6. Africa

Abstract

L. V. THOMAS describes a variety of cultural means by which traditional African society attempts to preserve the mental equilibrium of its members. MA MBOG has surveyed psychotherapeutic practises among several ethnic groups in the Cameroon and Tchad. His report on his observations covers the basic principles of psychotherapeutic dynamics in African society and the chain of forces—step by step—which results in the healing of ills. C. STAEWEN and F. SCHÖNBERG, two German psychiatrists, studied anxiety development in the Yoruba of Nigeria in relation to culture change. Two waves of anxiety which were found are discussed in sociocultural and psychoanalytic terms. R. F. KRAUS views in a new light earlier findings regarding involutional depression in women of the Ashanti tribe in Ghana. He shows that multiple factors in their culture render these women susceptible to depressive attacks, and that Western psychiatric and psychoanalytic insight can find applicability to cross-cultural phenomena. Little is known about emotional disturbances in children in developing countries. As R. GIEL and his associates noted in Ethiopia, children with emotional disorders are rarely brought to a physician. These authors devoted their special interest to a study of delinquent boys at the only remand home in Ethiopia. In a third paper they deal with attitudes and thinking patterns of Ethiopian university students. They are compared with British students. Finally, A. OMBREDANE in his book on the Congolese mentality reports on a revision of the TAT designed for and tried out on the populations of the then Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of Congo).