Janis Phelps, Ph.D.
Director, Center for Psychedelic Therapies and Research, CIIS
Founder of the world's first graduate-level psychedelic therapy training program at CIIS — the institution that has trained more psychedelic-assisted therapists than any other academic program in the United States.
Biography
Janis Phelps is a licensed psychologist who founded and directs the Center for Psychedelic Therapies and Research (CPTR) at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco — widely recognized as the first professional training program in psychedelic-assisted therapy in the United States.
The CIIS certificate program, which Phelps has developed and led, combines theoretical foundations in psychedelic pharmacology, clinical protocols drawn from the Johns Hopkins, NYU, and MAPS research programs, and supervised experiential components. Graduates of the program have gone on to staff clinical trials, Oregon Psilocybin Services licensed facilities, and integration therapy practices across the country. The program has produced more trained psychedelic-assisted therapists than any other academic institution in the US.
Phelps has been a significant contributor to the MAPS MDMA-assisted therapy training infrastructure, working alongside Michael Mithoefer and others to develop the training protocols used to certify MDMA therapy providers. Her work bridges the academic world of psychedelic studies and the clinical training needs of a field that is rapidly expanding into regulated practice.
She is the author of 'Developing Guidelines and Competencies for the Training of Psychedelic Therapists,' a foundational document shaping how the field thinks about what trained psychedelic therapists need to know and be able to do. Her CIIS program has been a model for training programs subsequently established at UC Berkeley, Naropa University, and other institutions.
Organizations
Why They Matter to the LearnShrooms Community
The quality, ethics, and competence of the psychedelic-assisted therapy workforce will determine whether this treatment modality helps or harms patients at scale. Phelps built the first systematic training infrastructure for that workforce and has influenced every major training program that followed. She is the most important figure in psychedelic therapist education in the United States.
Legal Context
For the legal landscape where Janis Phelps, Ph.D. operates, see psilocybin laws in California.