The Psychological Imagination and the Ascent of the Contemplative Practice Industrial Complex


Sarah Badr, McGill University

My paper aims to better understand the rise of contemplative practices within the scientific industrial complex. Using a comparative approach to examine mindfulness meditation and psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, it will frame these practices as cases which reflect the growing prominence of what Daniel Nehring and Ashley Frawley call "the psychological imagination." Meditation, with its Buddhist origins, and psychedelic use, with its long history in traditional societies around the world, first arose to prominence as practices in Western culture through the American counterculture of the post-war period and were associated with groups such as the hippies and anti-war activists. In recent decades, these practices have undergone secularization and commodification, transforming from esoteric, niche practices for the purpose of expanding ones consciousness, to mainstream practices that are promoted as tools of self-care and healing within a growing cultural focus on "wellness". This can be illustrated by the rise of what Ron McPurser calls McMindfulness, his term for the popularization and commodification of meditation practices as tools for stress reduction, as well as the Psychedelic Renaissance and the increasing popularity of practices such as microdosing. Critics of both the mindfulness industrial complex and the nascent psychedelic medical industrial xomplex argue that rather than being liberatory tools, these practices as currently promoted place the onus of wellness on the individual while neglecting the social causes of stress and mental illness. Building on previous research related to the growth of wellness cultures and the growing popularity of self-care practices, this paper contributes to critical interventions which explore how conceptions of wellness and productivity have become intertwined using the framework of the psychological imagination. Drawing from the sociology of knowledge, science and technology studies and social theory, my research hopes to deepen our understanding of therapeutic cultures through an investigation into the ascent of the mindfulness industrial complex and of psychedelic medicine. Using a comparative approach, this paper will use political economy and discourse analysis to trace the rise of contemplative practices in the scientific industrial complex, in the greater xontext of the rise of the psy-sciences, illustrating how these shifts have occured alongside neoliberal economic approaches to health and a growing mental health crisis. It will draw special attention to the implications of the psychedelic renaissance, and the ways that psychedelic knowledge is being integrated and shaped within larger processes of medicalization and commercialization. The significance of this investigation is greater insight into the political, social, cultural and economic processes which shape scientific production generally, and approaches to mental health specifically. In the context of a growing mental health problem, the crisis of psychiatry and the growth of the wellness industry, examining the processes of medicalization and commodification in the case of meditative and psychedelic practices offers a chance to explore questions that challenge societal understandings of health, healing and wellness in a time of increasing social and environmental crisis. By investigating these cases from a sociological perspective, this paper hopes to contribute to a growing literature which frames these issues as an opportunity to emphasize community-based understandings of health and wellness.

This paper will be presented at the following session: