PD Dr. Kurt Stocker

Research Interests

- Psychedelic Science: Phenomenology and Psychometrics
- Nonordinary Consciousness
- The Mind in General

Biosketch

PD Kurt Stocker, PhD, a psychologist who also has a linguistic background, is a university researcher and lecturer who studies how the mind works. Over the last years, his research focus has shifted from how the mind works in ordinary states of consciousness to how it works in nonordinary states of consciousness with a primary focus on the psychedelic experience. At the research level, he is a project leader of psychedelic science at the ETH Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, where he investigates the psychedelic experience mainly from a theoretical-psychological perspective (for instance with theoretical and review articles). He is also a research associate in psychopharmacology at the University Hospital Basel, where he additionally investigates the psychedelic experience also from an empirical-psychological perspective. As part of the research team at the University Hospital Basel, he conducts quantitative and qualitative psychedelic-psychometric research. Currently this involves LSD, psilocybin, DMT, mescaline, and MDMA studies with healthy individuals as well as with patients. One of the goals of this work at the University Hospital Basel is a comprehensive measurement of the psychology of the psychedelic experience for both research and therapy. At the teaching level, PD Dr. Stocker teaches at various Swiss universities, spanning the whole spectrum from how the mind works in ordinary consciousness (with general-psychology courses) to how it works in nonordinary consciousness (with psychedelic-psychology and nonordinary-consciousness courses). At the ETH, he has furthermore set up a course in general psychedelic science in collaboration with respective scientists (see project psychedelic science below).

Project Psychedelic Science

The ETH project psychedelic science of PD Dr. Kurt Stocker covers psychedelic science with research and with teaching. In research, the psychedelic experience is investigated from a theoretical-psychological perspective (for instance with theoretical and review articles). Collaborations in research, in which Kurt Stocker bridges his theoretical with empirical psychedelic-psychological work, are mainly carried out with the Liechti Lab (where Dr. Stocker additionally works empirically as a research associate). In teaching, he has set up a course in general psychedelic science at the ETH. The curricular goal of this course is to cover psychedelic science from all major academic disciplines that are involved in this field, and at the same time to reflect all of them from the viewpoint of the humanities and psychology. Thus far—in collaboration with respective experts—the following psychedelic-scientific fields are represented in this course: psychology, pharmacology, physiology, psychotherapy, religious studies, politics, and philosophy.