicated entirely to the topic of trust earlier this summer, offered to subscribers every Sunday so the 1% can enjoy a hit of piety via smartphone. Companies where the staff trust leadership work quicker and make more money.

“Trauma comes up for healing when people feel safe and the time is right”

But reputation marketing firm Edelman’s latest Global Trust Barometer is titled ‘World in Trauma’ and declares ‘double digit trust inequality in 13 out of 14 countries’ meaning the mass population distrusts institutions significantly more than the ‘informed population’. The latter is not defined, but we all get the idea. This gap has reached record levels in the UK and France.

With even daytime UK TV fitness coach Joe Wicks threatening to “do ayahuasca” the mass population of a world in trauma are likely to turn up at your informed psychedelic clinic. And they probably won’t trust you, but they do want to, and it’s downright key that they do. Because “the extraordinary state makes clients feel even less safe,” reminds Taylor.

“Trauma comes up for healing when people feel safe and the time is right,” says Taylor, a highly qualified transpersonal psychologist, kundalini energy expert, and holotropic breath work coach.

“The role requires impeccable preparation for the client’s work in an extraordinary state,” adds Taylor, “If we’re aware of ourselves and behave in an impeccable way then we’re in the best place.”

Attention to both detail and the bigger picture, following through on all assurances including paperwork, accepting how challenging processes unfold and their use to the inner healer, are all tips from the psychedelic ethicist who helped sculpt the MAPS Code of Ethics and more.

“You don’t have to be perfect, because no-one is, but you should be compatible and do whatever comes to mind to protect the space. Wish the client truly well on their journey, through your actions as well as words.” Generating and expressing goodwill is apparently one of the three pillars of trust, alongside competency and reliability – and that goes back to Aristotle. If you need to pull out someone more on-brand, there’s always Huxley: “Good is a product of the ethical and spiritual artistry of individuals; it cannot be mass-produced.”

Kool-Aid Corner #10

To finish: trippy clippings, merry pranks, and psychedelic student life

Graph of the Week

“There are many other ways of acheiving altered states,” says Kylea Taylor, Grof Foundation therapist and psychedelic ethics expert. Here’s trip playlist maetsro, Guided Imagery and Music therapy inventor Helen Bonny’s handy guide to them:

From: The Use of Music in Psychedelic (LSD) Psychotherapy, Helen L. Bonny, Walter N. Pahnke, Journal of Music Therapy, Volume 9, Issue 2, Summer 1972

My bookshelf weighs a ton

Notable new purchases for the occult library. Strictly second hand snap-ups only. This week: Slaine: The Horned God by Pat Mills and Simon Bisley

Got it from America for £25 plus slow P&P here’s some 2011 editions for £300+

Celtic myth reinterpreted by one of UK comics’ greatest minds, illustrated by future fanboy favourite Simon Bisley.

This has just been re-released. But don’t be fooled, the new one’s got crappy matt pages. The 2011 original dust jacket edition and the 2014 second printing have gloss pages. It’s chock-full of inspiration for young fellows growing up, like this one direct from the lips of the Goddess herself: “The Horned God is nor afraid of death, of losing control… he sees the ridiculousness of taking the wheel of life seriously. The humour of death is his.” A bit much to take in aged 16 during the late 80s but it put a generation on the right track.

Next issue: Core module two Psychedelic Therapies continues with ethics training on the edge of reality