I'm pretty sure that any psychologist/psychotherapist who can successfully use a psychedelic in a therapy session (not necessarily MDMA, but certainly LSD and psilocybin) needs to have a sense for what "unitive/mystical/spiritual/cosmic consciousness" means and what it's like to experience it, and why it's important and how it can be integrated into an otherwise normal human life, or else they will simply not be able to help people by offering this experience to them in the form of drugs.
So I definitely think the distinction is a little blurry, if you consider "shaman" to be a meaningful term outside of an indigenous cultural context.
The problem is, I don't know if the term "shaman" IS meaningful outside of an indigenous cultural context. "Shamans" only really exist in indigenous cultures because our culture HAS NO shamanic tradition. We're picking the idea up and running with it just in the past 40-50 years or so. That's why we always have to use the term "modern" or something like it when we describe "shamans" who have Western backgrounds.
If you argue that a true "shaman" cannot exist without a cultural context that supports them with a shamanic tradition, initiation rituals, etc., then there is no such thing as a "modern-day shaman."
However, there is a FURTHER distinction between "psychedelic therapists" who have a purely "scientific" approach to their practice, and "psychedelic therapists" who make a clear attempt to integrate spiritual concepts MUCH older than Western psychiatric medicine into their practice. There is nothing "scientific" about encouraging a patient to engage with "cosmic consciousness" or "unity with the Godhead" and basing the therapy around that experience, and it is perfectly possible for a psychedelic researcher to write a complete paper about their research without using any of that language. Yet, it seems to me, at least, that psychedelic therapy that does not attempt to engage with ancient spiritual concepts (unity with the Godhead, etc.) is only going to have success in spite of this deficiency, and that psychedelic therapy that DOES engage with these concepts will be more likely to be successful as a direct result.
Personally I don't like using the term "shaman" unless I'm talking about someone who was specifically initiated into a very old and continuous indigenous shamanic tradition by someone who was similarly initiated earlier in their life. There are very few, if any, white people who I'd consider to be true "shamans" (this is not to denigrate those who have devoted their life to studying shamanism ... but there is a difference between a student of shamanism and a shaman).
A person like Dr. Stanislav Grof, who has become such an extensive expert on psychedelic psychotherapy that he invented a new way of doing it without psychedelics (holotropic breathwork), is a good example of someone who I'd be tempted to call a "modern shaman," but he is very much an exception to the rule.
