Kindoki as diagnosis and therapy

Abstract

Kindoki (Kongo ‘bewitchment’) has often been analyzed as a social phenomenon which provides an outlet for repressed hostility, frustration and anxiety; as an indicator of tense social relationships, as accusations are directed toward outside agents of the relationship; as a medium through which episodes dramatize or reinforce social norms. But the following questions need to be asked from a psychological viewpoint. Does kindoki reflect the individual's unconscious means of personality integration? When it is used in describing an existential condition, clinical data suggests that the individual is moving from dependency to self-affirmation and self-integration. I propose the following hypotheses which guide my therapeutic work with the bewitched. Beliefs in kindoki are a representation of unconscious strivings toward ego integrity. Use of kindoki symbolism expresses engagement in the process of individuation, of identity formation, and a means of affirmation in the context of social thought and social relationships. An individual's identity is located in the ego yet also in communal culture; kindoki symbolism established the separate identity of the two—social and individual—identities. It enables the individual to say ‘no’ to the group which is the dominant part of his personality structure. In the kindoki experience, the individual uses the ‘group ego’ against which to externalize his feelings and impulses so as to promote personal growth. Kindoki symbolism provides the context in which the individual discovers and actualizes himself. It is thus a unitary psycho-social phenomenon. The therapist dealing with bewitched patients should accordingly, in diagnosis, adopt an analytic approach and, in therapy, a psycho-synthetic approach so as to not only represent the wholeness of kindoki as a system of thought but also to facilitate the healing process.