16 May 2025
Radical Adventure
An Inquiry into Psychedelic Psychotherapy
An excerpt
By: Andrew Feldmár
MAPS Bulletin: Volume XXXIV
What do you do when you don’t know what to do?
The skills that a therapist needs cannot be learned in a classroom-type, formal environmen. You need an apprenticeship, which is a kind of involvement between the student and someone who has been practicing therapy and has been doing it well and effectively. There are many things that one can pick up through imitation. In my study with Laing, of course I read everything that he wrote, as well as a million things as adjuncts based on what or whom he read. Of course I did all that. But in order to know the actual style, and to know that it works, not just hypothetically but to truly know it, I had to see him do it. I had to be beside him and pick up the vibes. Words are just a very shallow map of reality. The territory is always much more complex than the map. Reading and studying, you just get the map. But when you are apprenticing with the master, then you get the territory. You learn the skill nonverbally. You do not even know how you learn it. You just absorb it.
I think the skill of a psychedelic therapist can be transmitted only through apprenticeship as well. It is a very, very complex task to truly be there with someone who is in an altered state of consciousness. The possibility of alienation, the possibility of making things worse is enormous. The gains are high, but the dangers are also great. And I think the only way to make sure that in the future, when these substances will be legal, they will not cause harm is to focus not on the drug itself but on the relationship between the therapist and the patient. There are no tricks. There are no theories, and there are no steps to follow.
What do therapists have to do so they do no harm? Sándor Ferenczi, one of the, to me, most palatable, sympathetic psychoanalysts, said you need only two qualifications to be a good therapist: you have to have zero ambition and a lot of time. Ambition is harmful because most of us suffer from others telling us what we should desire. A seven-year cycle of analysis is basically about the vicissitudes of finding your true desires, if you can ever get to them. Your mother and father told you who you should be, how to play their good son. The school told you how to play a good student, then you have to be a good husband or a good wife, then you have to be a good mother or a good father, a good man, a good woman … Whoever remembers their own desires? So, the last thing I need when I go to a therapist and take LSD is to tune in to my therapist’s ambition and desire. The therapist should not even have the desire for me to have a life-changing or orgasmic trip. Nothing. I always go into an LSD session as if for the first time. I don’t know what is going to happen.
Take Niko Tinbergen’s work with autistic children. He did nothing to them that the children did not do to him, and I think everyone who is traumatized would welcome that. I will not do anything to you that you are not doing to me. I will not touch, I will not speak, I will not look until the other looks, until the other touches. I am there with them. If the other is silent, I can be silent for a very long time. If the other speaks, I am there.
Laing was one of the only people I have ever read in the medical profession who talked about what to do when you don’t know what to do. Most teachers, most schools rule that one out. You are not supposed to not know what to do, right? This way you are already motivated to lie. He never told me the answer directly, but the answer that I found was that when I don’t know what to do, I do nothing. Absolutely nothing, because whatever I would do from that state of mind would probably be the wrong thing. I only do things when I am moved to do things. And that doesn’t mean I allow the other to manipulate me. But I am moved by the situation, I am moved by the “Us” that is bigger than my patient and I. Hopefully, if all goes well, both of us are going to be moved. In my experience either both the therapist and the patient get better, or neither of them does.
As an apprentice you would first have to receive therapy yourself. Again, therapy here is not scientific, not technical. You need to get a lot of attention from somebody who has been there. The actual Greek word at the root of “therapy” means “to attend.” Pay attention. So, at first you would receive a lot of attention. The therapist must clearly know what this experience is like. The therapist must have gone through it already and know the territory in which the patient is meandering. Because if the therapist doesn’t, then he or she will inevitably get scared at certain points when the patient is just going through what they need to go through.
I would say the number one quality that the psychedelic therapist would have to have is a certain kind of fearlessness. Or at least she or he would have learned not to be afraid to be afraid. I want to make a comparison between being a psychedelic therapist and a midwife, because I think the psychedelic therapist has to be working under the feminine archetype. If I were a woman who was about to give birth, how would I select the midwife I wanted to use? Well, I would want an older midwife. I would want a midwife who has seen everything. I would want an older midwife not just because of her expertise, but because she could be there and not get frightened when something goes wrong. She has seen it a hundred times and she knows it is going to be OK. Fear is contagious, and if the therapist is afraid then the patient is going to freak out. This is true under normal circumstances. I do think on some level fear communicates even without drugs, but if the patient ingested an empathogen then it’s even more contagious. You want somebody who is not going to be afraid, no matter what happens. And if he or she does get afraid, they will immediately admit it and focus in on what is going on, and why they are afraid.
It has always been a problem of therapy that efficiency works only in technical matters. I would want an efficient car mechanic. In medical matters, and where there is a blueprint like architecture or engineering, you want the fastest way to go from point A to point B. And you want the people that you entrust with the work or the repair to know what the fastest way of doing it is. You can also train them the fastest and most efficient way. So, efficiency works in these technical fields. On the other hand, in the areas that have to do with relationship and psychological matters, emotional matters, the way to get from point A to point B is unknown. What we know is you can only get there by meandering. And meandering, which is kind of wandering without a map, is unpredictable and is inherently inefficient. Apprenticeship is not efficient. Striving for efficiency is no argument for trying to replace apprenticeship with anything else. There is nothing else.
Andrew Feldmár
Andrew Feldmár is a Hungarian-born psychotherapist who has practiced in Vancouver, Canada for over 50 years. Born in 1940 during WWII, Feldmar fled Hungary alone at age 16 following the 1956 revolution, beginning a lifelong journey shaped by exile, inquiry, and deep relational work.
He holds an Honours BA in mathematics, physics, and chemistry from the University of Toronto and an MA in psychology from the University of Western Ontario. In 1975, he trained with R.D. Laing in London — an experience that deeply shaped his approach to psychotherapy. He also studied with Francis Huxley, John Heaton, and Leon Redler, cultivating a lifelong commitment to non-pathologizing, experiential healing.
Feldmár has taught at SFU, UBC, and Emily Carr University, and worked extensively in Hungary. His work spans consulting for film and television, founding community-based mental health initiatives, and challenging conventional models of diagnosis and care.
An Honorary Life Member of the Canadian Psychological Association, Feldmár is known for his bold, uncompromising approach to psychotherapy. His latest book, Radical Adventure: An Inquiry in Psychedelic Psychotherapy, reflects a lifetime of relational depth, fearless presence, and care beyond clinical convention.
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