# The socialization of hallucinations: Cultural priors, social interactions, and contextual factors in the use of psychedelics

## TL;DR

This paper explores how cultural and social factors shape psychedelic experiences, using ethnographic research in the Peruvian Amazon.

## Contribution

It introduces the concept of 'socialization of hallucinations' to explain how cultural context influences the content of psychedelic experiences.

## Key findings

- Cultural background and social interactions shape the phenomenological content of hallucinations.
- Education of attention, perception categorization, and emotional shaping are key factors in the socialization of hallucinations.
- Psychedelic experiences act as vectors for cultural transmission and cognitive penetrability.

## Abstract

The effects of so-called “psychedelic” or “hallucinogenic” substances are known
for their strong conditionality on context. While the so-called culturalist
approach to the study of hallucinations has won the favor of anthropologists,
the vectors by which the features of visual and auditory imagery are structured
by social context have been so far little explored. Using ethnographic data
collected in a shamanic center of the Peruvian Amazon and an anthropological
approach dialoguing with phenomenology and recent models of social cognition of
Bayesian inspiration, I aim to shed light on the nature of these dynamics
through an approach I call the “socialization of hallucinations.” Distinguishing
two levels of socialization of hallucinations, I argue that cultural background
and social interactions organize the relationship not only to the hallucinogenic
experience, but also to its very phenomenological content. I account for the
underpinnings of the socialization of hallucinations proposing such candidate
factors as the education of attention, the categorization of perceptions, and
the shaping of emotions and expectations. Considering psychedelic experiences in
the light of their noetic properties and cognitive penetrability debates, I show
that they are powerful vectors of cultural transmission. I question the ethical
stakes of this claim, at a time when the use of psychedelics is becoming
increasingly popular in the global North. I finally emphasize the importance of
better understanding the extrapharmacological factors of the psychedelic
experience and its subjective implications, and sketch out the basis for an
interdisciplinary methodology in order to do so.