An Instance of Primitive Psychotherapy

The Amazulu of southern Africa are convinced that when a spouse dies the surviving partner is likely to be visited and worried for a considerable time afterwards by the nightly, invisible presence of the ghost of the deceased. Such a ghost is amorously inclined, and is the provoker of troublesome sexual dreams. When these become so frequent or so vivid that the health of the survivor is impaired, a medicineman is consulted. His duty obviously is to stop the dreams, and that means that he has to devise a way of laying the ghost.

In studying the curative method of the native doctor our task is to analyze his superstitious ways and beliefs. In so doing we can best work, perhaps, if we alternate a paragraph of the missionary's account with one of our own analysis. The reader will note that the missionary1 translates the negro's words quite literally, and that a woman does not mention the name of her husband, but refers to him as the “father” of one of his named children.

Text: “If a woman has lost her husband, and she is troubled excessively by a dream, and when she is asleep her husband comes home again, and she sees him daily just as if he was alive, and so she at last wastes away, and says: ‘I am troubled by the father of So-and-so; he does not leave me; it is as though he was not dead; at night I am always with him, and he vanishes when I awake. At length my bodily health is deranged: he speaks about his children, his property, and many little matters.’ Therefore, at last, they find a man who knows how to bar out that dream for her. He gives her medicine and says: ‘There is medicine. When you dream of him and awake, chew it; do not waste the spittle that collects in your mouth while dreaming; do not spit it on the ground, but on this medicine (a medicinal root), that we may be able to bar out the dream.’ Then the doctor comes (next day) and asks if she has dreamt of her husband; she says she has. He asks if she has done what he told her; the woman says she has. He ask