Encephale. 1976 ; 2(3): 235-7.

[From N-doep to psychodrama]

Tourame G.

The interest taken in traditional African Therapies was classically supported by a system of anthropological eurocentric references, motivated amongst other things by a folkloric curiosity. The socio-political evolution has progressively modified the vision of ethnologic teams of psycho-sociologists and psychiatrists. COLLOMB and LAMBO permitted recognition of a psycho-pathology which integrates with the cultural reality of the Africans and the Negros. The O.M.S. at present is supervising a number of enquiries into traditional African medicine. Obviously, such an ideological mutation imposes on occidental psychiatry the conceptualisation sociometry of certain traditional group therapies, distinctly making n'doep the forerunner in morenian psychodrama, and putting the healer in the position of leader in certain domains of modern psychiatry. Should occidental Europe be listening to the African Models?