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Traditional Therapies

Psychotherapy is not just something that happens when a client sits in a chair in an office. Traditional healers in South Africa use very different methods to treat the same problems as Western psychologists (Louw, 1995). The healers work to help their clients' interpersonal relationships, which they believe cause a variety of bodily illnesses. Instead of treating clients alone in a remote office, far from the clients' communities, healers come to clients' homes. Like family therapists, these healers focus on the relationship between the client and the client's family. However, healers do not ask clients to solve their own problems. Speaking as the earthly representative of "ancestors," the healer tells the client how to get better. The client and the client's family are swept up in an emotional ceremony that may include energetic dancing, music, ritual washing, blood-letting, and "cleansing" medicines that make the client vomit. The client becomes the center of attention at a performance that dramatizes the client's social conflicts, such as problems with neighbors, guilt over some misdeed, or an unpaid debt. The client's concerns are publicly recognized, allowing the client to feel important. By the end of the ritual, the client is reunited with the community, purified and ready to start life afresh.