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everything whether it be spiritual or energetic, “everything is sacred and evolving”, “we have a soul”, and that

“everything is treated as being real”.

These are ideas that are strongly held by many indigenous cultures but can only occasionally be found among

some psychologists and often time these are not fundamental ideas that are implemented into research. When

discussing the worldview that is held by psychologists it is difficult to identify specific main views because of

the diversity that can be seen in the types of researchers and psychotherapists that exist today. When it comes

to psychotherapy there are a few goals that can definitely be agreed on by almost all psychotherapists. Some

of these include being able to build a stronger mind, becoming enabled, having happiness, concentration, and

willpower, developing self-confidence, and feeling free (Smithstein, The Goal of Psychotherapy).

Although these sound like things that would definitely be goals within a shamanic practice as well, it is

difficult to determine the root of these beliefs. It is simply the approach of how to attain these things that

differs among psychology and shamanism. In shamanism, it is vital to connect with the spirit world to be able

to access freedom and understanding. While in psychotherapy it is believed to be possible to simply talk

through problems to come to loft realizations that otherwise would not have been attained on one’s own.

In shamanic culture when there is a ritual that takes place, many people are involved. I believe that this a vital

part to the treatment and healing as it becomes and immediate support system. Many times, in the western

world, people fall into deep depression simply because they have no support system at all. There is no ritual

with members of the community to comfort them, but rather one therapist, who the person must fully confide

in for the desired results. This leads to an extremely independent sense of healing which works well in the

Western world, but would not fend well in a tight knit indigenous community.

In an article titled, The Shamanic View of Mental Health Jonathan Davis mentions that, “to me it is clear that

we live in a culture that immediately labels these moments of crisis as sickness, and our culture has almost no

level of acceptance for the people that go through it. When face to face with a person experiencing

involuntary states of non-ordinary consciousness, most of us – to put it bluntly – just want them away from us.

It’s almost as if we fear that ‘crazy’ is contagious and we want it quarantined. It’s unfortunate that this

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