ABSTRACT
In this chapter we shall look in detail at the experiences of a single patient to see how illness may be an intelligible response to certain difficulties. Rather than explain her illness from the outside by saying simply that it is the result of the stresses of migration or culture change, we shall try to understand how she herself feels. Every society has characteristic ways of articulating experience. The Tembu, as we have seen, have a single word to denote that inner feeling of unease which may herald the development of a mental illness or the call to be a healer. This familiar experience is communicated to the rest of the community by a single pattern of behaviour.
