Mental Disorders and the Symbolic Function of Therapeutic Rites in the Réunion Island Hindu Environment

• Published in: Transcultural psychiatry Vol. 43; no. 3; pp. 488 - 511
• Main Author: Govindama, Yolande
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Thousand Oaks, CA Sage Publications 01.09.2006; Sage
• Subjects: Adult; Ceremonial Behavior; Cognitive problems, arts and sciences, folk traditions, folklore; Defense Mechanisms; Denial (Psychology); Dreams; Ethnology; Ethnopsychiatry. Ethnopsychoanalysis. Ethnopsychology; Fantasy; Gender Identity; Hinduism; Humans; Male; Medicine, Ayurvedic; Mental Disorders - ethnology; Mental Disorders - psychology; Mental Disorders - therapy; Object Attachment; Psychoanalytic Interpretation; Reality Testing; Religion and Psychology; Reunion; Symbolism; Traditional sciences and medicine; Indian Ocean; East Africa; Reunion Island; Reunion; healing; Hinduism; Réunion Island; therapeutic ritual symbolic function; psychoanalysis; Penitent; Genealogy; Mental health; Representation; Therapeutic rite; Psychoanalysis; Disruption; Madness; Relation with ancestors; Meaning
• ISSN: 1363-4615; 1461-7471
• DOI: 10.1177/1363461506066990

This article describes two therapeutic rituals in the Hindu milieu on Réunion Island - walking on fire and piercing parts of the body in the Feast of Cavedy - to underscore the cultural representation of madness and the symbolic function of these rites in treatment. Madness is considered to be the result of a rupture of genealogy through denial of the founder, and of psychic-somatic unity, which leads the afflicted person to develop a fantasy of immortality. The two therapeutic rituals aim at reestablishing the debt to the founding ancestor by the symbolic reactualization of the original chaos, and at restoring the genealogy through a relationship between the penitent and the officiant, which brings the subject to accept his human condition as a mortal being.