Registration Link: For HKU members
MEHU Seminar
Title: Psychedelics Between Clinical Science and the Humanities: Steps Toward a Third Culture
Date: 18 December, 2023 (Monday)
Time: 5:00 – 6:30 pm HKT
Venue: Rm 608, 6/F, William M W Mong Block, 21 Sassoon Road
Mode: In-person
Registration Link: For HKU members
Abstract:
In 1959, C.P. Snow highlighted a division in modern intellectual life between the sciences and humanities, a gap that persists despite efforts to bridge it. This talk examines the resurgence of psychedelic research in medicine as a case for developing a “third culture.” Around 2010, major pharmaceutical firms reduced investment in new psychiatric drugs, despite rising mental health issues and the inadequacy of existing medications. In contrast, psychedelic-assisted therapies, blending pharmacology with psychotherapy, have flourished. These therapies, focusing on life attitudes and values rather than just symptom reduction, necessitate a blend of biomedical research and humanities scholarship. The talk advocates for “psychedelic humanities,” a field merging psychiatric drug research with ethical and epistemological inquiries and asks whether this approach could extend to other psychiatric drugs and beyond.
Speaker:
Professor Nicolas Langlitz
Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Psychedelic Humanities Lab at The New School for Social Research in New York
Professor Nicolas Langlitz, a medical doctor by training, is an anthropologist and historian of science and medicine who uses ethnographic fieldwork to think through philosophical questions. He wrote three books: Chimpanzee Culture Wars: Rethinking Human Nature alongside Japanese, European, and American Cultural Primatologists (2020), Neuropsychedelia: The Revival of Hallucinogen Research since the Decade of the Brain (2012), and Die Zeit der Psychoanalyse: Lacan und das Problem der Sitzungsdauer (2005). He is Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Psychedelic Humanities Lab at The New School for Social Research in New York.
Welcome to join us!
Enquiry: Please contact Mr Edison Cheng (mehu@hku.hk).