Culture et processus d’association mentale

Abstract

Throught certain clinical elements gathered in an intercultural context the author tryusing the ideas of resemblance rather than on dissimilarity, thereby establishes a relationship of therapeutic cooperation between himself and the patient. In this perspective, the patient must not be send back to his own reference system nor given over to the freudian grid of intrapsychic conflicts so that an original interactive approach can be set up, in which the aspects of doubt and ignorance inherent to regression in the analyst’s own approach play a major role, as do the traces of the patient’s verbal expression in the subconscious of the therapist. The author has provided a theoretical overview of the hypotheses of Devereux and Roheim regarding “subconscious reverberation”, with dreaming conceived of as an underlying factor in human societal organization. Then he has reviewed the studies of Searles and Pankow on the concept of “therapeutic symbiosis” and “dynamic structuring of the personality”. The clinical situation that the author has examined is then further investigated, and a description has been given of the experience of loss of self-possession, or more particularly self-depossession connected with mental automatism, hypochondria, and the patient’s personal beliefs. At the very limits of western psychiatry and ethnopsychiatry, it can be seen how within a proximal relationship that involves reconsideration of the interior images of the psychiatrist, through these, the therapist can encourage his patient to undergo transformations that also enable him to provide a culturally acceptable explanation for his disorders.