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Scholarship

Research & Writing

Four decades of inquiry into culture, consciousness, and traditional healing.

Culture and mental health

While I have practiced mental health for nearly 40 years, I have also kept an active interest in research on culture and mental health. For many years I have explored traditional healing and cross-cultural perspectives on health and human potential. These explorations have taken me across varied religious traditions and the study of healing and wellness around the world.

Most of my writing relates to Native American medicine, in collaboration with friends and colleagues who are Native American elders. I have also had the privilege of working with the Sufi tradition, the Vedic tradition, and Buddhist teachers, and more recently of learning from contemporary Pagan culture, which can be seen as a revitalization of Western shamanic traditions.

Editorial work

I am the editor of the International Journal of Traditional Healing and Critical Mental Health, the journal of the Society for Integrating Traditional Healing into Counselling, Psychology, Psychotherapy and Psychiatry. It is a collaboration of the University of Toronto and Christ University in Bangalore, India.

Selected publications

  1. Smith, D. P., and Orlinsky, D. E. (2004). Religious and Spiritual Experience Among Psychotherapists. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training. Based on my doctoral research.
  2. The Sweatlodge as Psychotherapy. A Self Psychological, or Kohutian, interpretation of an Ojibwa sweat lodge, drawn from my master’s thesis (book chapter).
  3. Emergent Spirituality. A chapter making a bottom-up argument for spiritual experience, from the lives of seminal historical figures and of colleagues (Exploring Therapy, Spirituality and Healing).
  4. Listening to the Grandmother Spirit. Drawing on my ethnographic work with Anishinaabe elders, a case that holistic, nurturing care can improve modern medical practice (Therapy, Culture and Spirituality).
  5. Tradition of ‘Animal Magnetism’ vs. ‘Hypnosis’ in Relation to the Cedar Bath Ceremony of the Anishinaabe. International Journal of Health Promotion and Education (2016), a special issue I guest-edited with Scott Hoye, PsyD.

See the full curriculum vitae for the complete list of publications and presentations.

Bring this perspective to your care

If a thoughtful, culturally grounded approach to psychotherapy speaks to you, I would be glad to talk. Reach out to begin a conversation.

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