Katrina Michelle - Psychedelics, Transformative Experiences and Healing

Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health

Mad in America

Mental Health, Medicine, Health & Fitness

4.7 • 212 Ratings

🗓️ 12 May 2021

⏱️ 42 minutes

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Summary

Katrina Michelle is a psychologist and the founder and director of The Curious Spirit, a transpersonally oriented psychotherapeutic practice that encourages transcendent personal exploration to remedy psychological suffering. She is a holistic psychotherapist currently serving as faculty at Columbia University School of Social Work and The Institute for the Development of Human Arts.

In addition to her practice, she also serves as the director of harm reduction for the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) and formerly worked as the executive director of the American Center for the Integration of Spiritually Transformative Experiences (ACISTE). To demystify awakening experiences through storytelling and art, she is also producing the film When Lightning Strikes.

Beginning in the world of traditional social work, Michelle was drawn to transpersonal psychology after her own spontaneous spiritually transformative experience. She now works to help create communities capable of holding these often difficult experiences, as western societies often lack the language and cultural understanding needed to integrate them into daily life.

In this interview, we discuss the place of psychedelics in psychotherapy, how spiritually transformative experiences can be mistaken for 'mental illness,' and the various resistances we have to these experiences.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Madden America podcast, your source for science, psychiatry, and social justice.
0:13.5	Welcome to the Madden America podcast. I'm Richard Sears, science writer for Madden America,
0:19.2	here today with Dr. Katrina Michelle. Dr. Michelle is the
0:22.5	founder and director of the curious spirit, a transpersonally oriented psychotherapeutic practice
0:27.8	that encourages transcendent personal exploration as a remedy for psychological suffering. In addition to
0:34.0	where practice, Dr. Michelle also serves as the director of harm reductionuction for the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies and formerly worked as the Executive Director of the American Center for the Integration of Spiritually Transformative Experiences.
0:47.2	Welcome, Dr. Michelle, and thank you for talking with us today.
0:50.1	Hi, Richard. Thank you for having me.
0:52.7	So we're just going to jump right into the questions here.
0:56.0	And I wanted to start by just asking how you came to your work.
1:02.0	What drew you to transpersonal psychology and what drew you to your work in harm reduction for maps?
1:10.0	Well, I guess it's a similar story about how I arrived here.
1:16.4	Transpersonal psychology, before I knew what it was, was always an interest of mine.
1:21.2	It is something that is at the intersection of consciousness studies, philosophical inquiry, behavioral health,
1:30.4	spirituality. And while I always kind of knew I wanted to be a therapist and I went to
1:37.3	traditional route of going through mainstream social work school, learned a lot about myself in the
1:43.5	process, I always felt
1:45.0	that there was something that was missing from general psychotherapy practice. And I knew it was
1:50.0	that spiritual piece. So eventually I did go back to school to study transpersonal psychology.
1:55.5	And it was actually during that academic endeavor that I realized that what had drawn me to the
2:00.4	field all along was my own transpersonal experience. And that is realized that what had drawn me to the field all along was my own
2:01.9	transpersonal experience. And that is something that was spontaneous to me. For me, it wasn't
	...

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