Who Is Sebastian Salicru? The Psychologist Behind Psychology Today’s Leadership and Psychedelic-Therapy Writing

Sebastian Salicru is a registered psychologist, psychotherapist, and board-approved supervisor who contributes to Psychology Today, where his blog carries the title "Psychology Insights for a New World." According to his contributor profile on the site, he has more than 25 years of professional experience across both clinical and corporate settings.

Salicru is based in Canberra, Australia, and works online with clients globally. His profile lists his practice as Insightful Psychology Results, operating under PTS Psychology at ptspsychology.com. Beyond seeing individual clients, he supervises counsellors and psychotherapists, according to the same profile.

From clinical work to the boardroom

What distinguishes Salicru's background is the split between therapy and organisational work. He holds Professional Certified Coach (PCC) credentials from the International Coach Federation and is a graduate of the Harvard University Kennedy School, according to his Psychology Today listing. That combination places him among practitioners who move between individual mental health care and executive development, working with senior and middle-level executives across public, private, and not-for-profit organisations.

He is the author of Leadership Results: How to Create Adaptive Leaders and High-Performing Organisations for an Uncertain World, published by Wiley in 2017. His profile also credits him with two book chapters and multiple peer-reviewed journal articles.

Recurring themes: schema therapy, psychedelics, and language

Salicru's published posts and listed research cluster around several distinct areas. A prominent one is Schema Therapy, and specifically the concept of the "Healthy Adult" mode. His writing repeatedly returns to this idea, including a piece that frames the Healthy Adult through an octopus metaphor and a separate research entry describing the mode using a Sherlock Holmes analogy from an enactivist and embodied cognition perspective.

A second cluster concerns psychedelic-assisted therapy. His listed research includes a mini-autoethnographic case study on an MDMA healing experience written from a psychotherapist's viewpoint. Recent blog posts extend this focus to self-compassion in psychedelic-assisted therapy and the management of suggestibility during treatment. On the latter, his profile summary describes suggestibility as functioning both as a catalyst for healing and as a factor that can leave clients vulnerable to bias and misconduct, a framing that acknowledges risk rather than promoting the treatment uncritically.

A third theme is the intersection of spirituality and mental health. His research listing includes work on an evidence-based spirituality framework for mental health practitioners, and his posts argue that spiritual practices can be secular, grounded in ethical values, and beneficial to mental health.

A skeptic of standard diagnostic models

Salicru's research titles suggest a critical stance toward conventional psychiatric frameworks. Listed work includes entries on retiring categorical systems and the biomedical model of mental illness, along with a piece proposing a contemporary model of depression. On the leadership side, his research spans functional leadership, psychological contracts and leadership integrity, and a model described as "Leadership-as-Practice Development," alongside a case study of global leadership development best practice.

His blog also touches on more accessible topics, including impostor syndrome, anger management, self-leadership, and the psychology behind why New Year's resolutions tend to fail, which he attributes to maladaptive schemas.

Why the profile matters

Salicru's positioning reflects a broader pattern in the mental health field: practitioners who operate simultaneously as clinicians, executive coaches, and public communicators. His work draws on Schema Therapy, an evidence-based approach, while engaging with psychedelic-assisted therapy, an area still under active research and regulatory review in Australia and elsewhere. Readers evaluating his contributions should note that the claims summarised here come from his own contributor profile and are not independently verified beyond that source.