Drawing from ethnographic research with psychedelic therapists and researchers, this article explores political tensions between two sources of efficacy within psychedelic therapy: the self and the chemical. At times researchers and therapists emphasize the specificity of chemical effects in relationship to the neurobiology of particular diagnoses. And at other times they foreground the self as the true source of an experience which is not tied to that same biochemistry. Anthropologists have long emphasized that efficacy is a historically and socially embedded category and practice. Those conversations have new valence in light of recent theorization of the chemicals as material-semiotic structures shaped by their experimental contexts. This article argues that while the empirical claims embedded in these two efficacies can and do mutually include each other, a fundamental political tension remains between the efficacious ends envisioned by each. As clinical trials develop these drugs as therapeutic agents, they do so through linking the specific effects of the chemical to particular diagnostic populations, which may enfranchise these chemicals, but not all their efficacies.

本文借鉴迷幻治疗师和研究人员的民族志研究，探讨了迷幻治疗中两种功效来源之间的政治紧张关系：自我和化学物质。有时，研究人员和治疗师强调化学效应与特定诊断的神经生物学相关的特异性。有时，他们将自我视为体验的真正来源，而这种体验与相同的生物化学无关。人类学家长期以来一直强调功效是一个历史和社会根深蒂固的类别和实践。鉴于最近将化学物质理论化为由其实验背景塑造的材料符号结构，这些对话具有新的价值。本文认为，虽然这两种功效中蕴含的经验主张可以而且确实相互包含，但每种功效所设想的功效目标之间仍然存在根本性的政治紧张局势。当临床试验将这些药物开发为治疗剂时，他们通过将化学物质的具体作用与特定的诊断人群联系起来来实现这一点，这可能会赋予这些化学物质以权利，但并不是它们的全部功效。