I haven't yet finished reading - and I do intend to! - but I felt it important to make a few observations.
I am unfortunately not the intended audience for this book. There appear to be two camps of people who regularly use the word "sacred:" very devout Christians, and the spiritual without a formal religious practice. I am the former; the author is the latter.
I was so hopeful that Sacred Psychiatry would include more of a much-needed examination of the shortcomings of conventional Western medicine in general, and specifically the United States healthcare system's tendency to over-medicate issues that require deeper work to truly address. I can't say this book definitively doesn't do that, because I'm only partway in. But so far I've found it somewhat alienating because it specifies what the author asserts that deeper work MUST entail, rather than leaving it to the individual preferences of the reader. For something like what she calls "ancestor work," connection to those who have gone before, I can easily translate this to the Communion of Saints for myself. But for other points, such as oracle cards, I find it impossible to separate her personal shamanic practice from the potential benefit of her suggestions.
Further still, despite her higher education, she so far doesn't delve deeper than surface-level into any scientific backing behind (for instance) crystals or astrology. I find myself dismissing these practices out of hand because she discusses their efficacy as foregone conclusions, but I remain unconvinced of their efficacy and I know I'm not the only one. Please don't get me wrong, I want to believe that there is truth in these fields - there is simply too much about the world that we don't understand for me to completely disbelieve them "just because." But as with any new piece of learning, I like to see concrete evidence that I'm not getting here. This point in particular, though, I'm willing to chalk up to differences in spiritual backgrounds and reiterate that I'm not the target audience for this book.
That being said, I'm also not yet sure how readers in the target audience will view this book. I hope to better articulate my opinions about the craft, rather than just the content, after I've finished reading.
I received a review copy free of charge through a Goodreads giveaway, for which I am enormously grateful to Greenleaf Book Group and Dr. Tsafrir.