Customer Reviews

American Shaman: An Odyssey of Global Healing Traditions

5 star:		(2)
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2 star:		(1)
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Although I'd never before read anything about Shamanism or healing of any kind, this book inspired me to do so. Bradford Keeney sounds like a really incredible person and Jon Carlson and Jeff Kottler end up feeling like old friends by the end of the book. I was absolutely engrossed in this book and it wasn't at all dry or overly academic. It fits with real life as well as for phsychologists and other healers.

This books talks about life in a way that much of the mechanized, individualistic Western World has abandoned. Keeney is not talking about New Age fads or chemically induced experiences. It is not a how to book nor is it an attempt to give insightful knowledge to the reader as many psychologically oriented books try to do. Rather, it acknowledges the great complexity and circularity and mystery innate in living and encourages embracing these in a way that expands human experience rather than reducing them into seemingly understandable explanations. Keeney demonstrates how healing comes through adding mystery to mystery, through play, improvisation and by dancing together.

I highly recommend this book to anyone; especially to professionals in psychiatry and psychology.

I know that a lot of well informed people respect this book and have learned non-western approaches to disease and emotional dis-ease. As someone who has spent quite a few years working with Navajo healers, this book felt false and pretentious. For me, it had the critical flaw of being organized around the concept of the "very special" person with the simplistic notion that conventional western approaches are lacking in wisdom, while traditional/tribal approaches to "life out of balance" are consistently more powerful, if elusive. First off, the white iconoclast should not be the center of a book of this type. At best, he can only be the "messenger". But the bigger problem for me was in how these materials were conveyed to the reader lacking any element of scientific hesitation to make extreme claims for radically different approaches to human health problems. It could be true that we have much to learn from non-western/tribal sources of health care, but they are not a universal panacea. Not all "healers" are wise and not all tribal healing practices are effective. To place modern science on a pedestal far above traditional people is an error, as well as its opposite.
This is a very difficult area to find reliable information, but there are better sources than American Shaman.