Affinities and Atmospheres: Using Design to Rethink Set and Setting in Psychedelic Therapies

Designing spaces for  therapeutic psychedelic experience

The past twenty years have seen re-emerging clinical interest in psychedelic drug-facilitated

experiences as healing modalities. Unique in their action, psychedelic drugs have therapeutic

potential that is ascribed not solely to their pharmacological effects, but to the experiences they elicit. Consequently, attention to (mind)set and (spatial)setting is central to the growing body of contemporary psychedelic research, as aspects of context have been observed to have direct

impacts on therapeutic outcomes.

My research explores ways in which spatial design practice has the capacity to contribute meaningfully to existing set and setting scholarship by developing concepts around the space of the therapeutic experience, and speculates that there are alternate relationships or modes of conceptualising set and setting which may be revealed through the application of design thinking and practice.

'Psychedelic space’ is composed not of discrete architectural containers, but of a meshwork where the psychedelic therapy room represents only one of many knots.”

Contact: Anna Conrick

Email: anna.conrick@monash.edu