Can We Engineer Consciousness? Interview with Popular Mechanics

In the past few decades, there has been an increased interest in exploring the potential psychotherapeutic benefits of substances previously only used recreationally. Studies have started demonstrate promising efficacy as a therapy for depression (one month efficacy for ketamine; one year for psilocybin), therapy for anxiety (about 16 months for LSD), and therapy for trauma (MDMA). While these results give us reason to be hopeful, in each case the substance itself isn't the active agent delivering psychotherapeutic improvement, but a tool to lessen defenses and increase openness to connection and a desire to change. As the MDMA study cited above notes:

The empathogenic and entactogenic effects of MDMA help individuals with PTSD develop a sense of safety and trust within the therapeutic setting, facilitating the exploration and processing of traumatic memories and emotions that are often at the core of their condition. MDMA is thought to increase feelings of connection, empathy, and self-compassion, which can contribute to healing and integration.

This points to a crucial piece of the puzzle: n each study the studies cited above, participants were also receiving treatment from a psychotherapist. The effect of these substances is to potentiate treatment, not to replace it. Harvard Medical School's health communication wing, for instance, cautions about misuse of ketamine: "Ketamine doesn't offer a cure; rather, it improves symptoms of depression for a certain amount of time."

That doesn't mean we should write substance-assisted psychotherapy off entirely. If these substances are truly safe and effective at augmenting treatment, they should be embraced. And, as recent advances in AI have been used for drug discovery (as well as many other, less useful, things), some researchers have observed that we do not need to be limited by the range of psychotropics currently available. The US tech startup MindState Design Labs, for instance, is working on engineering a drugs that can create specific, and psychotherapeutically facilitative, mental states.

MindState Design Labs's CEO, Dillan DiNardo, describes his goal as not only providing psychotherapeutic aids, but to shed light on how the mind operates and get a more detailed understanding of consciousness. In order to get a better idea of how psychotropics could reveal the underlying structure of consciousness and assist therapeutic treatment, Popular Mechanics reached out to Dr. Jordan Conrad, who is not only a psychotherapist in NYC but a researcher with a deep understanding of the difficult problems posed by consciousness. In "Science Has a Powerful New Tool to Unlock the Mysteries of Consciousness", Jordan spoke to journalist Stav Dimitropolous about therapy in New York; psychotropics and therapy for anxiety, depression, and trauma; and consciousness and the unconscious.

Jordan explains that brain science, for all its advances, is still in a very primitive state. He cautions against the overoptimism surrounding some recent developments in psychedelic-assisted therapies.“When we try to navigate what’s going on in the brain, we’re often working with a shovel, not a scalpel,” he says. “Psychedelics may help, but it does seem like there could be unintended effects there.”

One of those effects is that those psychological mechanisms that we use to protect ourselves from fears, sadness, pain, loss, and the like - what psychotherapists refer to as defenses - are not intrinsically bad things to be removed, but helpful to maintain equilibrium: “People have defenses for a reason. Defenses aren’t bad things. Your ego is a defense… and you want to make sure that your defenses are integrated into your broader sense of yourself.” Jordan worries that simply shutting down your defenses with the goal of providing great insight overlooks the danger of waking up the next morning feeling like you have given too much of yourself away and feeling vulnerable and ashamed.

The conversation moves to consciousness and the unconscious. Jordan explains that being a therapist in Manhattan means working with some creative, powerful, and very busy people and the problems of consciousness sometimes come up. Dr. Conrad, who is a certified cognitive behavioral therapist, knows that approaching some issues that arise in consciousness can be very effective, and so, for Stav, the question of free will rears its head.

“Everything I know about the brain tells me we don’t really have free will,” Jordan says. “Say I want to raise my hand—well, that could just be neurons firing in response to something you said… And if that’s the case, then we don’t really need ‘mind.’” But, he continues “For the same reasons free will can’t exist, consciousness shouldn’t exist. But consciousness does exist.” It is a problem Jordan doesn't pretend to have an answer to; it's enough to know that it works.