Entre événements de vie et croyances culturelles : un délire à la croisée des chemins

We present the story of a woman who lost in a shipwreck her last 19-years-old son. Mariama T. is a widow, her husband died eight years ago, after a mysterious illness according to her. The couple had got four children before the birth of Landing, dying successively in their early weeks or months of life. A curse of the ancestors was suspected, the kañaalen's ritual was performed to restore relation with the ghost of ancestors to guarantee the survival of her child. Landing effectively survived until the fateful date of the drama: the shipwreck of the boat, Le Joola that happened on September 26th 2002. After his sudden death, Mariama developed progressively a paranoiac delusion centred on women who practised the kañaalen whom she accused of treason. She is persuaded that they had killed her son by digging up the fetish that was protecting him. Since then, she talked only about means she may use to avenge on them. This observation is the occasion of a critical reflection on a missed therapeutic relation.