Ego dissolution is a temporary loss or weakening of the ordinary sense of being a separate self. People describe the border between “me” and the world fading. Researchers define it as a compromised sense of self and list older names for it, including ego death and ego loss (Nour et al., 2016).
The phrase grew out of 1950s research with LSD and mescaline, and “ego death” spread through the 1960s counterculture (Millière, 2017). Today it is measured after the fact with questionnaires. The best known is the 8-item Ego Dissolution Inventory, validated in 691 participants in 2016 (Nour et al., 2016). The same scale has been used outside drug research: 100 people who had near-death experiences scored higher on it than on a scale of ego inflation (Martial et al., 2021).
It is not always pleasant. The Challenging Experience Questionnaire includes fear, death and insanity among its seven factors (Barrett et al., 2016). Ego dissolution is also different from depersonalisation disorder, which is a lasting condition. Whether it causes any therapeutic effect is a hypothesis, not a finding.
Sources
- Nour et al., Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2016
- Millière, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2017
- Barrett et al., Journal of Psychopharmacology, 2016
- Martial et al., Brain Sciences, 2021
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