La mort ou l’exil : fuir un parent sorcier et le porter en soi
Based on our clinical experience with people for whom the question of witchcraft had been a very important aspect of their perception of the origin and persistence of their symptoms, we tried to understand what this practice could represent for the subjects concerned in their psychic construction, i...
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| Natura: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Lingua: | Français |
| Pubblicazione: |
2025
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| Accesso online: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Riassunto: | Based on our clinical experience with people for whom the question of witchcraft had been a very important aspect of their perception of the origin and persistence of their symptoms, we tried to understand what this practice could represent for the subjects concerned in their psychic construction, in the expression of their current disorders, and in the perception of therapeutic work, after attempting to reflect on the conditions of a clinical encounter marked by sociocultural otherness. In the two cases described, it became apparent that the figure of the sorcerer-father or the witch-stepmother was part of a relationship with a parental other who knew no limits, either internal to oneself, psychically integrated, or external, represented by the community, in the exercise of its authority. With unlimited power over the child's body and that of their siblings, capable of committing acts that were directly or indirectly destructive within the family or group, and with social accreditation in the exercise of their power, because they were designated as a sorcerer, this parent had invaded and continued to occupy the patient's internal space. The incorporation of this parent rendered the choice of exile as an escape strategy obsolete, since the patients found again, in the form of spirits calling for murder, the persecuting presence of this parental other, a ruthless invader, a fearsome sorcerer, a colonial and slave-owning force historically intrinsically linked to the colonized slave. The voices urging patients to act violently are thus facets of the entire parental destructiveness unleashed against the child of yesteryear, in the absence of psychic, social, and cultural barriers capable of impeding this dispossession of the self. Castrating institutional responses, reproducing the violence once experienced and unwilling to differentiate themselves from these persecuting parental imagos, may have hindered therapeutic care, and in this respect constitute a particularly important field of questioning for thinking about the clinic of psychosis when dealing with people in situations of exile, precariousness, and trauma. Our clinical interventions have attempted to create a container for the anxieties expressed, to understand what witchcraft was called in each individual experience, and to detach ourselves from it in an attempt to understand the underlying psychic issues, in the face of life experiences in which death, poorly elaborated, massive, and unsymbolized, had been omnipresent. |
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