The psychedelic self social constructions of brain, personhood, and subjectivity through psychedelic science
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Authors
Rothstein, Craig
Issue Date
2025-08
Type
Electronic thesis
Thesis
Thesis
Language
en_US
Keywords
Science and technology studies
Alternative Title
Abstract
Sacraments, contraband, epistemic tools; psychedelic drugs have long had contested meanings in law, religion, and science. This dissertation seeks to better understand what psychedelics mean in modern society. Through a historical tracing of multiple discourses around psychedelics, this dissertation responds to critical questions about the ways in which psychedelic knowledge has been produced, and the role of psychedelic science in the coproduction of ways of knowing brain, identity, and subjectivity.In this dissertation, I consider molecular nomenclature as a technoscience and structural models as representations through which models of the neurochemical brain have historically been produced. Through archival research and interviews, I examine ways in which psychedelic science was both produced by and productive in the milieu of concurrently developing epistemic cultures of mind-brain sciences. I examine legislation and court decisions that distinguish identity based on psychedelic drug use and analyze ways in which the institutionalization of drug control rendered novel kinds of scientists as uniquely qualified to perform psychedelic research in human subjects. Finally, I investigate ways in which psychedelic researchers have produced quantitative results from qualitative accounts of subjective experience.
My findings indicate that molecular meanings of psychedelics were the product of the social relations immanent to the theoretical and practical use of molecular structural representations. Psychedelic research made serotonin visible to neuroscience through structure-activity relationship, as part of a broader pharmacologization of the brain. This way of knowing informed the legislation of drug control as well as its interpretation of historically significant state and federal supreme court decisions. During the same period, the regulatory bureaucracy around drug control created the conditions from which the current iteration of psychedelic science emerged.
This dissertation contributes to the growing attention in Science and Technology Studies on psychedelics. It calls attention to the historical significance of psychedelics in multiple forms of knowledge production and lays groundwork for future exploration of psychedelics as epistemologically significant scientific and sociopolitical actants.
Description
August2025
School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
Full Citation
Publisher
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY