title: Mental disorders and the symbolic function of therapeutic rites in the Réunion Island Hindu environment.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Psychologie Clinique et de Psychopathologie, Université René Descartes - Paris V, France. yolande.govindama@psycho.univ-paris5.fr
authors.forename: Yolande
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Govindama
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002562:Ceremonial Behavior; D003674:Defense Mechanisms; D003717:Denial, Psychological; D004325:Dreams; D005201:Fantasy; D005783:Gender Identity; D018596:Hinduism; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008515:Medicine, Ayurvedic; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000208:ethnology* / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy; D009769:Object Attachment; D011573:Psychoanalytic Interpretation; D011936:Reality Testing; D012069:Religion and Psychology; D017508:Reunion; D013561:Symbolism