Childhood trauma leaves the ego riven and cracked. It shatters our ability to synthesise, to maintain the integrity of experience. To cope with this threat of fracture, parts of our internal world remain unintegrated, repressed into the recesses of the mind so that we can maintain coherence. Yet, this survival strategy always comes at a cost. The mind and body must dynamically and continually hold down what is unintegrated, like a buoy held under the water, ever pushing to rise to the surface. This downward force requires the creation of mechanisms and structures within the developing personality, which both ensure our survival in a challenging world, and lead to chronic and compulsive personality patterns which can restrict growth and cause psychiatric symptoms. 

Childhood adversity remains the most consistent risk factor for chronic suffering and mental illness, yet, both psychological and psychiatric treatments tend to focus on the compulsive presenting symptoms rather than the underlying cause. We have created a mental health system whereby we silo suffering into categories that do not exist in nature. Rather than focus on humans as complex systems within a particular environment, we treat symptoms of ever-expanding diagnoses. Rather than encourage integration, we engage in suppression of symptoms. 

Psychedelic Assisted Therapy (PAT) offers a different path. PAT allows the long-suffering individual a way through their labyrinthine pain. It allows clarity where there was confusion, and awareness where there was darkness. Neuroscientifically, Friston's Free-Energy Principle lays the foundations for an understanding of psychedelics which far surpasses that of traditional psychiatric medications. Combined with qualitative research, a complex picture emerges of healing and integration, whereby the compulsive and protective aspects of our personalities become malleable, allowing access to the previously unintegrated aspects of our-selves, offering healing rather than treatment, and humanity rather than reductionism.