title: A Healing Cult Met with the Baatombu from the North of Benin: The Kaawo.
abstract: Some remarkable studies have been devoted to the healing cults in Africa; but few of them focus on the role played by their therapeutic processes in the healing of the patient. This paper aims to show the real implication of the techniques mobilized in a healing process by a cult named Kaawo on the Baatombu in Northern Benin; and of which the data have been collected between 1995 and 2002. The outcomes of the study show the techniques used, such as prayer, sacrifice, divination, witchcraft, gesture and postures, as being real healing operators that have inductive properties with direct effect on the 'disease'. Here, the healing efficiency is all the more significant as the troubles from which the subjects suffer are either of psychosomatic or psychofunctional type, and relating rather to an existential malaise than an organic disorder. In this process, the priest/healer's conviction in the efficiency of the treatment prescribed to the patient, and the faith of the latter in the efficiency of the treatment received, maximize the potential of healing. It is clear that such results move away from the classical clinical approach that consists of assessing the consequences of a disease by examining symptoms it generates-and contributes to opening up some avenues for as yet fairly unexplored research opportunities.
authors.forename: Mohamed
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Abdou