(Translated from the French by Catherine Grandsard)
(1) Ph D ; Professor of Clinical Psychology and Psychopathology, Centre
Georges Devereux, University of Paris 8
(2) Centre Georges Devereux - Centre Universitaire d'aide psychologique,
Université de Paris 8, 2, rue de la Liberté, 93526 Saint-Denis
cedex 02, France.
(3) "In 1968, he is furious. « My heart was heavy with anguish
and worry for those young people in the process of preparing a unlivable,
totalitarian world for themselves. There wasn't a chance that they would
succeed in establishing their anarchist, idealistic world. » Catherine
Clément: "De l'angoisse à la méthode" par
Georges Deverux. Libération, May 20 1980, p. 34. (Quote translated
from the French by C. Grandsard)
(4) "Georges Devereux remained unknown because he was always a rebel,
first and foremost towards the establishment: he never asked for anything
from anyone, and this is palpable. Where did his strange genius come from,
this sort of burnt sorcerer above himself?" Ibid., p. 34.
(5) Devereux, G. From Anxiety to Method in the Behavioral Sciences, The
Hague, Paris, Mouton & Co, 1967, p. 302.
(6) "Bohr and Jordan conclusively proved that, if one seeks to determine
completely the functions of life, one must reach so deeply into the organism,
one must disturb so radically its essential state, that one abolishes thereby
the very phenomenon one seeks to study: Life." Ibid, pp. 288-289.
(7) Ibid, p. 302
(8) Concerning this matter, see Sybille de Pury, Traité du malentendu.
Théorie et pratique de la médiation interculturelle en situation
clinique. Paris, Synthélabo, Les empêcheurs de penser en rond,
1998.
(9) See the stimulating discussion of the concept of placebo in Ph. Pignarre
- 1997: Qu'est-ce qu'un médicament ? Paris, La Découverte,
1997.
(10) Devereux, Essais d'ethnopsychiatrie générale , Paris,
Gallimard, 1970, p. 18. (Quote translated from the French by C. Grandsard)
(11) Levy-Bruhl L. - La mentalité primitive. Paris, P.U.F., new edition.
In recent psychoanalytic texts, one comes accross arguments very similar
to those of the beginning of the century: "Primitive man made weapons
and tools which he rendered sacred, investing them with a magical power
greater then his own. In the same fashion, he manufactured idols and fetishes,
signifying projections of his narcissism. The idols represented (and still
represent nowadays, to the extent that their worship still survives, in
more or less disguised forms) the virtues and powers that man would like
to possess in an absolute fashion... thus the idols become a prop of his
projected hatred and could be feared." B. Grunberger, P. Dessuant :
Narcissisme, christianisme, antisémitisme ; Actes Sud, 1997. Hence,
there is no interest here in the techniques of fetish makers and users -
nor in their philosophy or their construction of the world - once again
reduced to the status of infantile masturbators.
(12) Freud, S. Totem et tabou, Paris, Payot, 1968 (Totem and Taboo). See
also the critique of the Western representation of "primitives"
in M. Gauchet, Le désenchantement du monde. Paris, Gallimard, 1985.
(13) See certain present day works representing what one could qualify as
"old style" ethnopsychiatry, an ethnopsychiatry which denies the
specificity of its own approach to the world, which interprets the actions
and, above all, thoughts that it ascribes to those it observes. In this
type of approach, if others do indeed act, they do so guided by intuition
whereby the theories they construct to justify their actions can only be
considered as facts to be observed. Examples: Ortigues M.C., Ortigues E.
Oedipe africain. Paris, Plon, 1966 or Pradelle de la Tour C.H., Le crâne
qui parle. Ethnopsychiatrie bamileke, Paris, E.P.E.L., 1997 for Lacanian
interpretations; Juillerat B., dipe chasseur. Une mythologie du sujet en
Nouvelle Guinée. Paris, P.U.F., 1991, for more "classical"
psychoanalytic interpretations.
(14) Stengers, Cosmopolitiques, tome 7, Pour en finir avec la tolérance.
Paris, La découverte-Synthélabo, les Empêcheurs de penser
en rond, 1997. (Quote ranslated from the French by C. Grandsard)
(15) I quote here an expression coined by Isabelle Stengers in "Le
médecin et le charlatan" in T. Nathan et I. Stengers, Médecins
et Sorciers, Les empêcheurs de penser en rond, Paris, Synthélabo,
1995.
(16) For example, the exponential development in large cities throughout
the world of prayer groups which are genuine traditional therapeutic organizations
adapted to the modern world. See Piault C. ed., Prophétisme et thérapeutique.
Albert Atcho et la communauté de Bregbo. Paris, Hermann, 1975; Dozon
P., La cause des prophètes. (politique et religion en Afrique contemporaine)
Paris, Le Seuil, 1995; Nathan T., Hounkpatin L., La parole de la forêt
initiale. Paris, Odile Jacob, 1996.
(17) With the noteworthy exception of Marcel Mauss.
(18) See G. Ròheim (1943) Origine et fonction de la culture. (Origin
and Funtion of Cuture) Paris, Gallimard, 1967.
(19) Devereux, Ethnopsychanalyse complémentariste . Paris, Flammarion,
1972, p. 252. (Quote translated from the French by C. Grandsard)
(20) Ibid, p. 256.
(21) See I. Stengers, Cosmopolitiques I, La guerre des sciences . Paris,
Paris, La découverte-Synthélabo, les Empêcheurs de penser
en rond, 1996.
(22) Saura, B. Politique et religion à Tahiti . Tahiti, Éd.
Polymages-scoop, 1993.
(23) Berger, Anthropologie politique des systèmes de soins magico-religieux.
L'exemple des cultes de possession bamanan au Bèlèdugu (Mali).
Mémoire de DEA d'Anthropologie, sociologie du politique et du développement.
Université Paris 8, juin 1997.
(24) Field data collected by Geneviève Nkoussou and Jérôme
Weisselberg, unpublished.
(25) Personal observation.
(26) See Pouillon's description of theDangaleat where any calling is first
an affliction. In other words: it is an illness which promotes the individual
to the social position he will hold and qualifies him for this function.
Pouillon J., 1970, "Malade et médecin : le même et/ou
l'autre. Remarques ethnologiques." Nouvelle Revue de Psychanalyse,
1, 76-98.
(27) It isn't surprising that it is in Foulcault's wake that one finds the
most innovative attempts in including patient associations in research,
for example in the works of Daniel Defert. The recent publication of Foucault's
lectures at the Collège de France provides us with theoretical leads
for reusing « subjugated knowledges ». "By «subjugated
knowledges » I also mean a series of knowledges that were disqualified
as non-conceptual knowledges, as knowledges that were insufficiently elaborated:
naïve knowledges, hierarchically inferior knowledges, knowledges beneath
the level of scholarly or scientific requirements... it is through the reappearance
of these local knowledges of people, of these disqualified knowledges that
a critique was initiated." [Quote translated from the French by C.
Grandsard] Michel Foucault, Il faut défendre la société.
Cours au Collège de France. 1976. Paris, Gallimard, Seuil, 1997,
p.9.
(28) Oliver Sacks, Un anthropologue sur Mars. Sept histoires paradoxales
. (An Anthropologist on Mars) French translation: Paris, Le Seuil, 1996.
(29) I even think it is the only methodology, at least for psychopathology
and psychotherapy, which affords a way of avoiding Popper's criticism accusing
psychoanalysts of producing "non refutable" statements.
(30) Brotherhood also including a therapeutic function, gathered around
the tomb of a saint. See, for instance, A. Chlyeh, La thérapie syncrétique
des Gnaoua marocains. Thèse de doctorat d'ethnologie, Université
de Paris VII, 1995.
(31) The original text : G. de la Tourette, 1885, Etude sur une affection
nerveuse caractérisée par l'incoordination motrice accompagnée
d'écholalie et de coprolalie (jumping, latah, myriatchit), Archives
de neurologie , 9, 19-42 et 158-200.
(32) Jilek G., Culture "Pathoplastic" or "Pathogenic"?
A key question of Comparative Psychiatry. Curare. (Journal of Ethnomedicine
and Transcultural Psychiatry), Heidelberg, 1982, 5: 57-68.
(33) Quoted by Collignon in Pour un retour sur les "culture-bound syndromes"
en psychiatrie transculturelle. Santé, Culture, Health, VI, 2, 149-162.1989.
(34) Devereux, Ethnopsychiatrie des indiens mohave . French translation:
Paris, Synthelabo, Les empêcheurs de penser en rond, 1996.
(35) I refer to Isabelle Stengers' use of this expression (la pratique de
l'injure) - Seminar, 97/98.