What is Psychedelic Somatic Interactional Psychotherapy (PSIP)?
Psychedelic Somatic Interactional Psychotherapy (PSIP) is a body-based, relationally engaged, comprehensive trauma modality whose interventions are designed specifically for the altered state of consciousness induced by psychedelic medicine. However, the modality is not specific to or dependent on any one medicine, but allows us to provide psychedelic therapy while working with fully legal, easily accessible, doctor-recommended medicines, such as ketamine and cannabis, that can be used in a private practice setting. The core of PSIP are the psychotherapeutic interventions: the relationship, the container, the autonomic processing pathway, the transference dynamics that allow us to focus and amplify the healing capacity of the psychedelic medicine.
Rather than focusing on insight, storytelling, post-session integration or the cognitive processing typically used by traditional Western psychology, the agent of transformation in PSIP is a bottom-up, self-correcting process conducted by the autonomic nervous system. It is not the mind or conscious personality that orchestrates these bottom-up nervous system processes, but rather a visceral, felt sense signal that takes over when the managing and interruptive conscious identity quiets. Essentially, when the conscious self gets out of the way, a much deeper innate intelligence will arise to orchestrate healing.
The PSIP model is especially relevant for:
-
Practitioners working with complex or developmental trauma
-
Clients with significant layers of dissociation
-
Clients with relational wounding expressing as negative transference
-
Clients who have been in traditional top-down ‘talking cure’ approaches for years without resolution
If you have not already seen a PSIP session, we invite you to take a look at this video. The process is compelling, depth oriented, powerfully deconstructive and reconstructive, and ultimately affirming of what underpins life.
The PSI Apprentice Training is designed for practitioners seeking more than an introductory overview of psychedelics or a primarily non-relational ‘eye shades and headphones’ passive space-holding sitter approach. It offers an experiential deep dive into a comprehensive, autonomic nervous system-based trauma model developed specifically for the psychedelic state. The training emphasizes practical skill development, preparing students to work somatically and relationally with trauma as it emerges during psychedelic session.
PSIP directly addresses dissociation and other psychological defense mechanisms implicated in treatment resistance. Do lifelong defense mechanisms simply disappear when a psychedelic is taken? No, in fact, dissociation will often blunt the effect of the psychedelic and create a non-response to the medicine where the client will feel completely sober. At the very least, dissociation and other defenses will prevent access to core material. PSIP specifically does not operate within the window of tolerance when clients dissociate. We do not resource clients away from dissociation because the heart of a traumatic event typically lives inside of numbness. We step closer to it and support the client to experience their own dissociation in the context of relationship with all the capacity that brings. We specifically focus on the most blank, numb, empty places the client carries inside of themselves which eventually cracks open to reveal an entire world of previously hidden memory and reactivity.
It is a basic axiom of psychotherapy that ‘it is the relationship that heals’, yet somehow, we have strangely managed to remove human relationship from most psychedelic therapy settings relying instead of transcendence and often a transpersonal bypass of human experience. Our approach at PSI is that human relational wounding requires human relational healing. Because of this, the PSIP practitioner is a highly attuned, active participant in the client’s psychedelic consciousness, evoking and working with the negative relational experiences encoded into the client’s traumatic memory. Adding relationship to the psychedelic session opens the door to a great deal of therapeutic opportunity that would otherwise not be in reach.
Provides a pathway for the fully legal, above-ground, ethical and doctor-recommended use of psychedelic medicines in private practice. Although PSIP will work with any medicine that generates altered states of consciousness, it works quite effectively with ketamine and cannabis both of which can be doctor prescribed or recommended in treatment.
A Three-Component Apprentice Training Model
You Choose Where to Begin
The Experiential Training Component Has New Options That Are Affordable and Accessible
PSI offers multiple pathways for completing the Experiential Training Component. Students can enroll now in the Small Group In-Person Intensive, with lower-cost Individual In-Person Intensive and Individual Remote Intensive options launching on August 24, 2026.
PSI Introductory Videos
3
Student Testimonial
from therapist, researcher, speaker, and writer Dr. Hillary McBride
