Integration: What, why, what for and how – Marc Aixalà (w/ Finnish subtitles)

In spring 2019, we organized a lecture event focusing on the topic of integration at the University of Helsinki. Psychologist and psychotherapist Marc Aixalà from Barcelona and psychologist Riikka Ajantaival spoke at the event. Aixalà specializes in the integration of psychedelic experiences. Finnish subtitles are available from the YouTube menu.

More on the Finnish Association for Psychedelic Research:
https://psyty.fi
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More on the themes of the lecture:

What is integration? According to Marc Aixalà, there's no exhaustive definition for the term. In the context of psychedelic therapy, it can be understood as the processing of the experiential content of a psychedelic session in a way that allows insights from the experience to be utilized for increased well-being in everyday life. Aixalà compares integration to a puzzle: During a therapy session, one can find new perspectives to their life – new pieces of the puzzle. One needs to find out how to fit these new pieces together with previously pieced together parts of the puzzle – the person’s existing world view. Both the puzzle and the new pieces need to be worked on in order to make them fit together smoothly.

In integration, the role of the therapist is to support the person in the difficulties and symptoms they may experience. People seek integration support for a variety of reasons. Some might have experienced wonderful insights during a psychedelic experience, but after the experience, will notice falling back into old patterns. In these situations, the goal of integration is to maximize the benefits from the experience. Someone else might feel worse after the experience, and the goal of integration support is then the minimization of negative effects. One example of a situation requiring such support is managing difficult emotions brought up by an intense experience. Occasionally, people may feel anxiety, insomnia, or even psychotic-type symptoms after psychedelic sessions.

One important aspect of integration is the closure of the experience. This requires the processing and acceptance of the emotional material brought up by the experience. A sign of successful closure is that the material that came up during the experience has been handled in such a way that new, bothering thoughts no longer come up.

Occasionally, integration is referred to as just a cognitive, rational process. There are, however, also emotional and bodily aspects of integration. It is also important to consider the social aspects of integration. People with a social environment that enables the sharing of these kinds of experiences tend to have less challenges in integration when compared with people who are more isolated and thus unable to talk about their experience. This is why, in psychedelic therapy, people are usually offered separate preparation and integration talk sessions in addition to the psychedelic experience.

From a research point of view, integration is one of the least well known areas of psychedelic-assisted therapy. Yet, it is generally believed to be significant for the efficacy of the treatment. In the near future, we will hopefully see research comparing the effects of different approaches to integration.