Charles Raison, MD, is the Mary Sue and Mike Shannon Chair for Healthy Minds, Children & Families and Professor, School of Human Ecology, and Professor, Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Wisconsin-Madison in Madison, WI. He also serves as Director of Clinical and Translational Research for Usona Institute, as Interim Director of Research in Spiritual Health for Emory University Healthcare and as the Founding Director of the Center for Compassion Studies in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Arizona Dr. Raison is internationally recognized for his studies examining novel mechanisms involved in the development and treatment of major depression and other stress-related emotional and physical conditions, as well as for his work examining the physical and behavioral effects of compassion training. Dr. Raison received the Raymond Pearl Memorial Award from the Human Biology Association “in recognition of his contributions to our understanding of evolutionary biocultural origins of mental health and illness”. Dr. Raison’s book “The New Mind-Body Science of Depression” was published by W.W. Norton in 2017. In addition to these activities, Dr. Raison serves as the mental health expert for CNN.com.
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Thanks Dr. Dave!
What a great interview with Dr. Raison! I’m interested in your discussion about whether I have to remember a psychedelic experience to benefit from it. I treat experiences pretty much the same way I treat dreams. I’m pretty sure that I still benefit from dreaming, whether or not I remember my dreams. But I benefit more if I’m able to pick up a thread from a dream, pull it as far as I can, and integrate the dreamer with my waking experience and identity. So the first step in dream-work is to remember dreams and copy them to accessible memory. It would be really interesting to learn from Dr. Raison’s research how much or what parts of the benefit unremembered experiences play!
Frank, that’s a really good question. I will call his attention to it and he may reply back to this thread if we are lucky because he’s such a busy guy.