Set and setting: The missing factors in Chris Letheby’s psychedelic philosophy

Abstract

Chris Letheby offers a two-factor account of psychedelic therapy in which the first of these factors is the induction of plasticity on neural, cognitive, and phenomenological levels. The second factor, which Letheby believes is crucial for lasting change, is the discovery of new forms of self-modelling within the psychedelic experience and the appropriate reinforcement thereof in the period of integration. However, even though this theory accounts for methods of action, it neglects to mention the importance of non-individualistic aspects of the experience and its influence on the value that the psychedelic experience holds for therapy. For the psychedelic experience, this interrelatedness between the subject and its environment is classically referred to as “set and setting”. This article aims to show how the principles of set and setting may critically inform Letheby’s theory by filling in the missing phenomenological components. “Set” encapsulates the notion of embodiment, given its emphasis on the role played by the embodied subject in the act of experience, that is, how the psychedelic experience is dependent on the embodied state of the experiential subject. Likewise, embeddedness is akin to “setting”, as it accounts for the role the environment plays in the content, quality and value of the psychedelic experience.