Neşe Devenot just posted a response to the recent NYTimes piece on Psymposia (nytimes.com/2025/02/04/…How a Leftist Activist Group Helped Torpedo a Psychedelic Therapy” published on Feb 4, 2025). Much of her critique focuses on the Czech psychiatrist and psychedelic researcher Stanislav Grof, dismissing his pioneering work as “pseudoscience” rife with potential for abuse.

Devenot also appears to be arguing for a blanket ban on non-sexual touch in psychedelic therapy. As clinicians will already know, decades of research on bodywork therapies (including somatic therapies for PTSD) indicate that, when done ethically, safe, consensual touch can be an invaluable resource in trauma healing. It can lower stress hormones, enhance feelings of safety, and provide a channel for releasing embodied memories that talk therapy alone sometimes fails to access.

Of course, adding psychedelics to the mix complicates matters by putting participants into a heightened state of suggestibility. But given the well-documented benefits of touch in therapy, it seems like a dramatic over-reaction to advocate for an outright ban. The risks can be mitigated so long as appropriate precautions are taken. Despite the “non-directive” emphasis of Grof’s method, Devenot worries that touch can turn into “facilitated communication,” where a therapist inadvertently steers the patient’s journey. While vigilance against therapist influence is crucial, genuine non-directiveness means the client always leads: touch is optional, consented to, and used only to deepen the patient’s own process.

Calling Grofian therapy “pseudoscience” glosses over how paradigm disputes in science often devolve into power struggles: the term “pseudoscience” usually serves a political function to discredit approaches outside the mainstream (like how hundreds of scholars with competing theories derided Integrated Information Theory back in 2023). Devenot is not wrong to point out that Grof’s therapeutic model is informed by a broader spiritual worldview. I have no problem with anyone who wants to raise critical doubts about various facets of that worldview (I have some of my own!). But let’s not pretend there is some sort of neutral ground to stand on here. Scientific materialism is itself a worldview, not an objective, transcultural view from nowhere. Therapies that integrate concepts like “inner healing intelligence” clash with materialist assumptions, but that doesn’t make them worthless or fraudulent.

“Pseudoscience” is a boundary-policing term, wielded to draw a hard line between “us (legitimate science)” and “them (heretics)”. A quick look at the history of science makes clear that today’s pseudoscience can become tomorrow’s breakthrough—if given a chance to be tested and developed. Similarly, some ideas thought to be scientific later fall apart. There are numerous examples of fringe theories later vindicated (eg, continental drift was once ridiculed as pseudoscience), as well as popular theories later debunked. The pseudoscience label should be used sparingly and carefully.

All that said, it’s critical to acknowledge that abuse can occur in any therapy, especially when psychedelic states are involved. Stricter guidelines, robust informed consent, oversight, and training in professional ethics are essential. But banning all touch or denouncing entire frameworks as pseudoscience stifles open-inquiry and innovation, and dismisses the many people who have benefited from such holistic approaches.

In my opinion, the best solution is to treat people like adults: those who want no-touch therapy can seek clinicians who forbid it; those who find bodywork crucial for deep emotional release can pursue that modality—so long as ethical safeguards are firmly in place. Given the diversity of human psyches and experiences, a one-size-fits-all ban on touch is reductive and infantilizing. We should support clients’ autonomy to engage in the therapeutic style that resonates with them, while ensuring rigorous standards and open discussion of risks to guard against abuse.

So I thank Dr. Devenot for helping to spur a necessary discussion, but let’s not allow the pendulum to swing to an extreme by banning an entire modality outright.