Somewhere between the Olive Tree and the Baobab: Creation of a Cultural Mediation Group Setting in a School Environment
Type de matériel :
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This paper is based on the empirical research of a psychology student performing an internship at a specialized school (CLIS) located in an area with high immigration. It discusses the way in which a sound mediation group setting is established progressively by giving a central place to the cultural difference that René Kaës calls the “third difference.” The idea is that grouping these children together under the term “handicapped” masks essential differences in terms of origins, thereby impeding the differentiation processes. These differences reappear elsewhere in class in a conflictual way and are stigmatized by the projection onto the other of the negative and by mechanisms of splitting that are harmful to psychical and intellectual development. The forms of mediation used in this group setting are, on the one hand, music, nursery rhymes, and lullabies from different places on the African continent (symbolized by the baobab and the olive tree) and, on the other, individual and group drawing with one sheet of paper “for everyone.” The authors explain the progressive construction of this setting, then the processes of symbolization and revitalization of the primal or original dimension that emerges through establishing links between two cultures with the help of sound media. This setting, whose vocation is initially non-therapeutic, has healing and re-socializing properties for children suffering from multiple disabilities and, in one case, from psychosis.
Réseaux sociaux