ABSTRACT
Victor Turner described Ihembi as a charismatic white-haired man with 'a smile of singular sweetness'. Ihembi had a patient called Kamahasanyi, who was complaining of tiredness, heart palpitation, and severe bodily pain. He felt that people were speaking against him, and would withdraw to his hut for long spells. Ihembi used pharmacology, individual, marital, and especially group psychotherapy, religious ritual, a theory of witchcraft, common sense, drama, hypnosis (in producing dissociation in Kamahasanyi during part of the rites), personal charisma, all the force of traditional culture, and outright conjuring trickery, in an apparently irresistible attack on his patient's illness. However, Turner reported that by the 1950s the influence of missionaries on the village chiefs had already led to fines being imposed on Ihembi for deceiving the people. Thus, European culture was seeping in with a deeper devilry than Ihembi could cure.
