Online Library

The Takiwasi Center has a library specialized in traditional medicines, which holds a fund of more than 6,000 books, 2,000 articles and 300 audio-visual elements mainly related to the fields of ethnomedicine, indigenous spirituality, psychology, anthropology, drug addictions and botany. It is a unique resource for national and international researchers who have free access to it. Takiwasi's resident patients also benefit from its contents.

Takiwasi also has a collection of digital documents which includes a wide variety of books and articles related to medicinal plants, spirituality and psychology, among other topics. These contents, accessible through our website, are organized according to three classification groups: Articles produced by Takiwasi, Documents of general interest and Theses and research works carried out by national and international students and researchers.

The Center also develops its own editorial line that has several magazines, documentaries and books that are available for sale in our Store, whether in physical or digital format.

Featured Article

Cultural Biases and Psychedelic Experiences: Western Scientific Perspectives about Amazonian Mestizo Therapeutic Traditions

Author: Alberto Dubbini.

Published in OBM Integrative and Complementary Medicine 8(3), September 2023.

Abstract

This article aims to analyze how Western researchers can be influenced by their epistemic and ethical foundations, which are also expressed through a culturally shared idea of therapy, and how this influence can significantly hinder the understanding of a different cultural reality and its resources in terms of knowledge and practices. While examining a collection of research cases in the field of psychedelic therapy, the present paper focuses on the obstacles created by ethical and epistemic conflicts in the mind of researchers with Western scientific training and their consequent difficulty in exploring the situations induced by psychedelic substances in a context of articulation and integration between their therapeutic know-how and that of a spiritual hundreds-year-old psychedelic tradition like Amazonian mestizo vegetalismo. Such obstacles may offer a chance to increase awareness of the cultural bias and limitations of the scientific gaze and highlight the importance of therapeutic and research contexts in which declared independence, neutrality and effectiveness of human alert thinking as undebatable ethical and epistemic value are under discussion.

Links of Interest

Further documents of interest can be found on the following websites:

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