Speaker Bio
Daan Keiman, holds an MA in Spiritual Care from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He is a co-founder of the Communitas Collective Foundation, a psychedelic think-and-practice tank that explores, refines and disseminates ethical approaches, community-based models and best practices to psychedelic care. Daan teaches in a range of international psychedelic practitioner training programs and shared his work on Psychedelic Science ‘23, ICPR, Breaking Convention, Chacruna, Harvard Divinity School, and various podcasts. He has more than 15 years of experience supporting people preparing for, moving through and integrating psychedelic journeys. He maintains a private practice as a Buddhist and Psychedelic Chaplain.
ICPR 2024 Abstract
Psychedelic Chaplaincy
Discussions of psychedelic chaplaincy to this point have been limited to clinical systems (Beachy & Peterson, 2022). This is understandable given the western origins of both chaplaincy work and ‘modern’ medicine, as well as its imminent legality. Yet, it runs the risk of neglecting a range of non-clinical contexts, such as those in which psychedelic care unfolds and those in which chaplaincy has developed comprehensive models of spiritual care delivery.
We argue that spiritual caregivers and chaplains ought to be integrated into interdisciplinary care teams to help contextualise spiritual and existential experiences. Furthermore, they can provide spaces to contain the pastoral provisions unique to a particular faith community, whereas the psychologist is precluded from such confessional acts (Beachy & Peterson, 2022) and usually doesn’t function as a bridge between patients and their religious communities (Keiman, 2019). The clinical need is real: non-ordinary states of consciousness cannot be ‘functionalized’ nor can the mystical experiences they engender be rendered existentially neutral and reductively understood in therapeutic terms. As a form of existential medicine (Grob, 2007) psychedelic care requires, creates, and is created by many religious and spiritual cultures.
Our presentation briefly explores ways in which psychedelic chaplaincy has already been theorised. Next, we identify several gaps in the psychedelic care infrastructure. We conclude by offering contours of various models for psychedelic chaplaincy, namely faith-specific, interfaith and secular models, describing different roles and methodologies for religious professionals, and drawing comparisons to best practices in interdisciplinary hospice and prison chaplaincy work.