The Psychological Flexibility Model from a cultural perspective: an interpretative analysis of two Native American healing rituals

ABSTRACT While the growth of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and its underlying construct, psychological flexibility, has been supported by numerous studies, it has received little attention from sociocultural disciplines. With the aim of considering the transdiagnostic Psychological Flexibility Model from a cultural perspective and from an interdisciplinary approach combining both Psychology and Anthropology, this article proposes an interpretative theoretical analysis of two Native American healing rituals: sweat lodge ceremonies and peyote ceremonies. Drawing from the fieldwork of Calabrese among the Navajo and Wilson among the Lakota Sioux, both healing rituals are interpreted and compared in light of the six processes of psychological flexibility. While recognising the adaptability of the model outside the cultural sphere of Western mental health sciences, the article concludes with two remarks: the relevance of the sociocultural construction of values and a potential connection between psychological flexibility and altered states of consciousness.