Episode 194 Dr. James Fadiman – You Are Not One Self: Microdosing, Multiplicity and the Mind

What if the voice in your head is not one person? Psychedelic-research pioneer Dr. James Fadiman returns to HXP after 11 years to challenge the “single self” assumption—and to explore what our many selves, psychedelic experience, and the still-evolving science of microdosing might reveal about how we heal, choose, relate, and live.

Episode tagline: The psychedelic pioneer who helped define modern microdosing makes the case that a healthy mind is not a soloist—it is a team.

About Dr. James Fadiman

James Fadiman, Ph.D., is a psychologist, author, educator, and early psychedelic researcher whose work has helped shape modern conversations about psychedelic safety, consciousness, transpersonal psychology, and microdosing. He earned a B.A. in Social Relations from Harvard University in 1960, an M.A. in psychology from Stanford University in 1962, and a Ph.D. in psychology from Stanford in 1965. His early work included research with the Harvard psychedelic research circle and the West Coast Research Group in Menlo Park.

In 1975, Fadiman helped found the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, now Sofia University. He served as president of the Association for Transpersonal Psychology, held a leadership role on the board of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, taught psychology and transpersonal studies, and—despite not being trained as an engineer—taught in Stanford’s Department of Mechanical Engineering for eight years. Across more than six decades, his work has moved between research, teaching, consulting, writing, and the study of how people understand themselves.

Books and Major Book-Length Works

• Microdosing for Health, Healing, and Enhanced Performance (with Jordan Gruber, 2025)
• Your Symphony of Selves: Discover and Understand More of Who We Are (with Jordan Gruber, 2020)
• The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide: Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys (2011)
• The Other Side of Haight (novel, 2000)
• Essential Sufism (edited with Robert Frager, 1997)
• UnLimit Your Life: Setting and Getting Goals (1989)
• Motivation and Personality, third edition (Abraham Maslow; revised with Robert Frager, Cynthia McReynolds, and Ruth Cox, 1987)
• Be All That You Are (1986)
• Health for the Whole Person (edited with Arthur Hastings and James Gordon, 1981)
• Holistic Medicine (edited with Arthur Hastings and James Gordon, 1979)
• Personality and Personal Growth (with Robert Frager, first published 1976; later editions)
• Transpersonal Education: A Curriculum for Feeling and Being (edited with Gay Hendricks, 1976)
• Relax (edited with John White, 1976)
• Exploring Madness: Experience, Understanding and Research (edited with Don Kewman, 1973)
• The Proper Study of Man: Perspectives on the Social Sciences (1971)

His other dramatic and educational work includes the play Maria Cassino and restricted-use teaching texts on creative problem solving, creativity, states of consciousness, and fiction writing.

Episode Summary

This conversation begins with a disarming proposition: the idea that each person ought to be one stable, consistent self may be less a scientific fact than a cultural assumption. Drawing from Your Symphony of Selves, Fadiman argues that healthy people move among distinct selves—different patterns of perception, feeling, agency, and behavior—and that inner conflict does not automatically signal pathology.

Xavier presses the hard questions. How is a “self” different from a mood, role, or temporary brain state? Who is doing the observing when we notice ourselves change? What happens when one part becomes destructive? Fadiman answers with examples from psychology, family life, trauma, grief, religion, literature, and ordinary moments of arguing with yourself. His practical claim is that recognizing multiplicity can soften shame, reduce all-or-nothing judgments, and help people bring forward the part best suited to the moment.

The episode then turns toward psychedelics. Fadiman describes high-dose experiences as occasions when identity can loosen into a felt connection with nature and a larger whole. He distinguishes that from microdosing, which he presents through collected reports and emerging research as a subtler practice associated by some people with shifts in mood, attention, pain, and physical well-being.

The final movement widens the frame: perhaps the same error that tells us we are one sealed-off self also tells us we are isolated from other people and the living world. Fadiman’s conclusion is deliberately unfinished. The evidence remains incomplete, personal reports are not the same as controlled clinical findings, and the most honest scientific ending is an open door: more research is needed.

What You’ll Hear

• Why Fadiman believes having multiple selves can be normal and healthy
• How healthy multiplicity differs from dissociative pathology
• Why arguing with yourself may be evidence of an internal team, not a defect
• How the “single self” assumption shapes shame, blame, relationships, and psychology
• What trauma and grief may do to a person’s inner system
• Why selecting the right self for the moment can resemble leading a company or orchestra
• How high-dose psychedelic experiences can loosen identity and intensify connection with nature
• Why Fadiman sees microdosing as fundamentally different from a psychedelic trip
• What people have reported to him about depression, antidepressants, neuropathy, and other conditions
• Why he believes the Western ideal of the isolated individual is a profound cultural error
• What science can responsibly say—and what remains uncertain

Chapters

Click any timecode to open the mastered audio at that chapter.

• 00:00.000 — The Human Experience show introduction
• 00:41.240 — Opening and Dr. Fadiman’s return after 11 years
• 02:40.200 — Your Symphony of Selves and the myth of one consistent identity
• 05:08.480 — Healthy multiplicity versus dissociative identity disorder
• 06:28.190 — What makes a self different from a mood or social role?
• 13:41.290 — Who is observing our different selves?
• 17:41.850 — What modern psychology may have missed
• 23:17.200 — When one self becomes destructive or dangerous
• 27:57.860 — Noticing a shift from self to self
• 31:00.240 — Self-blame, relationships, and family conflict
• 35:26.070 — How trauma affects the inner system
• 39:15.740 — Grief and the emergence of new selves
• 45:17.230 — The illusion of being separate from other people
• 49:54.330 — Psychedelics, identity, nature, and interconnectedness
• 54:37.330 — Microdosing: what Fadiman says it is and is not
• 56:17.160 — Depression, antidepressants, and reported microdosing experiences
• 1:02:11.640 — What a lifetime studying psychedelics changed for Fadiman
• 1:03:43.070 — Why the isolated individual is a cultural myth
• 1:09:22.430 — The closing question: what did we fail to ask?
• 1:10:22.290 — Science, uncertainty, and why more research matters
• 1:12:33.370 — A Tourette’s microdosing report and the open door of inquiry
• 1:13:58.200 — Main episode close and bonus conversation invitation

Books Featured in This Conversation

• Your Symphony of Selves: Discover and Understand More of Who We Are by James Fadiman and Jordan Gruber
• Microdosing for Health, Healing, and Enhanced Performance by James Fadiman and Jordan Gruber
• The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide by James Fadiman

Important Note

This episode is for education and discussion, not medical or legal advice. Psychedelic laws vary by location. Experiences and case reports discussed in the conversation should not be treated as proof of safety or effectiveness for any condition. Do not start, stop, or change medication without working with a qualified clinician.

About the Transcript

Timestamp baseline: 00:00.000 is the first sample of the exact final mastered MP3. The transcript begins at the file boundary, includes the complete show introduction, and uses the MP3’s absolute clock throughout. Nothing was skipped, rebased, or offset. Xavier’s “Ladies and gentlemen” opening begins at 00:41.240.

The transcript below was generated from the mastered episode and lightly formatted for readability. It may contain transcription errors.

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Full Transcript

[00:00.000] HXP Narrator: Welcome to the Human Experience Podcast, the only podcast designed to fuse your left and right brain hemispheres and feed it the most entertaining and mentally engaging topics on the planet.

[00:19.120] HXP Narrator: As we approach our ascent, please make sure your frontal, temporal and occipital lobes are in their full upright position.

[00:26.490] HXP Narrator: As you take your seat of consciousness, relax your senses and allow us to take you on a journey.

[00:32.520] HXP Narrator: We are the Intimate Strangers.

[00:34.660] HXP Narrator: Thank you for listening.

[00:41.240] Xavier Katana: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Human Experience Podcast. My name is Xavier Katana, and today we’re going beyond the comfortable answers to confront ideas, contradictions, and defining moments that shape who we become.

[00:59.040] Xavier Katana: Expect an honest conversation, challenging perspectives, and questions that might change how you see yourself and the world around you.

[01:10.240] Xavier Katana: Let us begin.

[01:15.320] Xavier Katana: The human experience is in session. My guest for today is Dr. Jim Fadiman. He is a psychologist, author, researcher, and one of the most influential voices in the modern study of psychedelics and consciousness. He earned his bachelor’s degree at Harvard.

[01:31.680] Xavier Katana: and his master’s and doctorate in psychology at Stanford, where his graduate work examined LSD, perception, and therapeutic change. He later helped establish the field of transpersonal psychology, and co-founded the institution now known as Sophia University.

[01:50.880] Xavier Katana: He’s the author of The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide and with Jordan Gruber, Your Symphony of Selves and Microdosing for Health and Healing and Enhanced Performance. Jim, it’s a pleasure. Welcome back to HXP.

[02:06.350] Dr. James Fadiman: Well, it’s wonderful to be back. It’s been 11 years and we can now continue our conversation.

[02:13.920] Xavier Katana: 11 years, can you believe that? I mean, that is an immense amount of time.

[02:19.160] Xavier Katana: it just… it expands so quickly, you don’t know where it goes. You close your eyes, and it’s gone.

[02:25.280] Dr. James Fadiman: Well, when you’re working with psychedelics, time has a… it stretches a bit.

[02:33.160] Dr. James Fadiman: So we have enough time to do what we’re here to do.

[02:37.640] Xavier Katana: Right. And we’re going to get into psychedelics. I first want to talk about your book, Symphony of Selves, because you make some very interesting, what would you call them? Just takes or.

[02:54.680] Xavier Katana: uh… comments that you… you… you… you say that we have multiple selves, that there’s more than one person inside of our head. Um… you think that this assumption might be wrong.

[03:09.660] Xavier Katana: what does that mean? How did… first of all, how did you move from the study of psychedelics to this idea of multiplicity?

[03:22.160] Dr. James Fadiman: I’m not sure that they were necessarily connected. I believe that, um…

[03:26.960] Dr. James Fadiman: Simply, when you work with psychedelics, you are very interested in consciousness.

[03:33.660] Dr. James Fadiman: other people’s and your own, and when you begin to notice that your consciousness is not.

[03:39.260] Dr. James Fadiman: is not kind of coherent, that it doesn’t necessarily make sense that you make mistakes, that you do things which in the moment you know are wrong, and you do them.

[03:54.160] Dr. James Fadiman: You find yourself apologizing for something that another part of you really did.

[04:01.570] Dr. James Fadiman: And you then begin to look at not the theories.

[04:05.060] Dr. James Fadiman: Because theories are inherently restrictive in what they.

[04:10.630] Dr. James Fadiman: They suggest, and theorists are even worse.

[04:13.790] Dr. James Fadiman: Because they get defensive if you suggest their theory is inadequate.

[04:19.840] Dr. James Fadiman: So I tended to rely on experience.

[04:23.460] Dr. James Fadiman: bolstered, then, by looking for examples throughout, first of all, the psychological area, where I knew something, and then with my co-author, Jordan Gruber, we looked at the possibility.

[04:37.990] Dr. James Fadiman: That if the self were indeed multiple, at least the healthy self, that we would find evidence in other thinkers, in other systems, in other disciplines.

[04:50.240] Dr. James Fadiman: And so we did.

[04:53.050] Dr. James Fadiman: So it became then so self-evident.

[04:56.880] Dr. James Fadiman: I’m.

[04:56.880] Dr. James Fadiman: That we wondered, how did anyone ever miss it?

[05:01.040] Xavier Katana: Hmm, I mean, it’s a really interesting perspective to take that we have more than oneself, like, what distinguishes this idea from.

[05:11.980] Xavier Katana: A dissociative identity disorder. What’s the difference?

[05:17.120] Dr. James Fadiman: Yes, notice the term that you use, disassociation.

[05:20.620] Dr. James Fadiman: This association was how the self was, how the mental illness was viewed.

[05:28.370] Dr. James Fadiman: And that’s what Freud began to learn about in his early career. And we’ll see what happened when he changed his mind. But disassociation is… suggests, obviously, that health is association.

[05:42.880] Dr. James Fadiman: If you think of a telephone cord or a cord that has a lot of little wires inside it.

[05:49.980] Dr. James Fadiman: Each of those is individual, but the thing itself, when it’s wrapped in insulation, is a single thing which we call, you know, my cord, and I plug it in, and it has a lot of different attributes. So physically imagine.

[06:05.890] Dr. James Fadiman: That your mind is a complicated set of those cords, and that there is a certain amount of communication between them, and there is a certain amount of ignorance between them as well.

[06:19.490] Dr. James Fadiman: That looks like what people report about their own inner life.

[06:23.670] Xavier Katana: Mmhm.

[06:24.360] Xavier Katana: Mm-hmm. I mean, please continue, like, so, what makes a self different rather than a mood that I might be in, or a social role, or a temporary brain state?

[06:39.080] Dr. James Fadiman: Well, let me give you a kind of classic one-line answer to a question which I know you’ll come to, which is, can I show myself that I’m not a unified being?

[06:53.840] Dr. James Fadiman: Okay?

[06:53.840] Xavier Katana: Mm-hmm.

[06:54.840] Dr. James Fadiman: Now.

[06:54.840] Dr. James Fadiman: Now here’s here goes ready.

[06:59.400] Xavier Katana: I’m ready.

[07:00.400] Dr. James Fadiman: Have you ever argued with yourself?

[07:03.480] Xavier Katana: Absolutely.

[07:05.480] Dr. James Fadiman: And do we assume that that’s true of most of the people we’ve ever met?

[07:09.600] Xavier Katana: I mean, I would presume that that is the case for most people, sure.

[07:15.590] Dr. James Fadiman: Who is the other person?

[07:19.160] Xavier Katana: I mean, that’s a great question. I… I don’t… I’ve never distinguished, I’ve never… I’ve never actually placed that. It’s always been just a… my own voice in my head.

[07:30.440] Dr. James Fadiman: Yes, but who’s it speaking to?

[07:33.920] Xavier Katana: It’s myself, it’s me.

[07:35.960] Dr. James Fadiman: So you are speaking to yourself, is that right?

[07:39.960] Xavier Katana: Right.

[07:40.960] Dr. James Fadiman: That’s all I’m saying. Are both of those you?

[07:44.630] Xavier Katana: Yes.

[07:45.560] Dr. James Fadiman: Are there other things that you have noticed about yourself that there’s that kind of space where you’re observing yourself? You ever observe yourself?

[07:56.440] Xavier Katana: Yeah, of course.

[07:58.480] Dr. James Fadiman: Have you ever noticed, for instance, when you’re lying and you know you’re lying?

[08:02.520] Xavier Katana: Right. Yeah.

[08:04.520] Dr. James Fadiman: Part of…

[08:06.390] Dr. James Fadiman: continues to lie.

[08:07.600] Dr. James Fadiman: Part of you has a probably different moral position about it.

[08:12.880] Dr. James Fadiman: Right?

[08:13.950] Xavier Katana: Sure.

[08:14.880] Dr. James Fadiman: Okay, so now we have established that, at least in your case and in mine, that there is a dialogue inside the mind.

[08:25.220] Dr. James Fadiman: that actually is very important for a healthy flexible mind to have.

[08:32.520] Dr. James Fadiman: Remember, evolution…

[08:34.390] Dr. James Fadiman: Doesn’t really care about your theory, but it cares about your survival.

[08:40.630] Dr. James Fadiman: And it turns out it is better if an organism can fully be in different directions at different times.

[08:49.280] Xavier Katana: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[08:50.280] Dr. James Fadiman: Now, let me give you the other kind of visual.

[08:55.000] Dr. James Fadiman: And it’s wonderful when you see it.

[08:57.870] Dr. James Fadiman: There and now and then before AI, this actually you saw it. The story is the woman and her child are out in the front yard and the child wanders off.

[09:09.890] Dr. James Fadiman: And the next thing she notices is that the child is in the street.

[09:15.940] Dr. James Fadiman: And a car…

[09:16.750] Dr. James Fadiman: whose brakes have failed in some way, is slowly rolling towards the child.

[09:23.630] Dr. James Fadiman: Okay.

[09:24.440] Dr. James Fadiman: She runs out.

[09:25.280] Dr. James Fadiman: The now, just before the wheel starts to crush her child, she picks up the back of the car, grabs her child, and puts the car back down.

[09:34.450] Dr. James Fadiman: Okay.

[09:35.160] Xavier Katana: Mm-hmm.

[09:36.700] Dr. James Fadiman: Then, this is a real case, the National Enquirer.

[09:40.790] Dr. James Fadiman: a a.

[09:42.120] Dr. James Fadiman: a kind of sensationalistic magazine some years ago, comes up to her with the photographer.

[09:50.020] Dr. James Fadiman: And says, is this really what happened? And she says, that’s exactly what happened.

[09:55.760] Dr. James Fadiman: And then they say, well, would you mind just picking the car up so we can get a photograph?

[10:02.000] Dr. James Fadiman: And she looks at them, and she says, I weigh 132 pounds. There’s no way I could possibly lift that car.

[10:09.900] Xavier Katana: Mmhm.

[10:10.760] Dr. James Fadiman: And they say.

[10:11.600] Dr. James Fadiman: Well, because I’ve actually dealt with these guys, they said, well, could you just kind of pretend you’re doing it?

[10:19.540] Xavier Katana: Mm-hmm.

[10:20.280] Dr. James Fadiman: So what’s going on for that person? Why that what happened when it was clearly something beyond her strength and her understanding of her strength?

[10:31.070] Dr. James Fadiman: Now, we also see it.

[10:33.490] Dr. James Fadiman: And in a less kind of emotionally, you know, charming way, when someone playing American football.

[10:44.450] Dr. James Fadiman: Has a brain concussion and continues to play.

[10:50.440] Dr. James Fadiman: Or breaks a collarbone and continues to play.

[10:54.000] Xavier Katana: Right.

[10:56.010] Dr. James Fadiman: What happens is some part of disassociation occurs.

[10:59.690] Dr. James Fadiman: So that the person who wants to continue playing is able to, and the part that has to deal with the injury is… is basically not given the center stage for a while.

[11:12.180] Dr. James Fadiman: Now, again, let’s go back, because you used that nice word, disassociation. That was the way.

[11:19.670] Dr. James Fadiman: people thought of mental illness was when the parts.

[11:23.560] Dr. James Fadiman: Stopped associating, stopped helping each other, stopped working in agreement.

[11:30.050] Dr. James Fadiman: And that ended up with a mental hospital. For instance, there’s a term we say of people who cut themselves. They’re known as cutters, okay?

[11:39.880] Dr. James Fadiman: And they literally harm themselves.

[11:42.680] Xavier Katana: Mmhm.

[11:44.520] Dr. James Fadiman: A part of them doesn’t like that.

[11:48.850] Dr. James Fadiman: and a part of them has some other other need and that’s a that’s a very that’s called a mental illness.

[11:57.480] Dr. James Fadiman: Because the cells are not only not cooperating, they’re literally destroying.

[12:04.930] Dr. James Fadiman: The body.

[12:05.630] Xavier Katana: Right.

[12:07.240] Dr. James Fadiman: Um, okay.

[12:07.240] Dr. James Fadiman: So what happened in psychology?

[12:09.380] Dr. James Fadiman: is that was generally understood, because it had a certain obviousness. People…

[12:15.670] Dr. James Fadiman: are aware of their own.

[12:17.780] Dr. James Fadiman: other selves, and their other selves… there isn’t, like, a dominant self. There isn’t, like, a super terrific, kind, smart, wonderful self at the center.

[12:28.700] Xavier Katana: Mmhm.

[12:31.900] Dr. James Fadiman: It’s when you are doing things that you are aware of, particularly ones that go against your moral code, you’re aware that you need to.

[12:39.070] Dr. James Fadiman: to deal with that, to make amends with that, to make it work for you.

[12:45.920] Dr. James Fadiman: You know, um…

[12:47.580] Dr. James Fadiman: What do we say? Oh, I love the term and we have it in English. I was beside myself.

[12:54.240] Dr. James Fadiman: What does that mean?

[12:56.240] Xavier Katana: Yeah, that’s a good question.

[13:00.840] Dr. James Fadiman: Well, I know I’m supposed to be answering the questions. But hey, I’m pushing you a little here, because it’s these kinds of.

[13:09.970] Dr. James Fadiman: inner restrictions that say, well, but there has to be just oneself.

[13:16.620] Dr. James Fadiman: Well, there has to be a flat earth or else we would fall off if it was round.

[13:22.710] Dr. James Fadiman: But that’s not true.

[13:24.290] Xavier Katana: Mmhm.

[13:25.920] Dr. James Fadiman: So…

[13:26.150] Dr. James Fadiman: I always opt for what seems to be visible.

[13:30.170] Dr. James Fadiman: palpable, emotionally understandable, rather than a theory which somehow negates that.

[13:41.290] Xavier Katana: So, if I can observe my different selves, then what part of me, or who is observing? Who’s doing the observing?

[13:50.840] Dr. James Fadiman: Well, um, one famous author whose name I lost at the moment says, all I do in my mind is I bring together.

[14:00.190] Dr. James Fadiman: the board of directors.

[14:02.230] Dr. James Fadiman: And they let me attend the meeting, in my mind, when we are discussing something of importance.

[14:09.850] Dr. James Fadiman: So that’s a metaphor of what the way he was seeing his own mind.

[14:13.980] Dr. James Fadiman: As if there were a number of.

[14:15.720] Dr. James Fadiman: I’m.

[14:15.990] Dr. James Fadiman: parts of it that had different agendas. Have you ever been in a relationship with another person that you were either turned on to, or more than that, and another part of you thought this was the damnedest foolish thing you’d ever seen?

[14:32.160] Xavier Katana: Mm-hmm, yeah, sure.

[14:34.610] Dr. James Fadiman: And we don’t… and as you know, if you look back through your life, sometimes the part of you that said, this is ridiculous, won out, and sometimes the part of you that said, I don’t care.

[14:47.680] Dr. James Fadiman: I want it.

[14:49.640] Dr. James Fadiman: And that that comes out. Okay.

[14:53.350] Dr. James Fadiman: These are just a number of examples so that you can begin to look at yourself.

[14:59.750] Dr. James Fadiman: There’s no evidence.

[15:02.420] Dr. James Fadiman: That there is a single, unified self.

[15:07.640] Dr. James Fadiman: there is considerable evidence that there is divisions within the human psyche, and I use the term selves because.

[15:16.390] Dr. James Fadiman: they… they… that’s the way they think of themselves. The person in you who says.

[15:21.980] Dr. James Fadiman: I know this is going to be terrible, but I want that woman, and I’m going to do something really terrible. It’s going to ruin a relationship, but I want, want, want.

[15:31.720] Dr. James Fadiman: Okay. We know that person.

[15:35.520] Xavier Katana: Mmhm.

[15:35.520] Dr. James Fadiman: That person thinks they’re a real person. They don’t think they’re a part or a mood or a expression or an emotion.

[15:44.640] Dr. James Fadiman: they think that’s who I am right now, and there’s a part of me that’s a stick in the mud that says, she’s married, you can’t have her, it’s illegal, whatever it is.

[15:56.210] Dr. James Fadiman: And those parts have equal valence.

[16:01.920] Dr. James Fadiman: Just as a board of directors, everyone gets one vote. Now, in the real board of directors, people who have a large ownership in the company get more than one vote, but everyone has one vote.

[16:14.320] Dr. James Fadiman: So that seems to be the way it is.

[16:19.370] Dr. James Fadiman: And then once, if that’s so, where would we see it? And then the rest of the whole book.

[16:26.040] Dr. James Fadiman: Basically says, well, let’s go to poetry, let’s go to religion, let’s go to philosophy, let’s go to metaphysics, let’s go to a whole lot to literature.

[16:35.580] Dr. James Fadiman: um…

[16:37.640] Dr. James Fadiman: And let’s see if we can find it. Now, let me just give you one that, again, we all know, Jekyll and Hyde.

[16:44.370] Dr. James Fadiman: Jekyll and Hyde is the story of a person who has oneself, who’s.

[16:48.430] Dr. James Fadiman: what we would call a normal straight person and oneself that’s really quite terrible.

[16:54.450] Xavier Katana: Mm-hmm.

[16:55.520] Dr. James Fadiman: And the story…

[16:57.390] Dr. James Fadiman: Which came to the author.

[16:59.600] Dr. James Fadiman: in a kind of a dream state. He did not think this through. He saw this… this…

[17:05.580] Dr. James Fadiman: this difficulty.

[17:07.780] Dr. James Fadiman: and wrote it out and it became immeasurably popular.

[17:14.260] Dr. James Fadiman: Because people could…

[17:16.670] Dr. James Fadiman: Relate to it.

[17:18.480] Dr. James Fadiman: Okay.

[17:20.360] Xavier Katana: Yeah.

[17:22.040] Xavier Katana: So you’re saying that we have these different parts of ourselves that we move in and out of and come out of us at different moments in time, and we can argue with them, can have a conversation with them in our in our own heads.

[17:39.410] Xavier Katana: And, I mean, what does that conclude? You say that modern psychology has missed something, or gotten something completely wrong. What did it get wrong, or what did it miss?

[17:50.260] Dr. James Fadiman: Well, um, what happened, and let’s do a little history. Remember, I said Freud and the other people around him, um, who were discovering what we would call modern psychopathology.

[18:01.020] Dr. James Fadiman: And dealing… basically, they all got it. And the question for them was.

[18:08.490] Dr. James Fadiman: In the mental hospital, you could see the disassociation.

[18:14.520] Dr. James Fadiman: And the question was, from the people who worked in mental hospitals, they said, yes, of course there is disassociation, there are these parts, but only in pathology.

[18:26.880] Dr. James Fadiman: The people in the world, like, say, William James, who didn’t deal with pathology, said no.

[18:34.330] Dr. James Fadiman: We see it in everyone. Because we’re actually looking at everyone, we’re not focusing only on the pathology. We’re also looking at the person who’s the.

[18:45.180] Dr. James Fadiman: Who’s observing the pathology?

[18:48.080] Dr. James Fadiman: And this is a very…

[18:50.350] Dr. James Fadiman: It’s hard for people.

[18:53.280] Dr. James Fadiman: I’m remembering I was asked to give a talk about this kind of thing at a mental hospital.

[19:01.540] Dr. James Fadiman: Uh, to the… to some… some subgroup that invited me.

[19:05.800] Dr. James Fadiman: And I showed up and I was in the elevator and there was a little poster on the back of the elevator.

[19:11.170] Dr. James Fadiman: and said, you know, Dr. James Fadiman, 3 o’clock, room etchette, and it didn’t have the title of my talk. It had a different title that was kind of a vanilla title.

[19:21.560] Dr. James Fadiman: you know, advances in understanding psychopathology, which is who would ever bother to go to that if you’re in a mental hospital. Okay.

[19:31.010] Dr. James Fadiman: And I looked at that, and I wondered.

[19:33.380] Dr. James Fadiman: And I turned to my host and said, what is this? She said, there’s a unit here.

[19:39.470] Dr. James Fadiman: where they specialize in multiple personality as a severe pathology.

[19:45.760] Dr. James Fadiman: We didn’t want them to know you’re here.

[19:49.660] Dr. James Fadiman: Because they really are deeply committed that only their patients have this inner division.

[19:59.160] Xavier Katana: Mm-hmm.

[20:00.550] Dr. James Fadiman: Kind of like, you know, like going into a church and taking the doorway of a church and pounding on it, as Martin Luther did, with a list of things that the church wasn’t doing very well.

[20:14.040] Dr. James Fadiman: Not surprising the church didn’t like that.

[20:18.570] Dr. James Fadiman: So, so when you have… remember, if you have a theory that you’ve spent time and energy creating.

[20:24.920] Xavier Katana: Right.

[20:25.760] Dr. James Fadiman: or buying into.

[20:26.700] Dr. James Fadiman: And someone says, you know, the only problem with your theory is it’s not true.

[20:32.560] Dr. James Fadiman: You’re for most people.

[20:34.980] Dr. James Fadiman: at least in this in the mental health world, their first response is defensiveness.

[20:44.250] Dr. James Fadiman: So once you can see that you have something you said made them defensive, you then get to look at what’s going on.

[20:52.880] Dr. James Fadiman: And that’s why I came up with that little… that little moment of, do you ever quarrel with yourself?

[20:59.160] Dr. James Fadiman: Once you get that you are clearly you on both sides, but they’re really a genuine argument.

[21:07.520] Dr. James Fadiman: It becomes much easier.

[21:09.570] Dr. James Fadiman: to take in the rest of what I’m saying.

[21:13.250] Xavier Katana: Right.

[21:13.250] Dr. James Fadiman: Now, again, what happened to Freud is suddenly he said, oh, no, there’s no disassociation.

[21:22.780] Dr. James Fadiman: It’s only a self, and there’s a… there… well, there’s kind of a disassociation, but we won’t call it that. There’s an ego, there’s an id, there’s a superego. So, yeah, there are parts of the psyche, but not the way you’re talking about it, where they have some kind of, um…

[21:38.220] Dr. James Fadiman: stature and understanding of each other.

[21:42.450] Dr. James Fadiman: What happened?

[21:42.690] Xavier Katana: Mmhm.

[21:43.400] Dr. James Fadiman: Well, what happened, and this is a little technical, is part of Freud’s early theory was that this… his clients, young children, a number of them.

[21:53.990] Dr. James Fadiman: reported being sexually either excited or abused.

[21:58.330] Dr. James Fadiman: by their parents.

[22:00.600] Xavier Katana: Mmhm.

[22:00.600] Dr. James Fadiman: Now, understand this is now turn of the century Vienna. It’s not exactly the 60s.

[22:09.710] Dr. James Fadiman: This is a very uptight culture.

[22:12.960] Dr. James Fadiman: This is the culture where you could live with your wife for your entire 40, 50 years of marriage and never see her naked, okay?

[22:22.120] Xavier Katana: Wow.

[22:23.760] Dr. James Fadiman: And they had certain night dresses which had slits in them should you want to do something together.

[22:28.760] Dr. James Fadiman: Okay.

[22:28.760] Xavier Katana: OK. OK.

[22:29.760] Dr. James Fadiman: So here is Freud seeing these children with their childhood memories of sexual impropriety.

[22:39.110] Dr. James Fadiman: But.

[22:39.480] Dr. James Fadiman: These are the children of his clients, of his social set, of his friends.

[22:48.920] Dr. James Fadiman: There’s a dilemma.

[22:51.590] Dr. James Fadiman: And he resolves it by a very nice sleight of hand, which is, yes.

[22:59.040] Dr. James Fadiman: Everything they told me, I can understand from my theory, but it was all in their imagination.

[23:07.950] Dr. James Fadiman: They had a fantasy.

[23:09.770] Dr. James Fadiman: of one or the other of their parents being sexual with them.

[23:16.480] Dr. James Fadiman: And with that, for some reason, disassociation went away too.

[23:21.000] Dr. James Fadiman: And Freud kept to his three-sided self without ever.

[23:25.090] Dr. James Fadiman: really pointing out that this was just a kind of bizarre way of describing the way people really were.

[23:33.600] Dr. James Fadiman: So there we are.

[23:37.290] Xavier Katana: So, explain to me what happens when one part of ourselves becomes destructive or dangerous to itself.

[23:48.280] Dr. James Fadiman: First of all.

[23:49.290] Dr. James Fadiman: The rest of the cells try to prevent it from, like, literally killing them.

[23:55.520] Dr. James Fadiman: I’m thinking of someone who.

[23:58.190] Dr. James Fadiman: Um.

[23:58.850] Dr. James Fadiman: This is a real case.

[24:01.100] Dr. James Fadiman: Person is in therapy and he is has not told.

[24:07.050] Dr. James Fadiman: his therapist that there’s a part of him which is very pathological.

[24:11.640] Dr. James Fadiman: And the pathological one says to him.

[24:15.040] Dr. James Fadiman: If you tell him, I’m gonna hurt you.

[24:18.960] Dr. James Fadiman: And he tells him, and then he wakes up, and there are cuts on his arms.

[24:26.760] Dr. James Fadiman: Okay.

[24:27.800] Xavier Katana: Mmhm.

[24:27.800] Dr. James Fadiman: That’s a real problem. That’s what psychopathology is. It’s a part of you that is really dangerous.

[24:33.630] Dr. James Fadiman: and needs professional help. You may have to drug the whole body.

[24:40.440] Dr. James Fadiman: Or lock it up.

[24:41.940] Dr. James Fadiman: In order to protect yourself.

[24:46.080] Dr. James Fadiman: That’s what the notion is in a mental hospital, is you are there to be protected from some part of you that’s too dangerous.

[24:53.360] Dr. James Fadiman: So the mental hospital is… and how do you know when you’re…

[24:59.490] Dr. James Fadiman: when they let you out.

[25:01.680] Dr. James Fadiman: Okay, when I was teaching graduate students in psychology, I said, okay, here is your…

[25:07.580] Dr. James Fadiman: Your conundrum for the day. You have admitted yourself to a mental hospital, you have pretended you’re a patient, because you really want to study what goes on inside a mental hospital.

[25:18.930] Xavier Katana: Mm-hmm.

[25:20.160] Dr. James Fadiman: um and you are there for a couple of months and then you’ve gotten your notes and you’re going to get your thesis or your novel or whatever it is and you then go up to the lead doctor and say excuse me I’m actually not a a crazy person I’m a sane person and I would like to go out.

[25:37.680] Dr. James Fadiman: And then can you guess what happens next?

[25:41.000] Xavier Katana: They’re told they’re wrong, you know, they’re crazy.

[25:47.080] Dr. James Fadiman: Right?

[25:48.320] Dr. James Fadiman: So, here was the problem I gave my graduate students. How do you prove.

[25:53.990] Dr. James Fadiman: To this, in a mental hospital, that you are sane.

[26:00.000] Xavier Katana: It’s very hard to do.

[26:02.170] Dr. James Fadiman: And what…

[26:02.960] Dr. James Fadiman: Well, what you get is the system is rigged.

[26:06.560] Xavier Katana: The system is rigged.

[26:08.480] Dr. James Fadiman: Okay.

[26:09.480] Dr. James Fadiman: you know, what is a… um, well, we’re seeing it today. We’re seeing, you know, the ICE says, you know, you’re an alien, you’re a criminal, and we’re gonna throw you into something which resembles a medieval dungeon.

[26:24.640] Dr. James Fadiman: And you say.

[26:25.590] Dr. James Fadiman: Actually, I’m a citizen. I’m a voter, and I live with such and such. And they say.

[26:33.990] Dr. James Fadiman: We don’t have to believe you.

[26:39.040] Dr. James Fadiman: And if you say that again, we’re going to hit you.

[26:43.240] Dr. James Fadiman: Okay?

[26:45.250] Dr. James Fadiman: So a system that protects itself.

[26:49.990] Dr. James Fadiman: has pathology as an unsolved, unresolved problem.

[26:56.440] Dr. James Fadiman: And what we’ve done in psychology and psychotherapy and psychiatry and medications is to try to work with those parts of us.

[27:05.780] Dr. James Fadiman: So they are either calmed down or helped or improved or in some cases there is an actual effort to kill them.

[27:17.080] Dr. James Fadiman: And I mention that in that way because if you think of them as your inner family.

[27:23.280] Dr. James Fadiman: Which one?

[27:23.780] Dr. James Fadiman: will voluntarily kill itself.

[27:28.480] Dr. James Fadiman: Because the others think it’s a good idea. Nobody.

[27:34.680] Dr. James Fadiman: So the problem is when you have… then there are pathologies where the pathology is that I am separate from the rest of you, and I can kill you, and I will. Well, we have to hospitalize all of us.

[27:48.570] Dr. James Fadiman: to do that.

[27:49.760] Dr. James Fadiman: So what I’m saying — and I don’t want to stay with pathology because normal human behavior is far more interesting.

[27:57.710] Dr. James Fadiman: is how do you notice when you have made a shift from self to self?

[28:04.960] Dr. James Fadiman: Let me give you a very simple example. Do you have a pet?

[28:07.520] Xavier Katana: No.

[28:08.520] Dr. James Fadiman: Okay, have you ever had a pet?

[28:10.220] Xavier Katana: Yes.

[28:10.590] Dr. James Fadiman: Okay, dog?

[28:12.520] Xavier Katana: Cat.

[28:13.520] Dr. James Fadiman: Okay, when you spoke to your cat, did you use the same tone in which you’re speaking to me?

[28:19.800] Xavier Katana: No.

[28:20.800] Dr. James Fadiman: Why not?

[28:23.240] Xavier Katana: Because it’s my cat.

[28:25.240] Dr. James Fadiman: Right? Because your cat.

[28:28.890] Dr. James Fadiman: needed to be spoken to in a way that the cat understood.

[28:34.120] Dr. James Fadiman: Okay?

[28:35.570] Dr. James Fadiman: So have you ever spoken to a part of yourself?

[28:38.820] Dr. James Fadiman: In that same way where you needed to have a different tone, because there’s no rule of thumb that says all the parts of you are either the same age or the same sex, even.

[28:52.160] Dr. James Fadiman: I’m just thinking of a very powerful case that was written up.

[28:56.600] Dr. James Fadiman: This was what’s called a true multiple, which is they really were very, very separate.

[29:04.210] Dr. James Fadiman: um…

[29:04.210] Dr. James Fadiman: And.

[29:04.520] Dr. James Fadiman: The separations were so ex… were… were…

[29:07.560] Dr. James Fadiman: The person was in the hospital.

[29:10.820] Dr. James Fadiman: kind of prison hospital because they had raped someone. This was a male body.

[29:17.170] Xavier Katana: Hmm. Okay.

[29:17.940] Dr. James Fadiman: And as we discover more and more of who the inner world is, it turns out that it was a female.

[29:24.470] Dr. James Fadiman: within the self that was actually the rapist.

[29:29.610] Dr. James Fadiman: of a female.

[29:31.650] Dr. James Fadiman: So it got very complicated and it made a very fascinating book.

[29:35.360] Dr. James Fadiman: But it simply suggested, because among the alters, as they called them.

[29:40.890] Xavier Katana: Mmhm.

[29:40.890] Dr. James Fadiman: There were some who spoke different languages.

[29:45.940] Xavier Katana: Right.

[29:46.760] Dr. James Fadiman: There were two different artists. One only did portraits, and the only one would never do portraits. It was just too frightening.

[29:54.930] Dr. James Fadiman: So when we see that in pathology, all pathology is is extreme cases of normality.

[30:02.600] Dr. James Fadiman: So, for instance, if I am interested in.

[30:06.420] Dr. James Fadiman: and say photography, and I’m down somewhere, and there’s something interesting happening in the sky, and I really want to do that a lot.

[30:17.690] Dr. James Fadiman: I am…

[30:18.010] Dr. James Fadiman: Healthy enough so that either I will do it or I will.

[30:23.130] Dr. James Fadiman: somehow kind of rationalize with other parts of me that it’s inappropriate to do that right now. It’s not a pathology, it’s that I happen to love a sky that is an extraordinary experience, and I’d love to preserve it.

[30:36.920] Dr. James Fadiman: There’s no pathology there.

[30:40.980] Dr. James Fadiman: There’s no pathology when part of me wants to go to the gym and work out and part of me doesn’t.

[30:49.300] Dr. James Fadiman: There’s no illness. There’s nothing wrong with that.

[30:54.210] Dr. James Fadiman: what I would call normal, sane behavior, which is you work it out.

[31:00.240] Dr. James Fadiman: If you don’t understand that there are parts of you.

[31:04.080] Dr. James Fadiman: two things happen. One is you excessively blame yourself for things that one of yourselves did wrong, and the other, which is probably more common, is you blame someone else entirely.

[31:18.630] Dr. James Fadiman: for something they that one of their selves did at one time.

[31:24.560] Dr. James Fadiman: Many families…

[31:25.830] Dr. James Fadiman: We’re now moving into fall. We’re going to have Thanksgiving. We invite the family, but we don’t invite Uncle Abner.

[31:34.400] Dr. James Fadiman: Why not?

[31:35.240] Dr. James Fadiman: Say some of the kids we love over Amber. He’s funny, he gives us jokes, he brings little secret candies.

[31:42.740] Dr. James Fadiman: 25 years ago.

[31:44.980] Dr. James Fadiman: He cheated.

[31:46.240] Dr. James Fadiman: Me, the father, in a business deal.

[31:50.920] Dr. James Fadiman: I’ve never forgiven him.

[31:57.640] Dr. James Fadiman: Okay.

[31:57.640] Dr. James Fadiman: How much of him?

[31:59.510] Dr. James Fadiman: even 25 years ago, was this the entire being? Was this just one bunch of cheating?

[32:08.050] Dr. James Fadiman: Wrapped up with a few legs at the bottom.

[32:11.330] Xavier Katana: Right.

[32:11.330] Dr. James Fadiman: Of course!

[32:12.680] Dr. James Fadiman: It was a part of Uncle Abner that couldn’t resist.

[32:15.920] Dr. James Fadiman: And let’s assume that the father’s totally right here, okay? That Abner couldn’t resist taking advantage of some weakness in the father, okay?

[32:30.000] Xavier Katana: Mmhm.

[32:30.000] Dr. James Fadiman: Now, I don’t know about your family, but I know that there are one or two members of my family who stopped talking to the rest of us for various reasons.

[32:40.960] Dr. James Fadiman: And I think my brother said it very nicely about a cousin.

[32:44.280] Dr. James Fadiman: He said, “Cousin John is really wonderful, except when we discuss real estate.

[32:53.320] Dr. James Fadiman: Now, we happen to be on the board of a very small real estate company.

[33:01.000] Dr. James Fadiman: And because his.

[33:02.440] Dr. James Fadiman: He was unable to behave very well in that setting.

[33:07.520] Dr. James Fadiman: And things worked out so that he was thrown out of the company.

[33:12.690] Dr. James Fadiman: And a number of people stopped talking to him.

[33:16.480] Dr. James Fadiman: He was a lovely, charming, interesting guy.

[33:21.370] Dr. James Fadiman: Um, PhD in English, uh, fascinated by, um, he would, he…

[33:25.030] Dr. James Fadiman: volunteered, he also became a lawyer, he volunteered to help people in prison who couldn’t afford lawyers.

[33:32.430] Dr. James Fadiman: And lots of people didn’t talk to him.

[33:36.920] Dr. James Fadiman: Not an unusual story.

[33:39.240] Xavier Katana: It happens a lot.

[33:41.760] Dr. James Fadiman: Well, it particularly happens if you assume.

[33:44.480] Dr. James Fadiman: that if someone does one thing wrong the entire being therefore has to be rejected.

[33:52.380] Dr. James Fadiman: Now, it doesn’t make sense. Now, if you have children.

[33:59.690] Dr. James Fadiman: You know better.

[34:00.730] Dr. James Fadiman: I actually have… I mean, I actually have dogs that have no moral sense at all. They steal from each other.

[34:09.210] Dr. James Fadiman: and the one that is, you know… and they steal back from each other. And the only fights they’ve ever had, we’ve had them for about 10 years, has been over stealing food at the wrong time.

[34:21.600] Dr. James Fadiman: When the other dog really hadn’t finished, like, biting it.

[34:26.420] Dr. James Fadiman: And suddenly there’s this massive amount of barking and snarling and so forth.

[34:32.130] Dr. James Fadiman: where the social structure breaks down now they steal from each other when it’s when they can.

[34:39.670] Dr. James Fadiman: But we don’t punish anyone. One is they don’t know the term stealing, they just know I’m a dog, and that’s what dogs do with each other.

[34:49.650] Dr. James Fadiman: And two is, um, we are aware of the multiplicity inside animals as well.

[34:54.700] Dr. James Fadiman: And if anyone has ever had a pet, particularly a cat, cats are wonderful for letting you know.

[35:01.410] Dr. James Fadiman: that you’re a wonderful person, or get your goddamn hands off me right this second, I’m gonna slash you, and you’ll never, you know, use that thumb again.

[35:10.480] Xavier Katana: Right.

[35:11.480] Dr. James Fadiman: Right?

[35:12.480] Xavier Katana: Yeah.

[35:14.110] Dr. James Fadiman: But do we say that cats have inner multiplicity? No.

[35:19.480] Dr. James Fadiman: Because if we don’t have inner multiplicity, certainly cats don’t.

[35:26.040] Xavier Katana: So how does trauma affect this whole perspective?

[35:31.280] Dr. James Fadiman: Well, trauma is an injury to.

[35:34.060] Dr. James Fadiman: certain let’s say in some percentage of the whole set of beings.

[35:40.770] Dr. James Fadiman: I mean, that’s kind of like saying, well.

[35:43.630] Dr. James Fadiman: There’s eight of us in the apartment house and there’s a fire on the first floor, but it’s only affecting one bedroom.

[35:51.920] Dr. James Fadiman: Don’t worry about it.

[35:54.360] Dr. James Fadiman: Okay, we don’t do that.

[35:57.480] Dr. James Fadiman: We say, no, a fire affects the entire structure. We all have to cooperate and try and help.

[36:05.280] Dr. James Fadiman: And if one of us happens to have set the fire, then we have to do something to restrict that person.

[36:12.560] Dr. James Fadiman: And when you begin to study.

[36:14.670] Dr. James Fadiman: what happens inside of people in reality, very often there are what are called kind of imprisoned parts of the self that nobody wants to let them out.

[36:26.720] Dr. James Fadiman: Again, often in more severe pathology where everything is just more visible.

[36:32.460] Dr. James Fadiman: Remember, pathology is not like, oh, different.

[36:36.410] Dr. James Fadiman: You know, it’s like red is different than yellow.

[36:40.880] Dr. James Fadiman: It’s not that there’s well you got to really understand that yellow is honestly red it just has had a very hard childhood okay it’s not true.

[36:49.880] Dr. James Fadiman: The parts have agency.

[36:54.040] Dr. James Fadiman: And so forth.

[36:57.080] Dr. James Fadiman: They also are very helpful.

[37:00.830] Dr. James Fadiman: Because you have parts that are very… I’m afraid to confront this person.

[37:07.520] Dr. James Fadiman: But I’m not. I’ll do it. Okay.

[37:11.200] Dr. James Fadiman: And then you confront that person and you say, wow, I didn’t know I had that in me. Remember that phrase?

[37:17.440] Xavier Katana: Mm-hmm, yeah.

[37:19.760] Dr. James Fadiman: English, when you look at how language is used, it’s trying to express what people actually experience.

[37:28.850] Dr. James Fadiman: So those are where you find some clues.

[37:32.480] Dr. James Fadiman: Now let’s be another thing is people talk about being in a.

[37:38.710] Dr. James Fadiman: state in which they’re able to be creative.

[37:43.390] Dr. James Fadiman: um…

[37:44.160] Dr. James Fadiman: and this will show you how old I am, it used to be that writers often would say, before I can settle down to writing, I sharpen 8 or 10 pencils.

[37:55.750] Dr. James Fadiman: Which means you knew what a pencil sharpener was, and you knew maybe what a pencil was.

[38:01.680] Xavier Katana: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[38:02.360] Dr. James Fadiman: What they were saying is they were getting in the mood.

[38:06.120] Dr. James Fadiman: They were getting into the place in themselves in which they could, say, write or paint.

[38:12.520] Dr. James Fadiman: And we all understood that.

[38:14.320] Dr. James Fadiman: In fact, we have another, we have that term.

[38:17.880] Dr. James Fadiman: What is… what do we normally mean? What’s a conventional sense? I’m… I’m not in the mood, or I’m in the mood. What.

[38:25.500] Dr. James Fadiman: Want a hint?

[38:30.920] Xavier Katana: Yeah, I’m.

[38:31.920] Dr. James Fadiman: Okay.

[38:33.770] Dr. James Fadiman: What are we talking about?

[38:36.400] Dr. James Fadiman: Here, I’ll give you the hint. Honey, I’m not in the mood, okay?

[38:42.600] Xavier Katana: Right. I think I know what we’re talking about.

[38:45.840] Dr. James Fadiman: So…

[38:48.490] Dr. James Fadiman: And we, who are in the mood, okay, that part of ourselves has to then deal with the reality that it’s not going to go the way it’s intended.

[39:04.220] Dr. James Fadiman: Okay.

[39:05.480] Dr. James Fadiman: So we deal with ourselves all the time and not understanding that makes life very puzzling.

[39:14.680] Xavier Katana: Mm-hmm.

[39:16.200] Xavier Katana: Yeah. So, would you say that major life transitions, like adolescence, parenthood, war.

[39:26.480] Xavier Katana: grief, things… do that… do those things create new versions of ourselves?

[39:34.840] Dr. James Fadiman: Or new cells, perhaps. And the answer is, we don’t really know.

[39:39.930] Xavier Katana: New selves.

[39:40.430] Dr. James Fadiman: Because selves don’t know when they’ve come into existence any more than you remember birth.

[39:48.560] Dr. James Fadiman: But we see in healthy people.

[39:50.640] Dr. James Fadiman: They… they cooperate with their inner selves, whether they’re aware of it or not. Pathology is usually a break… it’s like a family breakdown.

[40:03.000] Dr. James Fadiman: There’s a term in psychology when you deal with a family.

[40:08.910] Dr. James Fadiman: Somebody in the family is called the identified patient.

[40:12.940] Dr. James Fadiman: Okay.

[40:14.560] Xavier Katana: Yeah, I’ve heard of this.

[40:16.560] Dr. James Fadiman: And in plain, in personal psychotherapy, the identified patient is who the therapist sees.

[40:24.000] Dr. James Fadiman: And therefore, the view of the family is entirely from that point of view. If you do family therapy, which is much, much harder, because everyone gets mad at you for.

[40:33.600] Dr. James Fadiman: calling them on their stuff.

[40:36.410] Dr. James Fadiman: The identified patient usually is not the sickest person in the family.

[40:43.080] Dr. James Fadiman: But a family dynamic.

[40:45.800] Dr. James Fadiman: Um, imagine…

[40:46.670] Dr. James Fadiman: You’ve grown up in a family and there’s like three kids and you’re say the middle kid who gets neglected.

[40:55.000] Dr. James Fadiman: And you’re not doing as well in school as your siblings are doing.

[41:02.410] Dr. James Fadiman: And so your parents say, well, it’s okay, you’re just not as smart as they are.

[41:09.320] Dr. James Fadiman: Okay.

[41:10.200] Dr. James Fadiman: Now…

[41:10.700] Dr. James Fadiman: you understand that the child has to bring that into reality.

[41:17.830] Dr. James Fadiman: How do you?

[41:19.560] Dr. James Fadiman: How do you begin to see that if you’re not as smart as your brothers, maybe the easiest way to understand that is you’re not smart.

[41:33.400] Dr. James Fadiman: And…

[41:33.670] Dr. James Fadiman: Your grades then will begin to show that.

[41:37.360] Dr. James Fadiman: Let me give you the opposite story because it’s one in my family.

[41:45.320] Dr. James Fadiman: I have an older brother.

[41:47.330] Dr. James Fadiman: And he was, um…

[41:48.390] Dr. James Fadiman: until maybe fifth, sixth, seventh grade, I’m not sure, an average student.

[41:56.850] Dr. James Fadiman: And if you said to him, are you smart? He says, no, I’m just average.

[42:01.240] Dr. James Fadiman: And if we looked at his report card, and there were report cards, which had, like, 10 or 12 little items. There were content items, it was, it was, how were you at recess? Um, how were you with other kids? How were you in geometry? How were you in, in history?

[42:16.730] Dr. James Fadiman: And you had like A, B, C, D, E, F.

[42:20.680] Dr. James Fadiman: And he had basically, if you looked at one of his report cards, it was C’s in everything.

[42:26.370] Dr. James Fadiman: He was average in everything.

[42:30.080] Dr. James Fadiman: And he had proof.

[42:31.080] Xavier Katana: Mm-hmm.

[42:31.320] Dr. James Fadiman: We couldn’t push him because, hey, I’m just average.

[42:37.110] Dr. James Fadiman: Okay?

[42:38.040] Dr. James Fadiman: Then he read a book about really smart collie dogs.

[42:44.810] Dr. James Fadiman: a writer named Albert Payson Tourillon, and their dogs always were doing things like, what’s… what do you need? What are you doing? Oh, you’re taking me in this direction. Okay, we’re going a mile and a half. Oh, there’s little Johnny stuck under the tree. My God, Lassie, you’re so helpful.

[43:01.320] Dr. James Fadiman: Okay.

[43:02.880] Dr. James Fadiman: Those kind of stories where the dog is always terrific.

[43:07.040] Dr. James Fadiman: And my brother said to my parents, I want a dog.

[43:11.000] Dr. James Fadiman: I want a dog like in the Albert Payson Tourjean books.

[43:15.920] Dr. James Fadiman: And my parents said.

[43:17.040] Dr. James Fadiman: They said, I don’t know if they said it quite this way, we don’t really want a dog.

[43:23.290] Dr. James Fadiman: And my brother said, please, please, please, just as nagging as he could be. And my parents…

[43:29.510] Dr. James Fadiman: Said, okay, but you have to get three A’s on your next report card.

[43:36.160] Dr. James Fadiman: My brother collapsed in tears.

[43:39.320] Dr. James Fadiman: because that was impossible because he was average.

[43:45.200] Dr. James Fadiman: And he had the statistical proof.

[43:49.140] Dr. James Fadiman: And he wanted a dog.

[43:51.870] Dr. James Fadiman: He wanted a dog very much.

[43:57.060] Dr. James Fadiman: Guess what his next report card looks like?

[44:00.680] Xavier Katana: Straight A’s.

[44:01.520] Dr. James Fadiman: Not quite.

[44:02.520] Xavier Katana: It was close.

[44:05.560] Dr. James Fadiman: And we got this not really very smart, but very sweet colleague.

[44:09.780] Dr. James Fadiman: Okay, now what happened is his cover had been blown.

[44:16.760] Dr. James Fadiman: He now speaks, I think, four or five languages. He has, I think, three master’s degrees and a PhD.

[44:24.430] Dr. James Fadiman: Oh.

[44:25.280] Dr. James Fadiman: He’s written a — he’s actually a member of an African tribe because he created the only history that that tribe ever had.

[44:33.400] Dr. James Fadiman: That was his dissertation.

[44:35.400] Dr. James Fadiman: In short, he got stuck.

[44:38.000] Dr. James Fadiman: Once he wasn’t average a whole lot of other things had to change.

[44:42.760] Dr. James Fadiman: Now, do I believe that he thought he was average?

[44:47.760] Dr. James Fadiman: I do.

[44:49.290] Dr. James Fadiman: He did.

[44:49.490] Dr. James Fadiman: You know, it made sense. Someone, you know, if you look at any group of people, somebody has to be average.

[44:57.880] Dr. James Fadiman: But if you’re seeing that the self is quite pliable and that other selves are around, it makes it easier to understand.

[45:07.440] Xavier Katana: Yeah, I mean, I’m starting to get it. I think I get it. So, you know, I have a good question, I think, is, you know, is this illusion that we’re a single, separate self related to another illusion that we’re somehow separate from other people?

[45:26.840] Xavier Katana: From nature and from the world around us.

[45:31.040] Dr. James Fadiman: That’s part, but how did we get to that? Well, one of the unfortunate sources of misinformation was Christianity.

[45:43.040] Dr. James Fadiman: that Christianity.

[45:44.910] Dr. James Fadiman: takes the position that you’re you know there’s only one God very bizarre position at that time in the world.

[45:53.880] Dr. James Fadiman: And here was the very fascinating part of Christianity. All the others were wrong.

[45:59.480] Dr. James Fadiman: So everyone’s wrong except you that has only one God. And if there’s only one God, it’s not unreasonable to assume there’s only one self.

[46:10.680] Xavier Katana: Mmhm.

[46:11.640] Dr. James Fadiman: And things go downhill from there.

[46:19.120] Dr. James Fadiman: So, when we were… when Jordan and I were working on this book on cells.

[46:25.820] Dr. James Fadiman: The problem for us.

[46:28.020] Dr. James Fadiman: was how much could we kind of put into the book without making it monstrous.

[46:34.800] Dr. James Fadiman: Because since it looks that way, once you start looking at it, you see it everywhere.

[46:42.200] Dr. James Fadiman: It’s like once you see.

[46:44.460] Dr. James Fadiman: that the world has got a lot of injustice, it becomes more visible.

[46:51.930] Dr. James Fadiman: If you’re a biologist or a…

[46:53.990] Dr. James Fadiman: or mycologist, you begin to see, say, mold in places you would never have noticed it because you don’t know how to look for mold.

[47:02.120] Dr. James Fadiman: So we specialize.

[47:05.280] Dr. James Fadiman: And the reason that we wrote the book is it makes life saner. And also, there are two things that happen. Once you understand that you have a number of selves.

[47:16.040] Dr. James Fadiman: One is you can forgive yourself.

[47:19.270] Dr. James Fadiman: Okay.

[47:19.270] Xavier Katana: Right.

[47:20.130] Dr. James Fadiman: Um.

[47:20.130] Dr. James Fadiman: Just thinking of something dishonest I did that I’m up for confessing and I have not reached that level of.

[47:32.620] Dr. James Fadiman: of humility. But I can remember things I did that were dishonest.

[47:39.240] Dr. James Fadiman: Am I proud of them? No.

[47:41.240] Dr. James Fadiman: Would I do them today? I hope not.

[47:44.180] Dr. James Fadiman: The person who did them totally understood the necessity of doing them.

[47:48.070] Dr. James Fadiman: Well, actually I will give you one.

[47:52.120] Dr. James Fadiman: I was interested in psychedelics. I was in graduate school at Stanford University. This was during Vietnam.

[48:00.720] Dr. James Fadiman: My reason for being in graduate school was about 85% not to be…

[48:05.280] Dr. James Fadiman: drafted and sent to Vietnam and 15% some interest.

[48:13.370] Dr. James Fadiman: And I became fascinated with psychedelics and what they said about things like spiritual systems, psychodynamic systems, art, philosophy.

[48:23.110] Dr. James Fadiman: And my psychology professors didn’t have much background in any of those, and didn’t have any interest.

[48:30.160] Dr. James Fadiman: And I didn’t want to say too much about what was… I was really thinking, or they might…

[48:34.740] Dr. James Fadiman: realistically say to themselves, he really isn’t…

[48:37.910] Dr. James Fadiman: he doesn’t like what we’re doing, he doesn’t believe in our religion, so to speak, and if we throw him out, it’s not our problem if he goes to Vietnam.

[48:50.080] Dr. James Fadiman: So.

[48:50.310] Dr. James Fadiman: I didn’t respect them.

[48:52.380] Dr. James Fadiman: Because I didn’t think they knew much of what interested me, and so I wrote.

[49:00.120] Dr. James Fadiman: A paper for a class.

[49:02.800] Dr. James Fadiman: And then there was another class, and I thought, well, I could use that paper. I actually used the same paper for four classes. I just put a different header on it. And it reinforced my feeling that they didn’t know much.

[49:18.960] Xavier Katana: Mmhm.

[49:18.960] Dr. James Fadiman: And I was considered a perfectly good student.

[49:24.840] Dr. James Fadiman: So one uses parts of the self.

[49:29.900] Dr. James Fadiman: Judiciously.

[49:33.000] Dr. James Fadiman: Just as if there was — if you were running a company and you have 25 employees, they don’t all do the same thing. That’s ridiculous.

[49:42.600] Dr. James Fadiman: You pick the ones that best at what they do and you help them do that better. That’s the same as inside of yourself.

[49:50.680] Xavier Katana: Right. Jim, we’re approaching the end of the first hour, um, you know, and I have to bridge this into psychedelics, or I’m gonna get a bunch of comments saying, why didn’t you talk about psychedelics with the person who.

[50:08.850] Dr. James Fadiman: Like that.

[50:09.340] Dr. James Fadiman: who…

[50:09.580] Xavier Katana: Founded basically you’re the father of microdosing, so how does it relate when a person takes a psychedelic and this idea about our inner self?

[50:24.840] Dr. James Fadiman: Well, let’s briefly go through high-dose psychedelics, which is.

[50:31.300] Dr. James Fadiman: what got them banned.

[50:33.770] Dr. James Fadiman: And what you discover at one layer, as you’re letting go of your identity, as you understood it, you can see other parts of yourself, you can accept parts of yourself, and then you realize that all of these selves are part of a larger.

[50:50.030] Dr. James Fadiman: Kind of, um…

[50:50.490] Dr. James Fadiman: family, or company, or cooperative. And then that also can dissolve into seeing that you’re actually connected.

[51:01.880] Dr. James Fadiman: to the actual physical world. And you asked at some point earlier on about connecting to nature.

[51:09.680] Dr. James Fadiman: And one of the things that is clear in most psychedelic sessions that have any outdoors is you identify with being part of the natural environment.

[51:20.320] Dr. James Fadiman: Now.

[51:20.610] Dr. James Fadiman: To Indigenous people, it sounds like.

[51:23.260] Dr. James Fadiman: It’s kind of the most obvious dumbest thing in the world. Oh, you found out that when you breathe in and breathe out that the air is kind of all around you.

[51:32.620] Dr. James Fadiman: When you are in the natural world and understand that you’ve always been in the natural world, it is, for many of us, a revelation.

[51:43.120] Dr. James Fadiman: And then you begin to let go of that identity.

[51:46.660] Dr. James Fadiman: And that the natural world is simply made up of organisms that all are made out of energy.

[51:54.370] Dr. James Fadiman: And that you are made out of energy, and that at this moment.

[51:59.580] Dr. James Fadiman: I’m in a physical human body, but at the edges of my body, my skin, there’s atoms flying off of skin.

[52:08.440] Dr. James Fadiman: There’s also atoms flying in. I’m breathing in.

[52:11.840] Dr. James Fadiman: So I’m part of a dynamic that is that is incredibly obvious when you get the identity and identities out of the way.

[52:23.010] Dr. James Fadiman: So imagine that you’ve grown up.

[52:25.120] Dr. James Fadiman: In a very nice house, but the windows have all been blacked out.

[52:29.650] Dr. James Fadiman: And for some reason, somebody leaves the door open.

[52:33.730] Dr. James Fadiman: and you go out and there you are at the beach.

[52:39.040] Dr. James Fadiman: And you are aware that suddenly you are part of this much larger world.

[52:43.760] Dr. James Fadiman: which includes the ocean, which is larger than you can envision.

[52:48.490] Dr. James Fadiman: Well, with psychedelics, you can let go of the house.

[52:52.660] Dr. James Fadiman: That you were brought up in. And you can let go of that you’re separate from the beach.

[53:00.640] Dr. James Fadiman: And then you begin to realize that.

[53:03.440] Dr. James Fadiman: The part of your organism is always dying and always being reborn, and then, wait a moment, if that’s true of a small part of the organism, could that be of the mind itself?

[53:16.170] Dr. James Fadiman: Now, there happened to be…

[53:18.300] Dr. James Fadiman: seriously thoughtful religious experiences, and like Buddhism, which suggests that the self is an illusion.

[53:27.320] Dr. James Fadiman: And that you are part of everything.

[53:30.960] Dr. James Fadiman: Now…

[53:32.830] Dr. James Fadiman: Intellectually, being part of everything is not hard.

[53:36.800] Dr. James Fadiman: when you actually are part of everything it’s like.

[53:39.990] Dr. James Fadiman: It couldn’t possibly be any other way.

[53:43.930] Dr. James Fadiman: And when you return back to being somewhat.

[53:46.580] Dr. James Fadiman: um, identified with this little puddle of flesh. You recall that you… you don’t recall really what you experienced, but you recall that you remember having had that experience.

[54:00.160] Dr. James Fadiman: So that’s high doses, okay?

[54:03.480] Dr. James Fadiman: So the self or selves becomes a subset.

[54:07.210] Xavier Katana: Yep.

[54:07.210] Dr. James Fadiman: So that Jim Fadiman speaking.

[54:09.810] Dr. James Fadiman: PhD, blah, blah, blah.

[54:12.340] Dr. James Fadiman: is a subset of a larger being, which includes all the Jim Fadimans, and probably existed before and may exist after him.

[54:23.440] Dr. James Fadiman: just as a tree.

[54:24.590] Dr. James Fadiman: doesn’t, you know, each apple.

[54:27.410] Dr. James Fadiman: Doesn’t just say I’m a tree.

[54:30.320] Dr. James Fadiman: It says, well, I’m kind of part of a tree, but I also am separate, okay?

[54:34.580] Dr. James Fadiman: So there we are. So microdosing has nothing to do with any of that. Microdosing is, it turns out, simply…

[54:44.280] Dr. James Fadiman: enhances.

[54:47.120] Dr. James Fadiman: the awareness of your own.

[54:50.520] Dr. James Fadiman: Thoughts?

[54:51.840] Dr. James Fadiman: and feelings, and it also enhances the physical body.

[54:58.510] Dr. James Fadiman: to…

[54:58.780] Dr. James Fadiman: Function.

[54:59.870] Dr. James Fadiman: in a healthier manner. So, literally, at the cellular level, it seems to, um, correct imbalances.

[55:09.100] Xavier Katana: Mmhm.

[55:10.440] Dr. James Fadiman: Literally, when people say, when you say to yourself, gee.

[55:15.780] Dr. James Fadiman: I feel better or I feel good. What feels good?

[55:20.080] Dr. James Fadiman: Well, literally, when you’re physically saying that, if you’re coming out, say, from a cold, or from an operation, or a quarrel.

[55:26.360] Dr. James Fadiman: Huh, I feel better.

[55:29.480] Dr. James Fadiman: Everything feels great.

[55:32.670] Dr. James Fadiman: Microdosing seems to work at that level. It doesn’t have any visual excitement. There are no giant anacondas that eat you like with ayahuasca. There’s no revelations of your trauma really.

[55:46.090] Dr. James Fadiman: relates to your grandparents’ trauma that they never told you about. There’s no great insights.

[55:53.380] Dr. James Fadiman: But if you feel better.

[55:55.850] Dr. James Fadiman: And your depression goes away.

[55:59.360] Dr. James Fadiman: or your neuropathy goes away.

[56:02.720] Dr. James Fadiman: Or…

[56:03.120] Dr. James Fadiman: a number of other conditions stop getting in the way of the body being better. Um, you will find that microdosing is probably.

[56:12.970] Dr. James Fadiman: the safest and easiest way to do that.

[56:16.810] Xavier Katana: Mmhm.

[56:16.810] Dr. James Fadiman: So let me give you an example which is many people who are listening have either are on, were on, know people who are on antidepressants. Okay they really should be called emotional suppressants because that’s what they actually do.

[56:34.920] Dr. James Fadiman: For most, for many people, they don’t work well.

[56:38.000] Dr. James Fadiman: And for people, they work well, they find it’s hard to get rid of them.

[56:42.560] Dr. James Fadiman: Okay, so there’s some problems.

[56:44.410] Dr. James Fadiman: But if you’re depressed.

[56:46.480] Dr. James Fadiman: You’d rather be…

[56:47.900] Dr. James Fadiman: If you understand antidepressants, you would rather be less depressed and the cost of that is also being less happy.

[56:56.440] Dr. James Fadiman: So a lot of people on antidepressants say, yeah, I don’t feel as bad about bad things, but I don’t feel good about good things.

[57:04.490] Dr. James Fadiman: Either.

[57:05.600] Dr. James Fadiman: Microdosing works differently.

[57:07.520] Dr. James Fadiman: People who are what we call…

[57:09.660] Dr. James Fadiman: They’re what we call depression resistant. They’re resistant to treatment, which means the things that they were offered didn’t work.

[57:20.520] Dr. James Fadiman: So what we get is somebody microdoses because they’ve been depressed, and within a week or two, they.

[57:27.440] Dr. James Fadiman: Are not only feeling less bad, as they would with antidepressants, but they’re feeling more good.

[57:35.280] Dr. James Fadiman: So they’re feeling less sad and more glad. And the statement…

[57:40.570] Dr. James Fadiman: that I’ve gotten in literally several hundred reports over the years.

[57:46.120] Dr. James Fadiman: It feels like I’m back.

[57:48.680] Dr. James Fadiman: I’m back to the person I was before I was depressed, and before I had antidepressants.

[57:57.160] Dr. James Fadiman: That’s remarkable.

[57:59.140] Dr. James Fadiman: Now, that’s mental… see, mental illness is a kind of funny game, which is…

[58:05.720] Dr. James Fadiman: Some place, 20, 30, 40 years ago, someone said, hey, what if mental illness were really physical?

[58:17.960] Dr. James Fadiman: What if depression was a physiological problem that we could.

[58:24.200] Dr. James Fadiman: handle with a medication.

[58:27.370] Dr. James Fadiman: Well, that doesn’t make any sense at all, because depression is your whole life, and it’s about your past, and it’s… well, let’s just try.

[58:38.880] Dr. James Fadiman: And so we’ve had a series of antidepressants were a improvement over something that was much worse that had lifetime negative physical effects.

[58:49.770] Dr. James Fadiman: But it was a notion if we can make mental illness, which is kind of ethereal, into a.

[58:57.000] Dr. James Fadiman: theory into it by a theory that it’s all physical. Everything’s physical.

[59:01.820] Dr. James Fadiman: Then we can…

[59:02.510] Dr. James Fadiman: give you physical things.

[59:07.900] Dr. James Fadiman: Now, when you have an antidepressant, if you have an honest.

[59:11.380] Xavier Katana: Mmhm.

[59:11.380] Dr. James Fadiman: broker here.

[59:12.300] Dr. James Fadiman: And you say, well, how long will I be using this? He says, well, if it helps you for the rest of your life.

[59:21.520] Dr. James Fadiman: Now, what he doesn’t say, and if it doesn’t help you, after a while, you won’t be able to stop taking it anyway.

[59:28.880] Dr. James Fadiman: Talk about incredible marketing. Imagine you’ve got a product that you buy forever.

[59:34.320] Dr. James Fadiman: Whether it works or whether it doesn’t.

[59:37.380] Dr. James Fadiman: Fantastic.

[59:38.790] Dr. James Fadiman: What happens with microdosing is with depression, for many, many people, they say after four to six weeks.

[59:50.210] Dr. James Fadiman: Wow, I’m not depressed.

[59:52.070] Dr. James Fadiman: That’s really wonderful.

[59:56.200] Dr. James Fadiman: Thank you, microdosing.

[59:58.050] Dr. James Fadiman: And they get on with their lives. Other people, it turns out.

[1:00:01.860] Dr. James Fadiman: Do the same thing and but a few weeks later depression creeps back in.

[1:00:06.960] Dr. James Fadiman: So they microdose again.

[1:00:11.640] Dr. James Fadiman: Now, when I was first faced with this, I thought, because I had a friend who I…

[1:00:16.340] Dr. James Fadiman: Told about it, and she microdosed her way out of a long depression.

[1:00:20.510] Dr. James Fadiman: And she got so excited, she turned on all her depressed friends.

[1:00:25.720] Dr. James Fadiman: And then six weeks later, she gave me this problem. Why are some of my friends saying they’re not depressed? Thank you very much. And others of my friends are saying, well, my depression’s coming back. Should I microdose again?

[1:00:40.200] Dr. James Fadiman: And I thought that is an ideal experiment that is so terrific from the sciency side.

[1:00:46.040] Dr. James Fadiman: So I…

[1:00:46.410] Dr. James Fadiman: And she said, well, why do you think there’s a difference? And I, being a real scientist, inside, said, I have the faintest idea.

[1:00:55.200] Dr. James Fadiman: But since I’m also…

[1:00:56.920] Dr. James Fadiman: someone who just is interested in other people’s points of view, particularly when they have more information. I said, well, they’re your friends. What do you think is the difference between those two groups? And we talked for a while.

[1:01:10.320] Dr. James Fadiman: And what she said was.

[1:01:11.940] Dr. James Fadiman: oh you know the friends of mine who.

[1:01:16.360] Dr. James Fadiman: Stop being depressed.

[1:01:17.600] Dr. James Fadiman: their lives were working pretty well and my friends who their depression returned their lives aren’t working very well.

[1:01:24.600] Dr. James Fadiman: So, therefore, we began to understand.

[1:01:26.940] Dr. James Fadiman: The difference between some conditions can just be healed and others have to be approached differently.

[1:01:35.240] Xavier Katana: Right.

[1:01:36.360] Xavier Katana: I mean, the last time that we talked, microdosing was less of a trend and something people were experimenting with. And now, you know, there are studies conducted that you’ve conducted on.

[1:01:53.450] Dr. James Fadiman: Okay.

[1:01:53.630] Xavier Katana: On microdosing and we have all this data that we can present that it is beneficial. There are companies that produce products that use substances that are not antidepressants to deal with depression.

[1:02:09.060] Xavier Katana: like ketamine therapy.

[1:02:10.860] Xavier Katana: Is, you know, you’ve spent a lifetime of work studying psychedelics, microdosing, and now the nature of the self. Is there a conclusion that you think.

[1:02:27.490] Dr. James Fadiman: Yup.

[1:02:28.260] Xavier Katana: That we’ve gotten wrong like that’s.

[1:02:31.760] Dr. James Fadiman: Yeah, yeah.

[1:02:31.760] Dr. James Fadiman: Certainly not my idea, but one of the things that is common when Indigenous people.

[1:02:40.780] Dr. James Fadiman: Asked or asked.

[1:02:41.480] Dr. James Fadiman: I’m.

[1:02:41.480] Dr. James Fadiman: You lived in this forest for 10,000 years, and it’s better than ever.

[1:02:48.850] Dr. James Fadiman: We’ve been here 60 years and we’ve destroyed…

[1:02:53.220] Dr. James Fadiman: 70% of the forest.

[1:02:55.560] Dr. James Fadiman: Would you like to advise us?

[1:02:57.200] Dr. James Fadiman: And they said, yeah, you made a fundamental error. You thought you were not also the forest.

[1:03:05.480] Dr. James Fadiman: You had a theory of identity.

[1:03:08.340] Dr. James Fadiman: that ended at the end of your fingertips.

[1:03:12.930] Dr. James Fadiman: You also.

[1:03:13.740] Dr. James Fadiman: Had another level where you denied the parts of yourself.

[1:03:19.510] Dr. James Fadiman: that were more open to this kind of normal understanding.

[1:03:25.720] Dr. James Fadiman: And you built whole systems to press yourself farther and farther away.

[1:03:33.140] Dr. James Fadiman: One from being in nature and two in being with each other.

[1:03:40.130] Xavier Katana: So the two things are fundamentally connected.

[1:03:42.120] Dr. James Fadiman: Yeah, so the notion, remember we have a notion in the West that the highest form of being is an isolated individual.

[1:03:52.140] Dr. James Fadiman: I did it myself.

[1:03:56.350] Dr. James Fadiman: Right?

[1:03:58.800] Dr. James Fadiman: that… that, um… should one ever imagine that, as someone pointed out, oh, did you… what’d you do yourself? Well, I built this company from scratch.

[1:04:07.730] Dr. James Fadiman: Oh, really? Did you use any of the roads?

[1:04:11.160] Dr. James Fadiman: What do you mean?

[1:04:14.160] Dr. James Fadiman: You know, the roads that get to your place.

[1:04:18.190] Dr. James Fadiman: Did you use the electronics from somewhere?

[1:04:22.520] Dr. James Fadiman: Did the people you hired, did they go to, were there schools? Was that necessary? And so forth and so on. And it’s obvious that you didn’t do anything yourself.

[1:04:31.630] Dr. James Fadiman: Well.

[1:04:32.220] Dr. James Fadiman: That error…

[1:04:33.450] Dr. James Fadiman: gives you one unfortunate other thing, is I’m an isolated individual.

[1:04:39.920] Dr. James Fadiman: If I hurt you.

[1:04:42.980] Dr. James Fadiman: I’m not hurt.

[1:04:46.040] Dr. James Fadiman: Okay.

[1:04:47.880] Dr. James Fadiman: Imagine that.

[1:04:49.630] Dr. James Fadiman: You are a father, and your child does something that you disapprove of, and you hit them.

[1:05:00.490] Xavier Katana: Hmm. Okay.

[1:05:01.680] Dr. James Fadiman: Doesn’t, no problem.

[1:05:03.550] Dr. James Fadiman: You’re not harmed.

[1:05:05.620] Dr. James Fadiman: And we know that’s false.

[1:05:08.710] Dr. James Fadiman: That you actually are in…

[1:05:11.270] Dr. James Fadiman: in, you know, interwoven with your child, whether you understand it or not.

[1:05:20.160] Dr. James Fadiman: So the fundamental error of the individual assuming they are individualized.

[1:05:27.820] Dr. James Fadiman: Instead of that they are porous, that they are able to understand that they are part of a matrix.

[1:05:36.450] Dr. James Fadiman: That they’re not necessarily a family, not necessarily a religious group or a nationality.

[1:05:43.040] Dr. James Fadiman: But if they at least walk outside.

[1:05:46.440] Dr. James Fadiman: Oh.

[1:05:46.440] Dr. James Fadiman: Well, it turns out that, um, one of the… one of the things we’re learning about depression is if you go and actually literally hug a tree.

[1:05:54.980] Dr. James Fadiman: that there’s an electrochemical.

[1:05:56.960] Dr. James Fadiman: Shift.

[1:05:57.730] Dr. James Fadiman: That’s measurable.

[1:06:00.680] Dr. James Fadiman: Uh, it isn’t that the tree is interested in healing you.

[1:06:06.330] Dr. James Fadiman: But there is something about getting back into a larger rhythm.

[1:06:10.480] Dr. James Fadiman: That is healing. Why do we want to go to the beach?

[1:06:14.560] Dr. James Fadiman: Why do we like the beach?

[1:06:18.080] Dr. James Fadiman: One of the reasons is there is something about being in a part of a very large thing.

[1:06:24.280] Dr. James Fadiman: That is…

[1:06:26.040] Dr. James Fadiman: that is releases us from our being individual. Because when you look at a, let’s say a sunset, we all agree, fabulous sunset. There’s very little of your identity in that awe.

[1:06:41.600] Dr. James Fadiman: It isn’t that, oh, that’s the way Jim Fadiman sees the sunset.

[1:06:46.080] Dr. James Fadiman: Gee, I bet if he were, you know, Danish, he would see it differently. We don’t do that.

[1:06:52.730] Dr. James Fadiman: We just relax and allow the natural reality that we cannot avoid being part of.

[1:07:01.190] Dr. James Fadiman: Um.

[1:07:01.190] Dr. James Fadiman: Become more visible.

[1:07:04.200] Dr. James Fadiman: And one of the things that happens with higher dose psychedelics is it’s easier to do that.

[1:07:11.120] Dr. James Fadiman: um…

[1:07:11.120] Dr. James Fadiman: I gave a talk somewhere, and a woman afterwards said, hey, Mr. Fadiman, I want to give you a word. I said, okay. Psychedelic.

[1:07:20.140] Dr. James Fadiman: I said, what’s a psychedelic?

[1:07:23.120] Dr. James Fadiman: She said, there’s a bunch of us that every quarter we get together and we take psychedelics and we take a hike.

[1:07:29.590] Dr. James Fadiman: And we go out in nature and we love it.

[1:07:33.320] Dr. James Fadiman: I thought she really…

[1:07:35.190] Dr. James Fadiman: got something very serious there. She understood that one of the things that she needed to break the illusion of separation was a psychedelic help.

[1:07:49.160] Dr. James Fadiman: So, that’s… if you’re answering, what’s our problem? Our problem is that we think other people, or other countries, or other races, or whatever it is, um, can be harmed without harming us.

[1:08:02.320] Xavier Katana: Yeah, that’s huge.

[1:08:05.920] Dr. James Fadiman: And we’re now historically — because who knows when this will be heard — historically, we, the United States, have attacked another country. And they control a little teeny piece of the world, tiny piece of the street called the Strait of Hormuz.

[1:08:20.720] Dr. James Fadiman: The fifth of the world’s oil goes through.

[1:08:25.000] Dr. James Fadiman: And…

[1:08:25.270] Dr. James Fadiman: The country that was attacked said, you know.

[1:08:28.870] Dr. James Fadiman: We can’t handle that we’re being attacked by a country 100 times as strong as us militarily, but we control this little teeny bit of land, and we’re going to close it.

[1:08:40.250] Dr. James Fadiman: And it turns out that the rest of the world will suddenly notice.

[1:08:45.110] Dr. James Fadiman: that any constriction in the movement.

[1:08:48.850] Dr. James Fadiman: of a little bit of land constricts the whole world.

[1:08:54.920] Xavier Katana: Yeah.

[1:08:56.920] Dr. James Fadiman: So… so that’s, again, that’s a kind of poetic way of looking at it, but the idea that you’re… that you can be unaffected by what… what you do to other people is the greatest of illusions.

[1:09:10.620] Xavier Katana: That’s very profound. Beautiful. I love it. Jim, we’re reaching the end of the main part here. I want to wrap all of this together. You know, is there something that I could have asked you that I didn’t?

[1:09:26.800] Xavier Katana: Can you give us a conclusion? Can you wrap, can you bow tie this all for us?

[1:09:34.240] Dr. James Fadiman: Reality just doesn’t work that way.

[1:09:37.250] Dr. James Fadiman: I love it. Yeah, I mean, you know, I finish a book, and at the end of a book.

[1:09:42.860] Dr. James Fadiman: Um, the nice thing about a kind of science-y book, you end all science books the same way, which is…

[1:09:49.870] Dr. James Fadiman: we know this much, but there’s a lot more to be known, and more research, and give thee more money, more research is necessary. That’s my favorite way, that’s the kind of religious end. You know, when you do a prayer, you end it and you say, Amen. When you write science, at the end you say.

[1:10:05.510] Dr. James Fadiman: And the words amen are spelled as we, more research is needed, meaning knowledge doesn’t get delineated, doesn’t end.

[1:10:14.560] Dr. James Fadiman: And one of the… when you’re reading the history of science, every once in a while, somebody gets to be famous in history for saying, well, we now know enough about all that. It’s pretty much over.

[1:10:27.530] Dr. James Fadiman: And there’s somebody really famous that says that about physics.

[1:10:31.390] Dr. James Fadiman: just before almost everything we know about physics becomes known.

[1:10:35.720] Dr. James Fadiman: Remember, we used to think that the Earth wasn’t — that everything around the Earth was secondary to the Earth.

[1:10:46.560] Xavier Katana: We had the heliocentric model before that.

[1:10:50.510] Dr. James Fadiman: Yeah, and it looks that way.

[1:10:52.890] Dr. James Fadiman: Until you look more closely.

[1:10:56.210] Dr. James Fadiman: Or, if you have an experience.

[1:10:59.540] Dr. James Fadiman: Where you let go of that which prevents you from seeing the interrelationship of all things.

[1:11:09.000] Dr. James Fadiman: Now, then you come down usually from that experience, including if you’re a spiritual being with 20 years of experience, you still go in and out.

[1:11:19.010] Dr. James Fadiman: And then you have to say, well, if I believe my own experience, which felt more real than this.

[1:11:27.000] Dr. James Fadiman: I must try to live somewhat closer to that.

[1:11:33.880] Dr. James Fadiman: And that’s how we begin to make progress. Well, how about if I look at Uncle Abner, let’s go back to multiplicity, if I get that there’s part of Uncle Abner that’s just awful.

[1:11:45.910] Dr. James Fadiman: I can take that in along with Uncle Abner.

[1:11:49.480] Dr. James Fadiman: And then he can come back to Thanksgiving.

[1:11:53.360] Dr. James Fadiman: And he may even say, hey, 25 years ago, Bill, I cheated you on that house deal. I’ve been ashamed of that ever since.

[1:12:02.720] Dr. James Fadiman: Poof!

[1:12:04.400] Dr. James Fadiman: the barrier goes down so the barrier is there and you always can bring it down.

[1:12:12.170] Dr. James Fadiman: And that’s what’s fun about the work I’m doing.

[1:12:16.380] Dr. James Fadiman: Uh, with… with microdosing is people say, here’s a condition.

[1:12:21.020] Dr. James Fadiman: For which Western medicine and maybe even Eastern medicine says there’s no treatments, no medication, and no therapies. Let me give you one just as a nice puzzler to think about. Tourette’s syndrome, we’ve all seen a movie of somebody twitching.

[1:12:36.370] Dr. James Fadiman: and saying things. Okay, Tourette’s is a little more subdued than that, but it’s very real.

[1:12:43.840] Dr. James Fadiman: and no treatments, no medication, no therapies, and I get a letter from someone that says, you know, when I microdose.

[1:12:51.180] Dr. James Fadiman: And when I microdosed the first time.

[1:12:54.240] Dr. James Fadiman: I had an hour.

[1:12:55.640] Dr. James Fadiman: without any ticks.

[1:12:58.100] Dr. James Fadiman: Without any twitches.

[1:13:01.200] Dr. James Fadiman: The first hour I’ve had that since I was eight years old.

[1:13:06.680] Xavier Katana: Mmhm.

[1:13:06.680] Dr. James Fadiman: That gets my attention.

[1:13:08.730] Dr. James Fadiman: That’s what I’m working on. And I am in touch with him, and he’s just wonderful.

[1:13:14.240] Dr. James Fadiman: And we’re… see, we’re exploring by letting go, for instance, of that psychedelics are about the mind, the mental.

[1:13:23.320] Xavier Katana: That’s a…

[1:13:26.080] Dr. James Fadiman: Suddenly, you open the door.

[1:13:29.120] Dr. James Fadiman: And the door turns out, when you open doors, and you look out.

[1:13:34.170] Dr. James Fadiman: That’s step two. The third step is you step out. And then there’s a lot of other things that happen. So no conclusions.

[1:13:42.310] Dr. James Fadiman: But the doors are open.

[1:13:45.680] Dr. James Fadiman: And as someone said, if you if it looks like a wall.

[1:13:49.220] Dr. James Fadiman: It just might be a door in disguise. Try opening it.

[1:13:53.960] Xavier Katana: I love that. Jim, I think we’re going to wrap the main episode here. Guys, for everyone listening, we’re going to wrap the main part of the show here, but Jim has graciously agreed to stay with us for a bonus conversation.

[1:14:12.680] Xavier Katana: We’re going to get a little more personal, a little more curious, and wander into some places we haven’t explored yet. If you’ve enjoyed spending this time with us, and you’d like to keep going, you can join us in the bonus conversation at thehumanxp.com slash.

[1:14:26.600] Xavier Katana: membership, and genuinely, your membership helps keep the human experience independent and make conversations like this possible.