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<p>Psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT) has several unusual features compared to other treatments. The most obvious is the psychedelic experience that patients undergo during therapy. Some authors, including myself, have argued that this feature is not only unusual but exceptional within medicine and that it poses exceptional challenges to common bioethical standards—challenges that no other treatment presents in this form. To address these challenges, the introduction of exceptional policies not currently found in medicine is therefore justified. In a recent comment, Earp et al. [<CitationRef CitationID="CR1">1</CitationRef>] reject this argument for what I have termed Type-B psychedelic exceptionalism. According to them, PAT either does not possess exceptional features, or these allegedly exceptional features do not give rise to ethical challenges that cannot be adequately addressed by existing policies. In this article, I counter their critique and argue that Type-B psychedelic exceptionalism can indeed be justified, using the example of PAT’s capacity to induce doxastic changes.</p>

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To Be, or Not to Be Exceptional: That Is the Question in Psychedelic Ethics

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年6月20日

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  • Daniel Villiger

摘要

Psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT) has several unusual features compared to other treatments. The most obvious is the psychedelic experience that patients undergo during therapy. Some authors, including myself, have argued that this feature is not only unusual but exceptional within medicine and that it poses exceptional challenges to common bioethical standards—challenges that no other treatment presents in this form. To address these challenges, the introduction of exceptional policies not currently found in medicine is therefore justified. In a recent comment, Earp et al. [1] reject this argument for what I have termed Type-B psychedelic exceptionalism. According to them, PAT either does not possess exceptional features, or these allegedly exceptional features do not give rise to ethical challenges that cannot be adequately addressed by existing policies. In this article, I counter their critique and argue that Type-B psychedelic exceptionalism can indeed be justified, using the example of PAT’s capacity to induce doxastic changes.