I always love J.R. Haule's writing on shamanism. Here's a great article: 

Taking Direction From the Spirit In Shamanism and Psychotherapy

Generally speaking shamans have good reason to be leery of psychology, which historically has dismissed shamans as schizophrenics, epileptics, and hysterics. Jung, who at least does not pathologize shamanism, nevertheless seems to denigrate it when he says that shamanism works out of a “primitive mentality” which sees the psyche as “outside the body,” whereas we denizens of the 20th Century West have no choice but to view the psyche as “inside.” What separates shamanism and psychotherapy, in short, is a clash of metaphysics. Mainstream psychotherapy -- including much that is Jungian -- locates the real “inside” and constructs a topography of drives, instincts, archetypes, complexes, and the like to explain our experience as the result of “interior dynamics.” Meanwhile shamanism locates the real “outside” and maps a greater cosmos comprised of a Lower World, Middle World, Upper World, and the entities that live in them, in order to explain our experience in terms of “exterior dynamics.”

To be fair to Jung, I must point out that when he referred to the shamanic perspective as more “primitive” than his own, he added that these are merely two metaphorical options, that neither is “better” than the other, but that as a “modern individual” he had no choice but to locate the psyche “inside,” for that was where he experienced it. I have long been... Read more