Aaron D. Cherniak

Annual Awards — International Society for the Science of Existential Psychology Each year, ISSEP funds the Early and Distinguished Career Contribution Awards ($1000 each), Best Paper Award ($500), and Outstanding Student Award ($500)

www.issep.org/annual-awards

My colleagues and I received the Intl. Society for the Science of Existential Psychology Best Paper Award for:
Religiosity, Spirituality, Meaning-Making, and Suicidality in Psychiatric Patients and Suicide Attempters: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Harvard review of psychiatry.

that a PhD thesis in psychedelic science has been presented at a Swedish university, which is wild. Hopefully, more are coming.

contributing to a stimulating discussion.

Thanks to my collaborators/colleagues who were a significant part of my journey, including Joel Gruneau-Brulin, Robin Carhart-Harris, Sebastian Ostlind, Max Wolff, Gustav Martling, and Anja Winter.

I was told it was the first time...

Thank you to my supervisors, Pehr Granqvist and Mario Mikulincer.
It was an honor that Michiel van Elk came to serve as the opponent. Thanks to the grading committee - Emmanouela Grypeou, Eva Henje, Robert Johansson, Walter Osika - for being engaged in the process and...

Dissertation defended!
The re-emerging psychedelic science need not reinvent the wheel in psychology. My work explores relational and attachment-oriented phenomena in psychedelic phenomenology and the outcomes of those experiences.

That new book smell hits different when it's your PhD dissertation!

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT📣: I haven’t been this excited to be part of something new in 15 years… Thrilled to reveal the passion project I’ve been working on for the past year and a half!🙀🥳 (thread 👇)

How does #psychedelic use relate to changes in religiosity and spirituality? Read a summary of current research on this topic from @aaroncherniak.bsky.social in his APA Journals Article Spotlight: https://bit.ly/3ImJlpJ

Our article on psychedelic-related religious and spiritual changes is the newest feature in APA Journals Article Spotlight www.apa.org/pubs/highlig...

SYPRES (Synthesis of Psychedelic Research Studies) logo

🍄 Our new living systematic review and meta-analysis on psilocybin for depression is out. Here's what we found and the open science infrastructure we built to support it 🧪🧵
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Psychologists & related fields: what is a big methods question that you believe remains somewhat unanswered & that you'd love to see adressed? There may be an opportunity for a large-scale meta-science project with many teams trying to figure out a question.

Any thoughts welcome! #psychscisky

Received notice that this article was selected as an @apajournals.bsky.social Editor's Choice!
"Editor’s Choice papers represent the best science in each area of our discipline, reflecting science that is exceptionally important, impactful, and deserves additional visibility for the whole field."

How prescient was this- even before Grok was seemingly trained on Mein Kampf

Last year, @jacobsaday.bsky.social and @trpr-ucsf.bsky.social asked: "Psychedelic assisted psychotherapy: where is the psychotherapy research?"

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

How soon can we say "here it comes"?

There are pros and cons to different types of study design. Your post mischaracterizes the study and my comments about it. I encourage you to read the study more closely. Also there is a difference between how some people *can* use something and how the general population does.

Feature on our recent paper

Psychedelics linked to religious disaffiliation—but not spiritual change—in large-scale study Psychedelics are often described as spiritual tools—but do they change people’s religious beliefs? A large new study found that while psychedelic use was associated with religious disaffiliation, it did not cause lasting changes in religiosity or spirituality over time.

Psychedelics linked to religious disaffiliation—but not spiritual change—in large-scale study

Thank you to the Open Science of Religion project funded by @templetonfdn.bsky.social

Psychedelics might gently reorient the compass of meaning, but they don’t build or destroy temples. Their impact on spirituality is personal, evolving, and never guaranteed.

Full link -> doi.org/10.1037/rel0...

We highlight the context-dependence of psychedelics and their effects and relating them to secularization-related trends. While mystical experiences are widely reported, long-term shifts may be more subtle — and shaped by existing beliefs and life context.

1) In 2 birth cohorts from the UK (N>22k), we compared the frequency of religious changes (vs. stability in affiliation) among users vs. non-users.
2) In a prospective study (N=9,732), we compared users vs. non-users on changes in sense of religiosity and spirituality.

New #openaccess in @apajournals.bsky.social Psych of #Religion and #Spirituality:

How do #psychedelics affect religiosity/spirituality?
Do psychedelics increase the likelihood of religious conversions?

We (Pehr Granqvist & I) explored these q's in 2 large preregistered longitudinal studies:

Survey for APA members: baylor.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...
Win 1 of 10 $50 gift cards.

The first webinar in our series, entitled: Psychedelics: Past, Present and Future, is slated for 4/23/24 at 4 PM PST. Here is the link to register: div12.org/live-webinars/ Participants will receive 1 FREE CE hour for attendance.

The program includes a series of webinars eligible for FREE Continuing Education credits, a survey to assess psychologists’ perspectives on PAT, and a basic toolkit to support practitioners and their clients.

I am representing Div. 36 on psych of religion/spirituality with colleagues from Divs. 56 (trauma), @scpdiv12.bsky.social, 29 (psychotherapy), 30 (hypnosis), 32 (humanistic psych).

The goal: To increase education and collaboration around psychedelic-assisted therapy across the field of psychology.

I am thrilled to be part of a cross-division
APA/CODAPAR project on psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy called Broadening Perspectives: Educating Psychologists on Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy.

The Blogs: Tuning out Noise, into Signal: Purim, Presence, and Listening From the blog of Aaron D. Cherniak at The Times of Israel

A fire alarm interrupted the reading of Megillat Esther this Purim. I wrote up a humble reflection on listening closely to something so fragile, so quiet, when the world seems to be screaming.
blogs.timesofisrael.com/tuning-out-n...

Celebrate submission day, not/in addition to publication day.

Too many hours go into writing and submitting a manuscript to wait until its accepted to celebrate.