Pattern breaking: a complex systems approach to psychedelic medicine

Abstract

Recent research has demonstrated the potential of psychedelic therapy for mental health care. However, the psychological experience underlying its therapeutic effects remains poorly understood. This paper proposes a framework that suggests psychedelics act as destabilizers, both psychologically and neurophysiologically. Drawing on the 'entropic brain' hypothesis and the 'RElaxed Beliefs Under pSychedelics' model, this paper focuses on the richness of psychological experience. Through a complex systems theory perspective, we suggest that psychedelics destabilize fixed points or attractors, breaking reinforced patterns of thinking and behaving. Our approach explains how psychedelic-induced increases in brain entropy destabilize neurophysiological set points and lead to new conceptualizations of psychedelic psychotherapy. These insights have important implications for risk mitigation and treatment optimization in psychedelic medicine, both during the peak psychedelic experience and during the subacute period of potential recovery.

Keywords: complex systems theory; entropic brain; free-energy principle; psychedelics; psychological experience.

Figure 1

Complexity science is composed of an array of different techniques, which together aim to capture the unifying common features of the behaviour of multisystem interactions

Figure 2

A depiction of how a system’s state (represented with a dot at time 4.8) evolves with a tendency towards certain ‘attracting’ points (basins of attarction or valleys) and avoiding repelleter (at time 1.8)