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Empathy as the Basis
of Delusion, and Yagé as a Potential Treatment
By
Brendan Bombaci
Copyright Brendan Bombaci 2016
ISBN: 978-1-365-08866-7
Revised
in March 2019 and posted on ResearchGate @
Introduction
As
indicated by the behaviors of mammals in contrast to non-mammalian animals,
neocortex size evidently relates to capacities of empathy and organization. Dunbar’s Social Brain Hypothesis notes that,
in primates, bigger neocortices are correlated to humanlike friendship
relations rather than solely mating or hierarchy relations seen in other
animals; and, Dunbar's Number rationally relates sizes of neocortices to those
of social networks (Dunbar 2009, Dunbar 1992).
This may be due to the fact that more memories can be stored about
individuals, allowing for more individuals to be well known. For humans, the theory holds that we can each
relate well to nearly 150 other humans (Gonçalves, Perra, and Vespigniani 2011;
Hernando et al. 2010; MacCarron, Kaski, and Dunbar 2016). Such “others” do not have to be known to be considered: to know 150 other
individuals fairly well is to be able to predictively assess or even imaginatively
synthesize unknown people – by calculating potential personality trait permutations
of known individuals who share certain recognizable traits with them – hence, “social
intuition.”
It
may be that quantity increases and/or amplified transmission efficiency of dopamine
and serotonin neurotransmitters, caused by monoamine oxidase inhibitor
chemicals (MAOIs), mostly known for their use as antidepressant drugs in the
West, promotes broadened and intensified access to and mentation upon interpersonal
memories. Hyperactivation of such
neurotransmitters seems to lead to an uncontrollable, unhampered, and sometimes
delusional consideration (or auditory hallucination) of others, as seen in
bipolar and schizophrenic psychoses.
Underactivation seems to lead to social withdrawal. The unique activities of antipsychotic drugs
and antidepressant MAOIs, respectively, corroborate this psychiatric polarity. In as much, empathy appears on the same
spectrum as delusion, but is simply lower in intensity, incidentally
controllable, and, in effect, more accurate.
Differences
in culture appear to be the foundational factors behind whether delusions are
detrimental, and this is partly due to the contrasting effects of prohibition of
experience, and venerance of experience, with certain plant chemicals that
alter consciousness in various ways.
These are MAOIs, and also various “psychedelic” or “entheogenic”
serotonin agonists – for scientific communication, I will use Winkelman’s
(1996) term psychointegrator for this
latter chemical class because of the way that such substances unify and awaken
brain areas for heightened learning and performance (Carhart-Harris et al.
2016), nonlinear thought processes (Petri et al. 2014), and the promotion of
neurogenesis as well as resolution of fear conditioning (Catlow et al. 2013). The two-fold combination of these chemical
classes (MAOI + psychointegrator), such as found in the sacred medicinal Amazonian
tea Yagé (also and most popularly called Ayahuasca, though that is actually just
the name of the MAOI-bearing liana ingredient alone) can make visually tangible
the afflictions that are otherwise internalized or invisible yet auditory in psychotic
episodes. Given the profound worldview
modifications that can be made with the utilization of such substances (Bombaci
2012), it may be that the generally implicit or subconscious neurological mechanism
by which the human brain learns and enacts social intuition (Lieberman 2000)
shares an equal impact with the typically less effective explicit or
intentional mode as well, during such ASC.
In a scientific clinical set and setting, this can be leveraged to potentially
ameliorate feelings of guilt, self-loathing, and paranoia in such sufferers, by
way of persuading patients via logic and manipulation of hallucinations, to
recognize the actually subconscious and transmutable rather than typically
static and spuriously perceived supernatural or extraterrestrial origins (APA
1994:273-317) of such delusions. Such a
Westernized form of Yagé therapy (with either organic or pharmaceutical
compounds) would be a major step forward for the field of psychiatry, with the
caveat that some sort of antipsychotic compound, without contraindication, be
simultaneously consumed in order to relieve fear and self-doubt and help the
healing process (CBD being perhaps the best natural option).
Theory
Major
Depressive Disorder (MDD) and Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) have been linked to
decreased capacities for comprehension, and even negative perceptions, of emotional
tone in others (Emerson et al. 1999, Kan et al. 2004, Murphy and Cutting 1990,
Perón et al. 2011, Uekermann et al. 2008, Quadflieg et al. 2008, Quadflieg et
al. 2007) – an ability that is normally acculturated by a
young age, and key to empathetic socialization (Kirmayer 2008:459).
In that social engagement declines with increases in symptom severity in
these disorders, which can create recursive attentional, emotional, and
attributional symptom amplification or looping
(Kirmayer and Sartorius 2007:836), such a connection
highlights the fact that humans are still socially dependent primates and tend
to pine for recognition of worth when under duress. MAOI-A chemicals
(different from MAOI-Bs), whose effective pharmaceutical effects are classified
as “antidepressant,” boost levels of endogenous and dietarily active serotonin,
dopamine, and epinephrine. It can be
inferred that depression is the chemical and social-engagement opposite of an
MAOI-altered state when
experienced by a psychiatrically normal person, being that
for them it is a literally sensational, socially sensitizing experience, made
apparent by the original name for the plant-sourced MAOI harmine alone,
that is, “telepathine." Hence, MAOIs can facilitate approximations
of psychiatric baseline for depressed people.
However, it can precipitate or exacerbate mania and delusions, as well
as auditory hallucinations, in sufferers of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia
both, because these people already have either an active overabundance of those
neurotransmitters and/or malfunctioning receptor sites (Howes and Kapur 2009,
López-Figueroa et al. 2004, Mueller 2007, Preisig 2000). This is
suggestive that those detrimental mental states are merely amplified versions
of what stable people experience with MAOIs. In as much, there would
appear to be a sort of threshold where MAOI-enhanced empathy, energy levels,
euphoria, and saturated imagination become delusions, mania, and auditory
hallucinations.
In
some cultures, these extremes, seeming on first objective glance to arrest or
overtake a person’s self-control, are not frightful conditions for the
experiencer or those around them, but are rather accepted because they occur at
a frequency of and to a degree of social manageability, and are even
informative for the collective. This cultural
difference likely has to do with a variety of factors including societal power
hierarchies and acceptable levels of individualism in contrast to collectivism
(Johnson and Johnson 2014:1114-5), less dramatizing family relations (Watters
2010:152-153), and an absence of iatrogenic “looping” (amplifying) effects caused
by both societal stigmas and the limitations of caregiving service and
political-economic treatment options (Kirmayer and Sartorius 2007:836). Complex shamanic practices - the origins of ethnopsychiatry
and religions worldwide - stem from such extreme altered states of
consciousness or ASC (Polimeni and Reiss 2002:246), or from the reverent mimicry
thereof via (1) the carefully measured consumption of psychoactive substances (Dobkin
de Rios et al. 1974:152, Rätsch 2005), or (2) the ritual act of performing tasks under such influences by a sane person in an
unaltered state (Lewis 2003:161-172, Noll
1983, Vitebsky 2001:52-92). Cultures
that appreciate and explore the deep relationship between both the ASC below
and above the control threshold may be those best able to handle them. For them, externalized voices, which are to Westerners
attributed to “angels and demons” or “agents” within, may instead be perceived
as benevolent environmental spirits, ancestors, or deity avatars who comment on
or guide us through activities and decisions, which altogether implies a sort
of social kindling of these states (Luhrmann
et al. 2015). To see those entities as
“beyond the veil,” potentially being in control of our interpersonal charisma,
care, and scrutinizations, is fundamental to both animism and concepts of the
soul, which led many societies to ancestor worship and/or theistic religion (Peoples,
Duda, and Marlowe 2016; Winkelman and Baker 2010:135-148), and then, for some,
to the scientific method. The degree to
which such entities are either supportive and inspiring, or scrutinizing and vindictive,
depends upon the scope of the civilization that one lives in (Atran and Henrich
2010) and whether the dominant religion therein is based on moralizing high gods who are ever-watchful
of and punitive towards behavior and thoughts that reduce sociality (Purzycki
et al. 2017). Furthermore, the severity
of punishment from such gods is key: belief in eternal damnation, e.g., is a
far cry from belief in karma.
The
MAOI-bearing plants known as Ayahuasca (“vine of souls”), caltrops
(“goatheads”), mimosa hostilis, malabarica (found in the Tibetan and Nepalese
incense Nag Champa), and Syrian Rue (a royal red fabric dye and medicine), are
all originally sourced from disparate locations in the world and have
historical and modern use. It is not a
leap between associating such potently psychoactive plants with spirits, and,
in consistency, associating all
natural beings and objects with spirits as well. Importantly, the difference between MAOI and
psychointegrator experiences may be the difference between speaking with angels and demons and actually bringing their realms visually to our own. This resonates with the proclamation by many Amazonian
Yagé shamans (ayahuasqueros) that, in
the psychoactive beverage Yagé (actually containing an admixture of various
plant extracts), the MAOI-bearing liana ingredient Ayahuasca, Banisteriopsis caapi, is “the power” (providing access to the spirit realm), while
one of the DMT-bearing leaf ingredients Chacruna, or Psychotria viridis, is
“the light” (providing the ability to see said realm). As noted already, the fact that ayahuasqueros
are animistic rather than theistic may explain why instead of envisioning
angels, demons, aliens, and multidimensional (rather than solely entoptic)
geometric forms – all so ubiquitous in Western ideological, artistic, and
technological undercurrents – they envision self-aware jaguars, serpents, birds,
butterflies, people, plants, and elements.
The miraculous Yagé plant substance combination may have been analagously
recognized in Mesopotamia during Biblical times as existing between Syrian Rue and
Acacia (Shanon 2008) – the latter being a common architectural and craft wood, but
incidentally the “burning bush” that spoke on behalf of Jehovah to Moses. This is quite possible, given strong
arguments for an as-yet unadmitted but evidenced use of other psychointegrators
in the spatiotemporality of Biblical accounts (Irvin and Herer 2009; Irvin,
Rutajit, and Zervos 2009; Moleiro 2005).
Again, CBD may have helped facilitate positive and constructive insight
in the latter case, as knei-bosem or
“fragrant reed” (hypothesized to be cannabis – whose original strains had very
low pro-psychotic THC oil content in comparison to anti-psychotic CBD oil), was
the original Chrism or anointing oil, which would guide one to being holy and
good through their experience with the holy sacrament, Amanita muscaria
(Bombaci 2017).
So it would appear that the
current-day Yagé users of the Amazon, and perhaps officially undisclosed users
of Yagé analogues elsewhere, are in a unique position to differentiate between (1) the visual and euphoric effects of serotonin analogues such as
DMT (aforementioned), psilocybin (found in certain mushrooms of Europe and the
Americas), and lysergic acid (found in plants of Mexico and South America as
well as in the chemically transformed beverage made from ergot used by the
ancient Greek hierophants [Webster, Perrine, and Ruck 2000]); and (2) the reward-sensation increasing,
empathy amplifying, and potential auditory hallucination inducing effects of
dopamine and epinephrine flooding that occurs with consumption of plant-sourced
(or synthetic antidepressant) MAOIs.
They are also in a unique position to understand and navigate their combined effects. For them, projected mental entities do not
automatically impose pressure or moral judgment upon them, which allows their
experiences to guide them towards constructive recognition of faults and
transgressions, how to achieve virtue and success, and how to foster rather
than fear. For them, auditory
hallucinations from heroic MAOI doses are learned to be associated with visual
hallucinations as well. So, even when
just using the MAOI-containing Yagé ingredient Ayahuasca, they are comfortable
with and experientially analytical towards disembodied voices even without
their associated visual representations, at times attributing said voices to
the minds of those in their communities (Rodd 2008). They are still recognized as tangible –
people have a sense of knowing where they come from and are therefore on equal
ground with them. If someone in a
village experiences unwarranted and therefore confusing psychoses,
ayahuasqueros are therefore in a great position to counsel them. However,
their popularly acclaimed ability to successfully counsel those from other
cultures (rather than administer a purely exotic catharsis or psychological
placebo) is questionable, in that (1) tribal Amazonian culture is immensely
distant from the West in norms, philosophies, linguistic devices, and
archetypes, and (2) there doesn’t appear to be any literature on research that
has controlled for psychiatrically normal versus delusion-prone people that
have sought Yagé therapy and benefitted from it.
Proposal
The everyday framework of culture is
integral to both individual and group perceptions, feelings, and beliefs. Yagé could be powerfully therapeutic for
mentally unstable Westerners prone to delusion and psychoses, in the right set
and setting, and with culture-appropriate cosmological and spiritual counseling
that decimates their negativity by way of helping them see their vices and
virtues and how to reduce the former and enhance the latter. Such suggestion should be familiar to them,
because it has been promoted by many academic philosophers, lay skeptics, and
now scientists, ever since The Enlightenment.
DMT is a serotonin (5HT) analogue but is not serotonin itself, and there are very particular 5HT molecules that
cause mania in some people but not in others (hence why one serotonin
antagonist antipsychotic will work for one sufferer but not for another). As such, it is possible that many sufferers of
psychosis can safely use DMT in a supervised and medical intervention-ready
setting along with, e.g., CBD oil for emergency anti-psychotic measures (and
Xanax, benzodiazapenes, and/or atypical antipsychotic drugs for extreme
situations). This would have to be
clinically confirmed, of course, with safety protocols such as dose-stepping experimentation
for each potential Yagé therapy subject to ascertain the risk of and be aptly
prepared for psychological crisis. The Ayahuasca
vine or other MAOI source will likely cause delusion and/or auditory
hallucinations, but the DMT, causal of general visual hallucinations, would
potentially offer visual form to these as well, lending leverage to the
counselor over both the subconscious and objectively conscious processes of the
patient.
Acculturation
mechanisms, and therefore the weavings of the subconscious – the schema with which we make associations
between people, places, things – are a human universal even if particular
symbolism, ideas, and knowledge classification systems are not (Bombaci 2012:3-8).
Through suggestion and environmental
alteration, that is, manipulation of the short term “set and setting” for familiar
comfort, safety, and learning – known in the literature as integral to the
quality of the psychointegrator experience (Bombaci 2012:19-22) – a psychointegrator
therapist could intentionally transform Yagé-induced visual hallucinations;
and, due to schematic relationships, there is great potential for such
transformations to alter concomitant delusions and auditory hallucinations into
visually tangible and familiar representations, and thereby into less mysterious
and omnipotent or “stealthy” entities (traits that may be the root cause of
their seeming malevolence). If the
transformations are at least preferable to what the patient has experienced
prior to psychointegrator therapy, rhetorical counseling would likely help them
understand that such hallucinations are of subconscious and benevolent nature,
originating from a hyperactivation of empathy processes that under normal
circumstances are meant to provide the predictable and useful mechanism of social
intuition. They may thereby gain power
over their fear and self-doubt, and therefore over delusional thoughts generally,
increasingly softening their symptoms and leading to real healing. Proven that such sessions are safe and effective,
there is hope that they can affect remission, or at least self-control to the
degree of functional self-sufficiency.
In the process, the patient would necessarily gain a heightened capacity
for empathy and become better equipped to assess others’ mental schema, capable
of living a good social life, as well, and, in potential, as counselors or
mediators, professional innovators, or community leaders.
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