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We are inclined to view the psychoanalytic cure through what Pierre Bourdieu, in The Logic of Practice (1990[1980]), called intellectualist lenses: we are prone to think that the analyst merely observes her patient, withdrawn from the scene where the cure takes place (the one in which, in reality, she also stands, as she interacts with the patient, and thus influences her). Or we think that the analyst is only a theoretician (whereas she is above all a therapist); or that this practice, having been created by an individual who became a stranger among his own, has nothing to do with the social and historical context in which it was created, and in which it later disseminated, exerting an influence far beyond the walls of the clinic (this outstanding success alone casts doubt on this hypothesis). Contradicting this intellectualist approach, Pierre-Henri Castel argues that one should never lose sight of the interaction between the analyst and the patient: in fact, the psychoanalytic cure would be a ‘therapeutic ritual’ (p. 328) allowing us to help an individual in distress, by evoking the primordial norms and values that shape our society. In any case, this would be the case with the children's cure. (Without dwelling on the question, Castel writes that his hypothesis does not apply to the adult cure. Should one understand that the intellectualist lenses, which seem inappropriate when it comes to understanding the child's cure, really allow us, however, to highlight the features of the adult cure?)
To induce a welcome gestalt switch, Castel compares the cure to a healing ritual observed among the Wolof people: the observation of their practice (which clearly appears to us as ritual) should help us to better perceive our own (which is far from appearing as such at first glance). The differences between the two would not arise from the fact that theirs is social while ours is not, but that they are rooted in societies that have developed very different forms of response t