The altered state experience occupies a contested yet generative space within the depth-psychology corpus. The term designates qualitative transformations of ordinary consciousness — perceptual, affective, temporal, and somatic — that arise through pharmacological induction, ritualized practice, trauma, trance, or even the extremes of aesthetic and emotional encounter. Three broad positions organize the field. The transpersonal tradition, anchored by Stanislav Grof’s decades of LSD and psychedelic research, treats altered states as privileged windows onto perinatal and trans-egoic strata of the unconscious otherwise inaccessible to waking cognition, linking them explicitly to Jungian archetypal structures and therapeutic transformation. Rick Strassman’s DMT research extends this line by situating altered states at the intersection of neuropharmacology and phenomenology, documenting body dissolution, entity encounter, and consciousness migration. A second tradition — trauma psychology in the lineage of Herman, Ogden, and Lanius — reframes involuntary altered states as defensive dissociative responses to overwhelming threat, emphasizing their pathological persistence long after the originating danger has passed. A third, more integrative position appears in Murray Stein’s Jungian reading of complexes as mild dissociative altered states, and in Sun and Kim’s empirical examination of shamanic trance as archetypal activation. Across all positions, the altered state experience raises unresolved questions about the ontological status of its contents, the conditions distinguishing healing from harm, and the relationship between neurological mechanism and transpersonal meaning.
This altered state of consciousness might be regarded as one of nature’s small mercies, a protection against unbearable pain.
Herman argues that trauma-induced alterations of consciousness — involving perceptual numbing, time distortion, depersonalization, and emotional detachment — function as involuntary defensive adaptations constituting a cardinal symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder.
, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror, 1992thesis
The alteration of consciousness during shamanic rituals is both a physical and mystical phenomenon. It involves psychological and spiritual experiences.
Sun and Kim establish that archetype symbols in shamanic ritual can significantly alter participants’ conscious states, producing dissolution of self, and that these effects are stage-dependent — a finding they interpret through Jungian concepts of the collective unconscious.
, Archetype Symbols and Altered Consciousness: A Study of Shamanic Rituals in the Context of Jungian Psychology, 2024thesis
Every human being can and does from time to time dissociate, in the sense of experiencing mild altered states of consciousness or splitting off from traumatic experience in order to keep functioning.
Stein situates altered states of consciousness along a continuum from the ordinary complex-possession of everyday life to severe dissociative disorders, arguing that being ‘in complex’ is itself a form of altered state constituted by ego-consciousness yielding to an alien personality fragment.
, Jung’s Map of the Soul: An Introduction, 1998thesis
Consciousness after the ingestion of LSD manifests a characteristic qualitative transformation
Grof distinguishes the LSD-induced altered state as a qualitative rather than quantitative change in consciousness — lacking the stupor or disorientation of common delirogens — and thereby frames it as a specific mode of psychic exploration rather than mere intoxication.
, Realms of the Human Unconscious: Observations from LSD Research, 1975thesis
shamanic trance is a specific type of ASC, involving mastery or control over the onset and duration of ASC, post-trance recall, and the ability to communicate with the audience during ASC.
Drawing on Eliade and Winkelman, this passage establishes shamanic trance as a disciplined, neurologically grounded subtype of altered state experience, distinguishing it from uncontrolled dissociation by its intentionality and communicative function.
, Archetype Symbols and Altered Consciousness: A Study of Shamanic Rituals in the Context of Jungian Psychology, 2024thesis
I was experiencing an ever-increasing state of ecstasy. This was accompanied by a clearing and brightening of my visual field.
Grof’s autobiographical account documents the phenomenological signature of a positive altered state: the dissolution of analytic resistance, somatic transformation, visual expansion, and simultaneous identification with fetal, cosmic, and transcendent levels of experience.
, Realms of the Human Unconscious: Observations from LSD Research, 1975supporting
This tidal wave of DMT effects quickly led to losing awareness of the body, causing some volunteers to think they had died. This dissociation of body and mind paralleled the development of peak visual effects.
Strassman documents the phenomenological sequence of a high-dose DMT altered state — bodily dissolution, consciousness migration, fear, and peak visual intensity — establishing an empirical profile against which transpersonal claims may be assessed.
, DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor’s Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences, 2001supporting
“My body dissolved—I was pure awareness.” There seemed to be a clearly identifiable sense of movement of consciousness away from the body.
Volunteer testimony in Strassman’s DMT research illustrates the core phenomenological feature of profound altered states: the perceived separation of consciousness from its somatic substrate, experienced as movement, weightlessness, or complete bodily dissolution.
, DMT: The Spirit Molecule, 2001supporting
awe has several qualities that place it on the border between an emotional state and altered state of consciousness due to its capacity to alter the senses of time, space, and self.
Lench positions awe as a boundary phenomenon between ordinary emotional experience and altered state, noting its empirically demonstrated capacity to diminish self-sense and increase connectedness, thus linking it to self-transcendent experience research.
, The Function of Emotions: When and Why Emotions Help Us, 2018supporting
Psychedelic drugs appear to provide access to unconscious material and, when used in a therapeutic context, may cause deep and longstanding psychological change.
Mahr and Sweigart argue that the altered states produced by psychedelics are specifically therapeutic within a Jungian frame because they facilitate access to unconscious and archetypal material in ways that ordinary analytic work cannot replicate.
, Psychedelic Drugs and Jungian Therapy, 2020supporting
While DMT may be involved in both spiritual and psychotic experiences, it is important to distinguish between them. There is some overlap between spiritual experiences and psychosis.
Strassman draws a differential between altered states occasioned by intentional spiritual practice and psychotic episodes, arguing that context, volition, and moral-intellectual framing are decisive criteria for this distinction.
, DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor’s Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences, 2001supporting
experiences occasioned by psilocybin are comparable with those that occur in other settings whether deliberately facilitated or occurring apparently spontaneously.
Yaden’s review of psychometric instruments for mystical experience establishes the comparability of pharmacologically induced and spontaneously occurring altered states, suggesting a common phenomenological structure across induction methods.
, The Varieties of Self-Transcendent Experience, 2017supporting
I have tried to conceptualize some of the clinical observations that seem to facilitate the understanding of the LSD reaction and that have a bearing on the theory of psychotherapy and on personality theory.
Grof situates LSD-induced altered states as clinically productive data that challenge and extend psychotherapeutic and personality theory, arguing that the transpersonal experiences they generate demand new conceptual frameworks.
, Varieties of Transpersonal Experiences: Observations from LSD Psychotherapy, 1972supporting
Once volunteers were prepared to lose control, it was easier for them to do so. They understood that the drug experience was essentially safe.
Strassman identifies psychological preparation and therapeutic alliance as critical mediating variables in the altered state experience, showing that set and relational trust substantially reduce anxiety and shape the quality of the encounter.
, DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor’s Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences, 2001supporting
aspects of this altered state are substantially different from ordinary consciousness. For example, one’s perceptions may be affected and altered, and the location of consciousness may be outside the body
Dayton frames trauma-induced altered states — including out-of-body experience and perceptual distortion — as substantially distinct from ordinary consciousness, drawing on clinical description to explain dissociative phenomena in survivors of relational trauma.
, Emotional Sobriety: From Relationship Trauma to Resilience and Lasting Fulfillment, 2007supporting
His individual self (Atman) is losing its seemingly separate identity and is reuniting with what is perceived as its divine source, the Universal Self (Brahman).
Grof documents the transpersonal apex of the psychedelic altered state as an Atman-Brahman union experience, in which individual identity dissolves into universal selfhood — a phenomenon he treats as clinically authentic rather than merely symbolic.
, Realms of the Human Unconscious: Observations from LSD Research, 1975supporting
Meditative techniques in psychotherapy. In C. T. Tart, ed., Altered states of consciousness.
A bibliographic reference to Tart’s foundational anthology signals the broader scholarly framework within which Welwood situates meditative and contemplative techniques as legitimate inducers of altered states relevant to psychotherapeutic practice.
, Toward a Psychology of Awakening Buddhism, Psychotherapy,, 2000aside