Documenting and defining emergent phenomenology: theoretical foundations for an extensive research strategy

The paper highlights the widespread use of Altered States of Consciousness (ASCs) induction methods across diverse cultures, despite a lack of understanding and often pathologizing interpretations in clinical settings. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) attempts to address this, but lacks sufficient detail and comprehensive characterizations of culturally sanctioned experiences. Existing guidelines from the World Psychiatry Association and World Health Organization acknowledge the importance of spirituality and religion in mental health but lack detailed phenomenological documentation. The authors posit a significant ethical mandate to research this experiential domain to avoid harm through ignorance (Nonmaleficence), promote beneficial effects (Beneficence), respect patient autonomy, and ensure justice in the distribution of benefits and burdens. The study aims to establish a foundational body of knowledge through description and definition, paving the way for future empirical research.

The authors reviewed 50 recent scientific publications on meditation, psychedelics, and other methods of inducing altered states, or spontaneous experiences. These publications included a diversity of modalities and study designs and represent qualitative reports from over 30,000 subjects. The literature review acknowledges limitations in existing research, such as a lack of phenomenological expertise, crude measurement tools, uncertain causal attribution, and biased interpretations. The authors categorized the qualitative data from these publications into a detailed thematic framework that considers various functional and experiential dimensions.

To document the broad scope of their domain of interest, the authors surveyed recent scientific publications. They selected 38 clinical/psychiatric/qualitative publications on meditation, 37 on psychedelics, and 21 on other induction methods or spontaneous experiences. The selection process prioritized higher-quality publications with first-person accounts and excluded those focused solely on physiological correlates or philosophical considerations. Data analysis was based on the micro-phenomenological method, drawing on various theoretical frameworks. The authors synthesized qualitative reports of phenomena, experiences, effects, and impacts (short-term, mid-term, and long-term) from over 30,000 subjects. They acknowledge limitations in the rigor and precision of the reviewed studies, including a lack of phenomenological expertise, limitations of available scales, and difficulties in causal attribution. This comprehensive inventory formed the basis for their subsequent discussion of relevant terminologies.

The primary finding is a detailed, fine-meshed inventory of experiences, effects, and impacts associated with various induction modalities. This inventory encompasses a significantly wider phenomenological range than any previous research initiative. The inventory, presented in detail in supplementary materials, reveals a considerable overlap in experiences across different induction methods, suggesting a common underlying experiential domain. The authors identified numerous categories of emergent phenomena, experiences, and effects, including aesthetic, archetypal, arousal-related, behavioral, cognitive, collective, contextual, dimensional, emotional, energetic, existential, expressive, functional, hedonic, informational, intuitive, magical, medical, meta-emergent, motivational, motor, paradigmatic, perceptual, physiological, psychological, semantic, sensate, sexual, social, spatial, temporal, vocational, volitional, and wakeful categories. Each category contains various sub-dimensions and sub-sub-dimensions, with sample items provided. The full inventory is available in the supplementary materials.

The authors argue that existing terms for describing this domain, such as Altered States of Consciousness (ASCs), are inadequate. ASCs lack precision, are often modality-specific, and carry metaphysical baggage. While acknowledging the usefulness of terms like "spiritual experiences," "mystical experiences," and others in their respective contexts, the authors find these terms too specific, metaphysically bound, modality-bound, culturally bound, idiosyncratic, syncretic, pathologizing, and imprecise for their purposes. They propose "emergent phenomena, experiences, and effects" (EPEEs) or "emergent phenomenology" as more suitable umbrella terms. This terminology is justified based on the complex causal processes involved and the apparent spontaneous "emergence" of these phenomena. The authors discuss the advantages and disadvantages of their proposed terminology, addressing potential overlaps with other fields and concerns about the acceptance of new terms.

The paper concludes that the domain of EPEEs constitutes a specific and significant field of human experience that warrants its own research and clinical specialty. The authors advocate for the term "emergence" and its derivatives as umbrella terms for this field, citing their descriptive accuracy, ontological neutrality, and global scalability. They acknowledge the potential for debate around terminology but emphasize the ethical mandate to develop precise and widely applicable terms to advance research and clinical practice in this area.

The study's primary limitation is its reliance on a review of existing literature, which itself possesses limitations in rigor and precision. The selection of publications, while aiming for diversity, may not be fully representative of the entire experiential landscape. The qualitative nature of the data also limits the ability to make strong claims about causal relationships or the prevalence of specific phenomena. Future research will require the development of more precise and comprehensive measurement tools, along with more robust methodology, to address these limitations. Further refinement and expansion of the inventory and related terminologies will be essential.