Altered states of consciousness (ASC) occupy a contested but generative intersection within the depth-psychology corpus, spanning phenomenological description, neurobiological explanation, and transpersonal theory. Grof's LSD research provides the field's most systematic cartography, distinguishing qualitative transformations of consciousness from mere quantitative impairment, and mapping ASC-induced experiences across psychodynamic, perinatal, and transpersonal registers. Sun and Kim extend this into Jungian territory, demonstrating empirically that archetypal symbols in shamanic ritual can precipitate measurable shifts in conscious state, including ego dissolution and oceanic boundlessness — states that resonate with Jung's concept of the collective unconscious. Carhart-Harris supplies the contemporary neurodynamic framework, proposing that psychedelic-induced ASC represent high-entropy 'primary' states in which default-mode-network suppression releases ordinarily repressed cognitive content. McGovern further synthesizes these strands, arguing that ASC disrupt cortical prediction hierarchies in ways that render archetypal content especially salient. Strassman's DMT research sits at the biological-mystical interface, while Stein notes that even everyday complex-activation constitutes a mild ASC within clinical analytic experience. The central tension throughout is epistemological: whether ASC reveal transpersonal realities, model psychopathology, or constitute neurologically lawful but subjectively significant reorganizations of ordinary cognition.
In the library
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archetype symbols in shamanic rituals can significantly influence participants' conscious state, leading them to experience a conscious dissolution of the self. Furthermore, archetype symbols have different effects at the stages of consciousness change.
This empirical study argues that Jungian archetypal symbols serve as active catalysts for stage-specific alterations of consciousness, including ego dissolution, within shamanic ritual contexts.
Sun, Hang; Kim, Eunyoung, Archetype Symbols and Altered Consciousness: A Study of Shamanic Rituals in the Context of Jungian Psychology, 2024thesis
the hallmark of altered states of consciousness is the subtle modification of behavioural and cognitive functions that are typically ascribed to the prefrontal cortex.
Mohandas proposes transient hypofrontality as the neurobiological common denominator across diverse ASC — meditation, dreaming, hypnosis, and drug-induced states alike.
Mohandas, E., Neurobiology of Spirituality, 2008thesis
Consciousness after the ingestion of LSD manifests a characteristic qualitative transformation
Grof distinguishes LSD-induced ASC from common delirium or stupor, identifying them as qualitative rather than quantitative transformations of consciousness with specific phenomenological signatures.
Grof, Stanislav, 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, the passage argues that shamanic trance is a disciplined, neurologically grounded form of ASC distinguished from other altered states by voluntary control and communicative capacity.
Sun, Hang; Kim, Eunyoung, Archetype Symbols and Altered Consciousness: A Study of Shamanic Rituals in the Context of Jungian Psychology, 2024thesis
ontogenetic delays in brain development and their symbolic resolution through cultural forms are crucial to understanding the reemergence of archetypal content in altered states of consciousness.
McGovern situates ASC within a predictive-processing and ontogenetic framework, arguing that psychedelic and analogous states disinhibit earlier-stage cortical organization through which archetypal content resurfaces.
McGovern, Hugh, Eigenmodes of the Deep Unconscious: The Neuropsychology of Jungian Archetypes and Psychedelic Experience, 2025thesis
Such psychological expectancy effects provide the necessary prerequisites for participants to enter altered states of consciousness more rapidly.
Pre-existing paranormal belief and expectancy are identified as significant psychological variables that lower the threshold for entry into ASC during ritual contexts.
Sun, Hang; Kim, Eunyoung, Archetype Symbols and Altered Consciousness: A Study of Shamanic Rituals in the Context of Jungian Psychology, 2024supporting
The APZ is a 72-item yes/no questionnaire designed to assess altered states of consciousness induced by drug (e.g., DMT or psilocybin) or non-drug (e.g., perceptual deprivation, hypnosis, and sensory overload) manipulations.
Griffiths deploys the APZ instrument to demonstrate that psilocybin and non-pharmacological methods share a measurable phenomenological space of ASC, validating cross-modal assessment of these states.
Griffiths, Roland, Psilocybin Can Occasion Mystical-Type Experiences Having Substantial and Sustained Personal Meaning and Spiritual Significance, 2006supporting
psychedelic drugs are especially useful tools for studying primary states as they allow for primary consciousness to be 'switched on' with a relatively high degree of experimental control.
Carhart-Harris positions psychedelic-induced ASC as experimentally controllable windows onto 'primary consciousness,' enabling neurobiological hypothesis-testing that other ASC cannot afford.
Carhart-Harris, Robin, The Entropic Brain: A Theory of Conscious States Informed by Neuroimaging Research with Psychedelic Drugs, 2014supporting
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 normalizes ASC within Jungian clinical practice by identifying complex-activation and trauma-induced dissociation as mild but genuine alterations of consciousness accessible to all persons.
Stein, Murray, Jung's Map of the Soul: An Introduction, 1998supporting
Very little systematic and serious attention was given to a variety of phenomena that have been described over centuries within the framework of the world's great religions, as well as temple mysteries, mystery religions, initiation rites, and various mystical schools.
Grof situates ASC-related transpersonal experiences within a long cross-cultural tradition that mainstream psychiatry had pathologized, arguing for their legitimate scientific and psychological study.
Grof, Stanislav, Varieties of Transpersonal Experiences: Observations from LSD Psychotherapy, 1972supporting
the dissociative experiences induced by shamanic archetypal symbols require the induction of an unconscious state through ritual to be perceived, that is, enter the spiritual world to achieve a change in consciousness.
The passage maps the mechanism by which ritual-induced ASC facilitates access to the collective unconscious, interpreting the shaman's 'spirit world' in Jungian terms as projected archetypal imagery.
Sun, Hang; Kim, Eunyoung, Archetype Symbols and Altered Consciousness: A Study of Shamanic Rituals in the Context of Jungian Psychology, 2024supporting
it is by altering brain function that psychedelics change consciousness. The earliest psychopha
Strassman grounds the mechanism of psychedelic ASC in pharmacological alteration of brain function, providing a biological anchoring for the phenomenological diversity reported across substances.
Strassman, Rick, DMT: The Spirit Molecule, 2001supporting
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; for example, the thrilling sense of imminence, heightened visual and auditory perceptions, and a change in the passage of time.
Strassman draws a crucial phenomenological and contextual distinction between spiritually sought ASC and involuntary psychotic episodes, despite their partial phenomenological overlap.
Strassman, Rick, DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences, 2001supporting
Kretschmer, W. 1969. Meditative techniques in psychotherapy. In C. T. Tart, ed., Altered states of consciousness. New York: Wiley.
A bibliographic citation in Welwood locates the foundational Tart anthology on ASC as a methodological resource bridging meditative practice and psychotherapeutic technique.
Welwood, John, Toward a Psychology of Awakening Buddhism, Psychotherapy,, 2000aside
Abused children generally discover at some point in their development that they can produce major, though temporary, alterations in their affective state by voluntarily inducing autonomic crises or extreme autonomic arousal.
Herman identifies self-induced autonomic dysregulation — through purging, risk-taking, and drug use — as a pathological but coherent attempt by trauma survivors to achieve state-alteration as emotional regulation.
Herman, Judith Lewis, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror, 1992aside
A default mode of brain function in altered states of consciousness.
A bibliographic citation signals the relevance of default-mode network research to the neuroscientific study of ASC, supporting Carhart-Harris's entropic brain framework.
Carhart-Harris, Robin, The Entropic Brain: A Theory of Conscious States Informed by Neuroimaging Research with Psychedelic Drugs, 2014aside