While Truth Fairy is away, Dr. T hosts this episode solo, welcoming Scott Hill, author of “Confrontation with the Unconscious: Jungian Depth Psychology and Psychedelic Experience”, who completed his PhD with a dissertation titled ‘Building a Jungian Framework for Understanding Psychedelic Induced Psychotic States’ at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Dr. Hill shares his early transformative encounters with LSD in 1967, which, though initially ecstatic, devolved into psychologically traumatic events. These experiences led him on a lifelong journey of self-exploration, academic inquiry, and healing.  

Scott shares his journey very openly with Dr. T and they discuss how Scott’s return to academia in Cailfornia, studying under Stan Grof and Ralph Metzner, deepened his understanding of his own experiences. They examine how Jung’s concepts of the collective unconscious and archetypes reflect in intense psychedelic states. Scott details how key reading, Holotropic Breathwork, a medicine circle. and an MDMA-assisted therapy session at Burning Man, and MDMA-assisted therapy all helped heal his ongoing flashbacks.  

Dr. T and Scott Hill share a deep and revelatory conversation, at the end of which Scott expresses gratitude for the path he was forced onto in spite of how painfully it began. He describes writing and academic research as transformative tools and identifies scholarship as a spiritual practice in its own right. “Confrontation with the Unconscious: Jungian Depth Psychology and Psychedelic Experience”, Dr. Hill’s book, is now foundational in psychedelic psychotherapy circles, and his insights are key to understanding much about psychedelic psychology. 

“As I read about the myths of Gilgamesh, Inanna,, Job and Christ, I was struck by the resonance between passages in those myths and my difficult psychedelic experiences. Given the Jungian view that myths are expressions of the archetypal unconscious, and given the resonance I experienced reading those myths, I started to wonder whether my terrifying trips, and perhaps those of others, might be understood, in Jung's words, as experiences of an archetypal nature.” - Scott Hill
 

About Scott Hill:

Scott J. Hill, Ph.D., lives in Sweden, where he conducts scholarly research on the intersection between psychedelic studies and Jungian psychology. He holds degrees in psychology from the University of Minnesota and in philosophy and religion from the California Institute of Integral Studies.

Book: “Confrontation with the Unconscious: Jungian Depth Psychology and Psychedelic Experience” by Scott J. Hill

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Resources discussed in this episode:

• “Confrontation with the Unconscious: Jungian Depth Psychology and Psychedelic Experience” by Scott J. Hill
• “Psychedelics and Psychotherapy: The Healing Potential of Expanded States” by Tim Read, Maria Papaspyrou, and others
• “Ralph Metzner, Explorer of Consciousness: The Life and Legacy of a Psychedelic Pioneer” by Cathy Coleman, PhD (Editor)
• “Breaking Convention: Psychedelic Pharmacology for the 21st Century” by Ben Sessa (Editor)
• “Drugs and the Mind” by Robert S De Ropp
• Aldous Huxley’s Books
• J. Krishnamurti Books
• “Letters from the Earth” by Mark Twain
• “Man and His Symbols” by Carl G. Jung
• “Trials of the Visionary Mind” by John Weir Perry
• Holotropic Breathwork

Scott’s chapter, Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious: Jungian Insights Into Psychedelic Experience, in “Breaking Convention: Psychedelic Pharmacology” is available on his  Academia.edu page (https://ciis.academia.edu/ScottHill) as is a preview copy of his book that includes the TOC, Preface, Introductory chapter, and Conclusion. There is also a book review of Scott’s book by Jungian Analyst Stephen A. Martin.

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