ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how the ritual develops this nucleus of unconscious structures, of primary processes, whose syntax diviner recognise without ever having been exposed to the Yaka unconscious. In the exercise of his particular function, the chief attacks the evil designated by the diviner with the aim of transforming it into good. During the investiture ceremony of the new chief, a large number of ritual acts demonstrate how one must kill evil—in this case depicted by the death of the former chief—such that the new chief may take his place as the promoter of good and of the benefits of order and hierarchical social organisation. Healing, whose aim is to reinscribe or reinsert the patient in society, consists of causing an individual or group to live or to undergo the various phases of a similar becoming. And mourning is a descent into death and a new rising into life, the passage from disintegration to reintegration in the life of society.
