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Thank you for considering our research at the Wounded Healers Institute Journal (WHIJ) and our publishing process. Our publishing process is founded in our Moral-Ethics and our research conclusions (O’Brien, 2023a) and extrapolations (O’Brien, 2025). Known to us as Applied Recovery, WHI recognizes that a professional dynamic that includes power dynamics that hold the law above ethical and moral behavior, we offer a different path to those looking to get published, have their work peer-reviewed for publication, or to work with us as you develop, test, and research with us as you go.

Our rejection of academic standards are based on our lived experience and we are advocating, through publication that bears the legal responsibility. As freedom of speech can become the freedom of choice from corporate interests and governmental overreach, those who have been overprescribing, overdiagnosing, getting the diagnostic wrong, supporting incomplete taxonomies (and billing for it accordingly), and say that psychedelics have no medical value cannot (and will not) be our peers. If the only addictions are drug and gambling, then our peers are like victims of trauma, stuck in the past; down, but not out. As if perfectionism, altruism, and ambition addictions don’t exist, then the research paradigm we are coming from is inherently different than theirs. Ours is both qualitative and quantitative, therefore, we can know more than they could ever know.

As psychological research on emotional attachment and human development defines the concrete stage of cognitive, emotional, and moral development to be that of a 7-12 year-old, this reality becomes clearer when we hold citizens to the measure of “a nation of laws” that is developmentally holding the next generation hostage just so they can get their time in the sun and win with the most toys. Again, we hold a different standard and our process outlined here confirms our commitment to hold those in power accountable for what they didn’t do, forgot, and possible could resolve if they have the capacity to be honest with their level of recovery, stage of development, and healing work documented so the world can know their true purpose and meaning. WHIJ supports healers publishing on the healing arts, because that is what we are: healing artists, as ordained and qualified by our lived experience and quantified by our research. 

If your peers are saying that a COVID shutdown was valid, “non-addictive opiates”, “chemical imbalances”, the food pyramid, tying health insurance to a job), and that all vaccines are great for everyone, then we must dissent publically. We prefer to defer to common sense. To think that everyone has to do something for the greater good is like saying that psychedelics have no medical value. First, “No medical value” discredits psychological value, and secondly, if the medical profession cannot see their value and neither can psychiatry, then our peers are not near-peers. They are immature and underdeveloped by their own standards and science (e.g., psychological attachment and addiction research). as if emotional maturity and professional careers could be separated, which brings up another point, why were the professions created separate and not equal? Again, if our peers are continuing to uphold this structure as a good idea like a war on drugs, then citizens have the right to freedom of choice; and professionally the licensed professionals have the responsibility to tell those who they disagree with as to why. Our is attachment research and our addiction model of care (e.g., Addiction as Dissociation Model).

Our work here is exploring truth in the world as to what people who don’t heal, don’t know and cannot know until they do. Our work is to support healing to those who don’t know they need it. 

For more context on our review of peer-review literature and the state of academia, we offer our blogs at woundedhealersinstitute.org/blogs/ 

Mission & Scope
The Wounded Healers Institute Journal is a near-peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary platform dedicated to publishing research that maintains common sense and prioritizes qualitative review and process. At WHI we are re-educating the psychological professions on what it means to have a healing, morally-ethical, and recovery-based profession. We challenge the “quantitative bias” of industrialized psychology by elevating “Lived Experience as Expertise”. This observation happens to also fall to those who do not have the lived experience that we have had (near-death, traumatized, and dissociative experiences) to have an informed opinion enough to understand what is what. This deficit may be because they only have training experience instead of lived experience, therefore separate professions.
 
Our Focus Areas:
• Phenomenological Research: Qualitative studies on the Addiction as Dissociation Model (ADM).
• Psycho-Legal Autopsies: Critical analyses of systemic failures in the medical and legal complexes.
• Case Studies: Clinical applications of the Meeting Area Screening and Assessment (MASA) tool.
• Psychedelic Care: Theoretical frameworks for memory reconsolidation and spiritual healing.
• Historical Application: Contexts for the psychology and the philosophy of history, intergenerational dissociation, and reenactment trends.
• Art as Healing: Capturing art as a healing process.
• Novel Memory Healing: Theoretical frameworks for memory reconsolidation and spiritual healing.
• Recovering Healing: Based on emerging recovery research since the opiate epidemic (William White), we support lived experience of recovery and healing in any artistic form reasonable for publishing.
 

Get your study approved by our independent Institutional Review Board (IRB) for your study or collaborate with Wounded Healers Institute for your work.

We prioritize qualitative research, theoretical papers, and lived-experience narratives that meet our academic rigor, AI checks and balances, and rabbit hole review. 

The Intellectual Apothecary
In a time when our peers are continuing a war on psychedelics, which is a war on healing, we must use the resources we have to support the science that we are and is us. As our peers are sold us that psychedelics have no medical value, WHIJ is an independent journal, with peer-review for qualified Our standard is to test the Frye Standard first before elevating something to a level of importance that governments, elders, parents, or abusers could use against the previous generation.
 
As Editor-and-Educator, what WHIJ and Dr. Adam are producing is multimedia material that provides our collective narrative as free citizens to the greater world. As wounded healers with the lived experience of what it means to be in a relationship with someone, something, or some system that has told us that this is the way it is or that we “must” follow their science or laws above our own, we must find our collective voice in the stories we decide to share; and even the ones we don’t. They also said that this is “how it has to be” and “how  is going to stay’ as they abuse us again and again and again with their reductionistic logic that reinforces their wall of denial. Being addicted to denial, is to be dependent on you to protect you.
 
In the historical context, WHIJ is reasonable citizen check against this level of ignorance and system of denial that have not seen or are willing to be diagnosed with an addiction to perfectionism, altruism, and ambition. These addictions have contributed to all wars and are the result of a industrialized and standardized systems of intellect that believes that they being rational as they destroy the opportunity for the pursuit of happiness for the next generations; therefore, to preserve psychological freedom today from what others consider social graces, we must protest against the ignorance that is our collective denial system. The need to create a layered peer-review process becomes obvious when your peers are obviously living dissociated from their professional truth because they are doing their career instead of their jobs. Also, because our peers are upholding that psychedelics have no medical value legally and that “a nation of laws” is a nation of adults being managed by 7 year olds, then we respectfully decline their need for peer-review status or to accept their reputation of us, and their ways of doing things anymore. Therefore, our peer-review process is to review our peers and until academia, boards of education, professional associations, and professions get off their high horse and the stop debate long enough to hear each other out. If not, then our publication process will remain what it is. Helping the lived experience of those who have been traumatized be heard and healed.
 
In the professional world where a plant is considered a drug, again we must protest to the logic of having to do what our peers are doing. Our peer-review process is a higher standard (Moral-Ethics) and since the system does not value qualitative science equally, what WHIJ and research is doing is legal, considering the inflated reasoning we use to justify continuing to be a nation of laws as is, the field of psychology should have something to say about that; and historically should have said it before it was brought to their attention. Due to the lack of application of common sense in research, WHIJ is restoring intellectual justice, freedom of speech, and freedom of choice to do something different for the right reasons. Whether or not anyone agrees with it or not, believes us or not, the outcome will be what it is.
 
As the Collective Unconscious is our educator, we must open ourselves to global healing. By starting with ourselves, communal healing becomes possible. At the WHIJ we do not believe that anyone is our of reach from understanding the ADM and PWH model that WHIJ supports.
 
How it works, Prescriptions for the Soul, Not the Symptom. WHIJ is providing the opportunity for healers to get published in a peer-reviewed journal and publication. With the caveat that the publication meets the standards to need a peer-review (e.g., common sense) WHIJ is qualitatively a counternarrative to the industrial system of standards and measures, therefore our process looks different, but is still peer-reviewed, by their own standards. Our standard of peer however is different than theirs. WHI utilize our wounded healer community to provide a common sense check on your works relevance, importance, and place. If it takes a village, then let the village figure it publically.
 
Our peer-review process is this:
 
1) Submit a work (art, writing, paintings, pictures, poems, and healing processes). Submit to [email protected]
 
2) Upon donation, work is reviewed by Dr. Adam and our publishing systems AI prompt. If the work aligns with our mission and purpose AND meets the standard of Frye or Daubert, then Dr. Adam will direct the work accordingly. If Frye Standard is met, but not Daubert, then it is considered qualitative and does not require a peer-review (or a governmental license to perform) and can be published with an near-peer-review status (AI expert prompt), standard set by our moral-ethics. (Dr. Adam will apply the same process to his publications and advocacy.) **IRB approval is required for Daubert Standards only.
 
3) Fee schedule, agreements, and researched marketing and options (plan) will be returned with your options of working with WHIJ and Dr. Adam.)
 
4) WHI will peer-review the work before publishing it through the WHI IRB and Rabbit Hole (if appropriate). The Rabbit Hole serves as our “qualitative think tank” and emotional moral-ethical check on the implications of the work and whether or not it should be published or not.
 
Currently, we are aiming to be publishing quarterly or when we have enough to publish… so get your submissions in soon.

As we are a donation-based journal, we offer our support (at your cost) in getting your works published in the journal. This may take some investment on your part and is a part of our educational process with Dr. Adam. Our standards are to increase the maturity level of the professions by providing quality qualitative work that supports its importance on the world stage. Our standard is that the citizen-review should be the common sense view that is published. We can collective publish under the name of “Wounded Healers” to better help those who wish to remain anonymous can remain anonymous.  The anonymous author or authors have donated their process to better help those who wish to understand healing. Their donation supports future healers and our educational services.

Statement of Moral-Ethical Scope: The Wounded Healers Institute Journal (WHIJ) operates on the Addiction as Dissociation Model (ADM). We prioritize Lived Experience as expert testimony and define the physical body as the psychological unconscious.

Submission Requirements:

  1. Anti-Reductionism: Manuscripts attempting to reduce addiction to a “brain disease” without accounting for trauma, dissociation, and systemic context will be flagged for “Theoretical Incompleteness”.
  2. Disclosure of Lived Experience: Unlike traditional journals that demand detached objectivity, WHIJ encourages authors to disclose their “Wounded Healer” status. Lived experience is viewed here as valid empirical data.
  3. AI Transparency: Authors must disclose the use of Generative AI in the methodology section, detailing prompts and tools used. AI cannot be listed as an author.
  4. Unconscious Informed Consent: Protocols involving human subjects must demonstrate how they obtained consent from the internal system (ego states) and somatic body, ensuring no violation of the “Meeting Area”.

WHI Moral Algorithmic Gatekeeper

Our review process employs a Dual-Layered Assessment mechanism that prioritizes “Common Sense” and “Moral-Ethics” alongside federal regulations. We do not view legal compliance as the ceiling of ethical conduct, but as the floor. Our AI-driven and human-supervised review process evaluates all submissions against two primary metrics:

  1. The Dual Scoring Mechanism Every research protocol and manuscript is evaluated for:
  • Legal Compliance Score (LCS): adherence to 45 CFR 46 (Common Rule), FDA regulations, and standard human subjects protections.
  • Moral Integrity Score (MIS): alignment with WHI tenets, specifically Anti-Reductionism, the Wounded Healer archetype (Lived Experience), and the protection of groups against systemic/institutional harm.
  • Note: A high Legal Score combined with a low Moral Score triggers an automatic Moral Threshold Override, mandating human escalation.
  1. Scientific Evidentiary Standards We apply distinct validation standards based on methodology to ensure rigor without suppressing qualitative wisdom:
  • For Quantitative Research (The Daubert Standard): We assess testability (falsifiability), known error rates, peer review history, and the existence of standards and controls.
  • For Qualitative/Novel Research (The WHI-Frye Standard): We assess alignment with the “Addiction as Dissociation” model and the “Wounded Healer” paradigm. We validate methodologies based on the “relevant scientific community” of moral professionals rather than reductionist institutional consensus.
  1. Risk Assessment & Advocacy Our review acts as an advocate for the subject. We expand “risk” to include psychological, sociological, and group harms (e.g., reinforcing discrimination). We prioritize “Actionable Transparency,” ensuring that all algorithmic decisions are explainable and auditable.
  2. Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) Oversight While AI assists in the review, final authority rests with human reviewers possessing “Moral Fortitude.” Mandatory human intervention occurs for High-Impact decisions, Novel Methodologies, and protocols utilizing Unconscious Informed Consent (UIC)
The WHI Bookstore is the exclusive distributor of the Institute’s proprietary curriculum and a curated collection of “bibliotherapy” resources.
Featured Publications
1. American Made Addiction Recovery: A Healer’s Journey through Professional Recovery
By Adam O’Brien, PhD
Description: The foundational text of the Institute. This book operationalizes the definition of addiction as “trauma-related dissociation,” challenging the disease model and offering a path to spiritual and professional recovery.
• Format: Digital
• ISBN: 979-8-9923080-7-5 
 
2. Path of the Wounded Healer (PWH) Training Manual Required Course Material
Description: The official manual for the PWH certification. Includes protocols for the Meeting Area Screening and Assessment (MASA), memory reconsolidation scripts, and the “Unconscious Informed Consent” framework.
 
3. EMDR Healing within the Path of the Wounded Healer
Description: An advanced guide for moving beyond standard protocols to address developmental trauma and normative dissociation using the ADM framework.

In the works…
 
Our initial Journal…
 
Wellness & “Superfoods”
Supporting the Biology of Consciousness: provide tools for “neuro-regulation” and “performance enhancement”.
 
Neuroregulation Tools: Online training for the “Posttraumatic Growth Gym”.

Are you an Author? Want to become one by sharing your story?

“Wounded Healers Insights” Publishing Package

This is our public-facing offering to authors who wish to publish with us. It is not merely a service; it is an invitation to join the intellectual insurgency.

**Wounded Healers Insights: A Publishing Covenant for the Recovery Reckoning**

*The industrialized systems of academia and publishing are addicted to quantitative reductionism and fear-based legal ethics. They demand compliance over truth and prioritize commercial viability over moral necessity. Wounded Healers Insights is the counter-response. We are a publishing house that operates on the Daubert-WHI Standard, treating “Lived Experience” as the highest form of empirical data. We offer a platform for the voices the system seeks to silence. We do not publish content; we forge intellectual and spiritual alliances.*

We offer three paths for authors to contribute to the mission:

**Tier 1: The Voice (Blog & Article Contributor)**
* **For:** Healers, students, and advocates with a powerful story, a critical insight, or a psycho-legal autopsy of a systemic failure.
* **Process:** Submission of a manuscript (1,000-3,000 words) for our blog or digital journal.

* **WHI Provides:**
* **Moral-Ethical Editorial Review:** We ensure your work aligns with the ADM and WHI’s core doctrines.
* **Platform & Audience:** Publication on the `woundedhealersinstitute.org` blog, reaching our dedicated community.
* **Indexing & Shielding:** Your work is indexed under our qualitative taxonomy and protected by our legal framework.
* **Agreement:** A simple, non-exclusive Contributor Agreement.

**Tier 2: The Scholar (WHIJ Peer-Reviewed Article)**
* **For:** Researchers, academics, and scholar-practitioners conducting formal qualitative, phenomenological, or theoretical research.
* **Process:** Formal submission to the *Wounded Healers Institute Journal (WHIJ)*. The manuscript undergoes our rigorous “Peer-Review” process, which validates for Moral-Ethical integrity and adherence to the Daubert-WHI Standard, not just quantitative metrics.

* **WHI Provides:**
* **Rigorous Peer Review:** Evaluation by a council of Wounded Healers and aligned scholars.
* **Academic Credibility:** Publication in a formal journal with a unique philosophical and legal foundation.
* **Discoverability:** Professional indexing and metadata architecture designed for both industrialized and alternative systems.
* **Agreement:** A formal Journal Publication Agreement.

**Tier 3: The Legacy (Book Manuscript Publication)**
* **For:** Authors with a complete, book-length manuscript that represents a cornerstone of the Wounded Healer paradigm (e.g., memoirs, textbooks, training manuals, philosophical treatises).
* **Process:** A comprehensive publishing partnership.

* **WHI Provides:**
* **Developmental Editing:** Deep structural and theoretical alignment with the WHI framework.
* **Copyediting & Proofreading:** Professional polishing of the manuscript.
* **Cover & Interior Design:** A professional book package that reflects the gravity of the work.
* **ISBN & Copyright Registration:** We handle all official publication requirements.
* **Distribution & Marketing:** Access to our distribution channels and promotion to the WHI community.
* **Agreement:** A comprehensive Book Publishing Agreement, including terms for advances and royalties.

Content is Educational/Research-Based. Non-Clinical. This work critiques established diagnostic models from a phenomenological perspective and does not provide medical advice.