Witchcraft and psychotherapy.

Belief in witchcraft, which serves a variety of social functions and personal defences, is bound to emerge in psychotherapy with individuals from a culture that holds such beliefs; endeavouring to understand it can open up new therapeutic possibilities. The nature of witchcraft, the profiles with which it intrudes into therapy, and the socio-psychological functions it fulfills are considered. Referring such patients to witchdoctors is morally unjustifiable, but the witch-doctor's folk-image provides a floating transference, around which the therapeutic relationship can be built. In dealing with witchcraft-ideation, understanding is based as much on cultural as on personal empathy, and to enhance its relevance, therapy may appropriate some of the functional dynamics of the witchcraft system into its own therapeutic manoeuvres.

The cultural perspective of therapeutic relationship--a viewpoint from Africa.

Therapeutic relationship has been considered an important ingredient of all psychotherapies. In communities in which no familiar conventions of such a relationship are available, the therapeutic encounter poses very different problems from those in the West, where such conventions freely prevail. This study has been carried out by five therapists representing three widely disparate cultures, but all working together in Tanzania. It brings together their perceptions of these problems and the strategies they employed to resolve them while working with African patients. In their view, in spite of great disparity between the world view behind Western psychotherapy and that of African communities, it is not impossible to forge a therapeutic relationship if empathic understanding and cultural sensitivity are added to the attitude of acceptance. After all, the therapist must attract and keep the patient before he can expect anything from him. The authors describe how this can be done with African patients.

Psychogenic factors in some genetic and non-genetic forms of infertility.

Five categories of patients suffering from different genetic and non-genetic forms of infertility and three categories of similarly affected, but potentially fertile, clinically normal individuals were studied. The Eysenck's Personality Inventory (1964), Ryle's Marital Patterns Test (1966) and Leckie and Wither's Inventory for Depressive Illness (1967) were used to determine the role played by psychogenic factors in causing infertility. No significant quantitative or qualitative differences were observed in the various groups studied. The psychogenic disturbances present in these individuals appear to be the result of the effect of persisting infertility rather than the cause of it.

Drug abuse in a farm community; a brief appraisal of a research work.

This project was initiated in the rural areas of the Punjab to assess the prevailing trends in the abuse of intoxicating drugs by rural folk, with a view to contributing to future primary mental health care planning as an integral part of comprehensive health care planning. Twenty-four villages were selected from six community development blocks in the three bordering districts of the Punjab. In the rural population, the abuse of intoxicating drugs is mainly confined to alcohol, tobacco, opium and cannabis. Among psychosocial correlates, religion was of obvious predominance. Since Sikh are non-smokers, tobacco abuse was much less among them; but they had maximum alcohol ;and opium abuse. The structure of the family and number of family members tend to move together in their association with drug abuse. In relation to income in general, drug abuse was more common at the two ends of economic scale-the richest and the poorest. Social perception of drug abuse has highlighted the fact that in villages it has still not become an illicit or underground activity. The findings suggest a number of measures for promoting future primary mental health care among rural fold of the country.

Psychosocial correlates of chronic cannabis use.

The psychosocial effects of chronic heavy use of cannabis were studied in a rural population of males in north India. The user group comprised thirty persons who had been taking only cannabis at least 11 times a month over a period of five years or more. The controls were fifty subjects selected from among the general population to which the users belonged. The controls had not been using any drugs. The subjects had similar age distribution, occupation, socioeconomic status, and educational background. Psychosocial adaptation was assessed by enquiries into such areas as self-aspiration, present occupation, occupational satisfaction, marital status, marital relationships, sexual behaviour, self-reported deviant behaviour, and future planning for children. On no variable were the present users found to be different from the non-user control group.

Culture-conflict and psychotherapeutic approach.

The world-view of a therapist is essentially determined by his own cultural milieu. This hypothesis was tested by involving four therapists from disparate cultural settings in an exercise of planning psychotherapy on the basis of the presentation of a clinical case of a patient treated by the author with a 'culturally relevant' therapeutic technique. The responses of the participants were compared with the process and outcome of the therapy actually carried out.