“I realized people were not having LSD experiences; they were having experiences of themselves. But they were coming from depths that psychoanalysis didn’t know anything about.” — Stanislav Grof
Stanislav Grof, M.D., (stanislavgrof.com) is a psychiatrist with more than 60 years of experience in research of “holotropic” states of consciousness, a large and important subgroup of non-ordinary states that have healing, transformative, and evolutionary potential.
In this wide-ranging interview, we cover many topics, including: Some of his main takeaways after supervising or guiding ~4,500 LSD sessions; The place and role of “wounded healers”; Limitations and uses of traditional psychoanalysis and talk therapy; Holotropic breathwork and some similarities to MDMA; Stories of odd synchronicities and the seemingly impossible; Stan’s strangest personal experiences on psychedelics; What Stan believes humanity most needs to overcome: division and destruction