The Dark Tremendum:
Psychedelics and the Opening of the Numinous Known...and Unknown.

This presentation is a reflection on the experience of how psychedelics can open the door to profound darkness and numinosity–fear and awe in the face of a tremendum. The experience requires both a descent and decentering, a going under that results in a defeat for the ego and a revisioning of the Self. It links the experience of ego death and rebirth, darkness and illumination, horror and ecstacy, a sacred chaos and volcanic numinosity. One major theme is the question of how to engage with numinous experiences: can they be psychologically integrated into a rational process of individuation or does the archetypal force itself transform the soul and the complexity of psychic reality?

My reflections are in part based on my early experiences at Millbrook with Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, and Ralph Metzner, and my lifelong struggle with an understanding of the process. My talk includes a reflection on Jung’s Red Book, and extracts from a number of my own publications that struggle with this question.

About the Speaker:

Stanton Marlan is an archetypally-oriented Jungian analyst and clinical psychologist who has a long-time passion for alchemical and dream studies. He worked closely with James Hillman, first as his analysand and later as a colleague and friend. Dr. Marlan holds two Ph.D.s from Duquesne University, one in Clinical Psychology and the other in Philosophy. He is a training and supervising analyst with the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts, President of the Pittsburgh Society of Jungian Analysts, and past President of the American Board and Academy of Psychoanalysis. He is an adjunct Professor of Psychology at Duquesne University and a Clinical Supervisor at Duquesne’s Psychology Clinic.

Dr. Marlan has lectured widely at Jungian and Archetypal conferences in the United States and abroad and has taught at the C. G. Jung Institute Zurich as well as at other Jungian institutes and universities. He has edited a number of books including Salt and the Alchemical Soul, and is the author of several books including The Black Sun: The Alchemy and Art of Darkness, and C. G. Jung and the Alchemical Imagination: Passages into the Mystery of Psyche and Soul, which was awarded Best Theoretical Book in Psychoanalysis 2021 by the American Board and Academy of Psychoanalysis. He has a private practice in Pittsburgh.