Le reste de l’Histoire. La croyance aux sorts dans l’hôpital psychiatrique du xxe siècle

Abstract

During the second half of the XXth century, the bewitch’s discourse cannot be any more understood in the French society. For the previous century it became gradually the object of a medical study reducing a part of the religious discourse to a sort of delirium. For that reason the bewitches are confined in insane asylums and their complex universe is reduced to a psychotic symptom. This article suggests to redraw the history of this believes’ medicalization about some patients’ cases hospitalized in psychiatry in the West of France. It questions in particular the conjunction of the medical and clerical practices and discourses that tend to exclude in the same movement a belief spread in this region.

Keywords

• Bewitch
• Psychiatry
• Insane asylums
• Medicalization
• Medicine
• Religion