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.