American Shaman: An Odyssey of Global Healing Traditions

This is a book written for practicing therapists, scholars, clergy, students, and those with a general interest in non-traditional healing and helping practices. It tells the story of Bradford Keeney, the first non-African to be inducted as a shaman in both the Kung Bushman and Zulu cultures. It offers lessons on the essence of making a difference in others' lives, not through the familiar, well-worn paths of traditional psychotherapy but through the work of spiritual healers and "doctors" of the oldest cultures on this planet. It is an integration of psychological, spiritual, kinesthetic, and anthropological methods into a biography of one of the most charismatic, creative clinicians working today, not just in traditional mental health settings but in the jungles of the Amazon, the deserts of Namibia and Botswana, and the most remote islands in the South Pacific. The authors present applications of indigenous shamanistic concepts to the practice of helping and healing. The book centers on a series of9 chapters that examine specific principles of shamanism and apply them to the practices and desires of counselors, therapists, and educators, including a wide range of examples from Keeney's own personal experiences as well as those of other shamans he has come to know. This is a book that challenges the foundation of everything we think we know and understand about helping and healing.

Bradford Keeney is a cultural anthropologist for the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto, California, and an adjunct professor at California State University, Fullerton.