Dr. Adam O’Brien is a leading expert in the fields of trauma, dissociation, and addiction, and the founder of the Wounded Healers Institute. His work is dedicated to redefining the healing journey for both clients and the clinicians who serve them, grounded in the profound connection between the body and the mind.

As a clinician and academic, Dr. Adam has developed a unique approach that operationally defines key psychological concepts. He posits that the unconscious is the body, and that addiction is a form of dissociation, with dissociation itself being an unconscious healing state that the endogenous psychedelic states produce. This integrated framework stems from his extensive clinical experience utilizing therapeutic modalities such as EMDR, Brainspotting, mindful meditation, and psychedelics. His doctoral dissertation delved into the unconscious lived experience of trauma, dissociation, and addiction, laying the groundwork for his groundbreaking theories.

Driven by the central question, “What is dissociation like for you?”, Dr. Adam created the Meeting Area Screening and Assessment (MASA) and MASA (Mindfulness, Awareness, Self-compassion, and Action) and framework. This experiential program offers a paradigm shift in how healing professionals understand and navigate human consciousness, moving from a singular to a multiplicity of self. His work is focused on helping individuals and communities understand that dissociative lived experiences are not a pathology, but rather a vital part of the healing process.

Through the Wounded Healers Institute, Dr. Adam is committed to supporting individuals, families, and the healthcare community in leveraging personal healing to create sustainable well-being and a profound professional impact.

Adam O’Brien PhD (Artist/Poet name: Adamé) has been personally navigating “altered” (or dissociative states of consciousness) and people’s unconscious in trauma healing for decades. He would be considered a modern day Healer, if that profession was allowed to exist. Well, Dr. Adam’s work solidifies Healing and Healer as a profession (O’Brien, 2024a). Due to his personal development, clinical expertise, and professional education, Adam presents his eclectic educational approach to learning by presenting his material experientially. He is a trained therapist who found the traditional psychotherapy industry to be a major cause and reflection of our society’s fragmentation. Through his studies, he found that the title of Healer is the most appropriate way to categorize his passion, calling, vision, and advocation. He is (re)creating the profession of Healer because the unconscious wisdom of dissociation and psychedelic plant medicine have been lost to history in our modern age, but are not gone forever. This loss was due to the industrialization of convenience and greed (e.g., addiction), but through recovery and healing processes, Dr. Adam is educating on healing so more healing is happening. With the Wounded Healers Institute, healing with Adam can be done individually, in groups, or at our WHI events.

His passion is educating on healing through the Addiction as Dissociation research, helping others walk the Path of the Wounded Healer, Recovery, advocating for psychedelic medicine and psychedelic research, and freeing the hearts and minds of audiences by activating states of healing together. He has developed a multi-media presentation that helps viewers explore the nature of the unconscious mind, creative expression, practice mental fitness, and increase audiences healing awareness. 

Dr. Adam trained as a trauma, dissociation, and addiction mental health professional and combines his clinical knowledge with musical improvisation, healing trance states, guided meditation, neural-regulation, to help people bring and condition the psychedelic healing experience into your life. He is a healer, poet, stand up philosopher, and consciousness facilitator who takes people on a journey through the annals of historical truth and into the heart and soul of experience. He is also the co-developer of the Addiction as Dissociation Model, Path of the Wounded Healer Program, a certified anger management specialist who developed the Path of the Wounded Healer (PWH) for Perfectionism, Altruism, and Ambition Addictions; as well as programming for Anger Management, PWH: Cannabis-Based Batterer Intervention Program, and Psychedelic Care.

WHI is a Psychedelic Research and Re-Education Healing Center that performs independent research and offers individual, family, and community based healings. Foundational Addiction as Dissociation Model research has resulted in the development of the Path of the Wounded Healer, which is a research-informed phase model of care that is for transversing altered and dissociative states of consciousness through meditation, creative expression (creative arts specialist), neuro-regulation (bio/neurofeedback), and with legal use of psychedelics as agents of spiritual healing and regulation. 

Dr. Adam presents his work in a variety of ways and the best way to get to know him is through the WHI YouTube Channel so you can start learning from him for free or you can find out even more by signing up for our Orientation Class HERE. 

Joining the Path of the Wounded Healer PWH Tuesday’s 12-1 EST is the best way to engage with Adam. This is donation based. If you want to engage with Dr. Adam and the PWH more directly, contact [email protected] to setup an initial consultation.