PSYCHEDELIC MEDICINE INTEGRATION & TRANSPERSONAL PSYCHOLOGY
CLINICAL INTERNSHIP TRAINING PROGRAM
About Us
The Integration Collective is a clinical psychotherapy internship program that specializes in psychedelic medicine integration and transpersonal psychology services for the community. We are dedicated to providing a training experience that fosters community, honors indigenous wisdom, celebrates diversity, upholds generosity/reciprocity models, maintains high ethical standards, and strong mentorships. Associate therapists of this program will be awarded a fellowship certification of supervised professional experience for licensure in California.
Our Values Embodied
Community
Community healing supports both individual and collective growth in order to promote compassion, empathy, and increased levels of awareness.
We work from a cohort based learning model that is committed to individual personal growth, creating a supportive learning environment, a network for ongoing peer support, and a commitment to cultural diversity and awareness.
Inner Ethics
“Ethics means that we treat everything as if we belong together.”
Inner ethics is a guiding light within each and everyone of us. We believe ethical and compassionate understanding flows from a place of intuitive access to presence, contemplative awareness practices, and dedication for our own psychological healing.
Inner ethics allows us to see reality with more clarity, interconnectedness, and compassionate understanding. We encourage personal mindfulness practices for each therapist such as contemplative awareness practices and self care to be equally as important as reading academic literature. We believe that the seasons of our lives are the greatest classroom for learning and growth. Ancestral trauma and opportunity for healing is embedded in each and everyone of us, awareness practices by the practioner allow for unhealed psychological patterns to be explored and healed.
MEntorship
Mentorship is the journey of guidance and support for our associate therapists through the realm of private practice. Mentors encourage the development of their mentee’s unique personal and professional identity as therapists.
Mentorship is an instrumental aspect of the training to offer guidance, professional development, and clinical oversight of client caseloads. This learning model helps practitioners develop their niche, nurture intuitive gifts and abilities, and lead to a thriving private practice.
Empowering Therapists Financially
We believe in empowering therapists to feel financially and energetically supported as they engage with clients.
We believe in setting a new example where right financial compensation is provided for the work provided. We hold the belief that healers should be fairly paid for their gifts and their dedication to our community's well-being. Therefore, we offer competitive compensation to our therapists to ensure their quality of life, so they can deliver the best possible services to our community.
Equitable Access
We believe in empowering therapists to feel financially and energetically supported as they engage with clients.
We believe in setting a new example where right financial compensation is provided for the work provided. We hold the belief that healers should be fairly paid for their gifts and their dedication to our community's well-being. Therefore, we offer competitive compensation to our therapists to ensure their quality of life, so they can deliver the best possible services to our community.
Indigenous Wisdom
We practice humility and cultural respect for the profound knowledge and practices that have been developed and passed down by indigenous peoples over thousands of years.
We adhere to an ongoing commitment to foster relationships and partnerships with indigenous elders, leaders, and knowledge keepers of indigenous lineages. We invite their guidance and permission to incorporate their wisdom in our program. Guest speakers and experts from indigenous communities offer their teachings and knowledge with our program in order to deepen our understanding of plant medicine, healing, and wisdom traditions. Ongoing feedback and dialogue from indigenous wisdom keepers are essential to our reciprocity model, as we continue to adapt our program based on their input and preferences.
Transpersonal Psychology
Transpersonal psychology integrates the spiritual and transcendent aspects of the human experience through Eastern wisdom, cross-cultural myths and archetypes, indigenous healing traditions, and East-West modalities of modern psychology.
Western psychology is still in its infancy of understanding the realms of human consciousness. In 1905, the “Father of Psychology'' William James first used the term transpersonal Psychology. In 1942, Carl Jung first used the term transpersonal in his publications, and in 1968 a human interest group (Including Abraham Maslow & Stanislov Grof) named Transpersonal Psychology as the “fourth force” of psychology.
As transpersonal psychologists, we understand that psychedelic experiences are an unfoldment of Transpersonal psychology’s understanding of ‘spiritual emergence’ and the work of Stanslov and Christina Grof. Spiritual emergence occurs when an individual comes into a more expanded way of being, such as a sense of deeper connection with themselves, other people, nature, and the cosmos. However, without the proper support and conceptual framework to understand and integrate their experiences, this emergence can quickly escalate into a ‘spiritual emergency’. Our psychedelic integration psychotherapy offers psychological support, energetic grounding, and a compassionate presence to help guide individuals at all stages of their healing journey from spiritual emergence to emergency.
Cultural Diversity Awareness
We provide a safe learning environment that fosters cultural sensitivity and diversity awareness.
Program facilitators and students receive cultural competency training throughout our curriculum. We aim to avoid cultural appropriation and ensure cultural sensitivity in program content. Throughout the program, we invite guest speakers and experts from diverse cultural backgrounds to share their insights and experiences. These speakers provide valuable perspectives on the intersection of culture and psychedelics. Program facilitators and directors are open to on-going feedback from students on how to make program content more inclusive and respectful to all cultures.
LGBTQ+ Allies
We are committed to creating an inclusive and welcoming environment for all individuals, regardless of their sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.
We proudly stand as allies of the LGBTQ+ community and firmly believe that diversity and respect for every person's unique identity enrich our learning community.
Ethical Considerations & Risk Reduction Education
We offer risk reduction training and education in our program to minimize the potential risks associated with psychedelic medicine use across various contexts and stages of psychedelic work.
We provide comprehensive training on ethical considerations related to plant medicine & psychedelic integration that include historical and cultural contexts of ethics in this field and the client-therapist psychotherapy relationship. This includes risk reduction principles and risk assessment of preparation, identifying safe ceremony and facilitation settings, and post-session integration. Ongoing supervision with experienced and qualified practitioners to discuss ethical dilemmas, risk reduction strategies, and crisis intervention skills is provided.
Meet the Team
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Dr. Jen Christian
Therapist, Educator, Co-Founder
Dr. Jen Christian, Psy.D. is a licensed transpersonal psychologist, psychedelic integration therapist, and clinical training supervisor. She holds a Masters degree in transpersonal psychology, a Doctorate degree in spiritually-oriented clinical psychology, and obtained her postdoctoral fellowship at UCSF. She has taught at CIIS, the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, and launched the first Mindfulness Self-Compassion Course at UCSF for the faculty and staff. She has a private practice in San Francisco where she provides somatic, trauma informed, and psycho-spiritual psychotherapy. Dr. Jen works with various psychedelic treatment centers and groups for the consultation and treatment of clients working with plant medicines and psychedelics. Since 2020, she has been an active member of Decriminalize Nature, which successfully advocated for the resolution to decriminalize entheogenic plants and fungi in San Francisco.
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Dr. Sophie Whitney
Therapist, Educator, Co-Founder
Dr. Whitney works as a therapist, researcher, and educator in the field of psychedelic therapy. Dr. Sophie Whitney received her PhD in Clinical Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute, holds an M.A. in Psychology with a Mind-Body Concentration from Columbia University's Spirituality Mind Body Institute, and completed her B.A. in Sociology at Pepperdine University. Dr. Whitney has been working in the field of psychedelic integration and therapy for the last 8 years spanning various settings. Dr. Whitney worked closely with Dr. Ingmar Gorman at the Psychedelic Education and Continuing Care Program in NYC as program assistant promoting education, trainings, workshops, continuing care programs, and other services. She also worked in Costa Rica at Rythmia Life Advancement Center, a medically licensed facility offering plant medicine ceremonies. At Rythmia she assisted Chief Medical Officer Dr. Jeff McNairy with client medical intakes and assessments and assisted facilitators during plant medicine ceremonies. Dr. Whitney currently supports clients in private practice, facilitates microdosing groups, and serves as an advisor at Thank You Life, a non-profit organization providing scholarships to individuals seeking psychedelic-assisted therapy. You can find an article co-authored by Dr. Whitney titled 'The Psychedelic Integration Scales: Tools for Measuring Psychedelic Integration Behaviors and Experiences' in Frontiers journal.
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Dr. Nicole Renee
Therapist, Educator, Co-Founder
Dr. Nicole Renee PhD is a psychotherapist and educator who specializes in integrative clinical psychology and psychedelic medicine. In her private practice, she weaves psychodynamic, transpersonal, and somatic approaches and psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy into her work with adults and adolescents who are struggling with mood disorders, life transitions, PTSD, grief and loss, women’s health issues and issues of self-image. Nicole completed an advanced fellowship in ketamine-assisted psychotherapy (KAP) through the Board of Medicine and brings experience in diverse treatment settings such as addiction medicine, community mental health, psychological assessment, concierge wellness and private practice settings. She currently maintains a private practice in the San Francisco Bay Area and is co-founder of The Integration Collective.
* If you are seeking treatment for Ketamine Assisted Therapy, Nicole is our KAP affiliated provider.
Join us
We Are currently accepting applications for our Summer Program
If you would like to join us on our amazing healing journey please apply with the link below. We look forward to hearing from you.