Observing the mind under psychedelics: conceptual metaphors used following four once-weekly macrodoses of psilocybin

This article presents the results of a Cognitive Linguistic analysis of metaphors used in a series of interviews by a single healthy volunteer following four moderate-to-high dosing sessions with psilocybin. The interviews were conducted by members of a human psychedelic research lab in a deep-sampling fMRI and EEG brain imaging study, allowing the participant to recount experiences under the effects of the compound. The goal of this case analysis is to make theoretically informed inferences about the participant’s cognitive-phenomenal processes during the interviews and the psychedelic experiences. To this end, we use Conceptual Metaphor Theory to explain how the participant consistently uses metaphors that frame abstract introspective events in terms of more concrete, visible and interpersonal events. This instantiates a cognitive frame that is known as the Observer’s Model. The metaphor themes we identify also imply a recurring sense of cognitive defusion and heightened metacognitive awareness during the psilocybin sessions. Moreover, we find that literal descriptions of hallucinatory visual experiences correlate semantically with metaphorical expressions, suggesting that metaphorical thinking plays a role in motivating those experiences. We link these linguistic-analytical results to neuroscientific findings about psychedelics and explore psychological and therapeutic implications.