Culture, ritual and healing

Collective Catharsis in the Face of Trauma

Through a transcultural and psychoanalytic lens, this article explores how collective rituals can serve as therapeutic frameworks for processing trauma. Drawing on diverse cultural examples — from Congo Square in New Orleans to Siberian shamanic ceremonies, the pilgrimages of travelling communities in southern France, and religious festivals in India — it argues that psychological healing is not confined to clinical settings. It can emerge in shared cultural spaces where body, speech, and community are activated together. This perspective builds on the work of Moro, Nathan, Hamayon, and Piketty, and repositions the therapist as a mediator of connection, narrative, and structure.

Introduction

In his documentary When the Levees Broke (2006), Spike Lee captures not only the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, but also the invisible wound left by institutional abandonment. Through testimonies, music, and gatherings, he shows how culture becomes a space for memory, resistance, and healing. This cinematic gesture reveals a fundamental truth: healing is not limited to the individual. It is cultural, communal, and at times sacred.

This idea resonates with transcultural clinical practice, which holds that psychological care cannot be separated from the cultural context in which the subject lives. Collective rituals, shared narratives, and symbolic gestures are powerful therapeutic mediators, especially in the face of trauma.

Congo Square: A Model of Community-Based Healing

Congo Square in New Orleans is a historic site where freed slaves gathered every Sunday from the 18th century onward to dance, sing, and practice African rituals. These weekly gatherings preserved cultural memory while transforming suffering into symbolic expression. Even today, groups continue to meet there to honor this living legacy in a spirit of resilience and repair.

Congo Square can be viewed as a genuine community-based therapeutic space, where movement, rhythm, and collective presence allow emotions to be expressed and processed. It functions as a shared psychic stage, much like the ancient Greek theater, where emotions are experienced, externalized, and transformed.

Other Rituals of Healing

Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer: Pilgrimage and Identity

Each year, traveling communities — Roma, Gitans, Manouches — gather in Camargue to honor Saint Sara the Black. The procession to the sea, accompanied by music and dance, is a ritual of familial transmission and communal recognition. Though often marginalized in public discourse, this pilgrimage offers a powerful symbolic framework for reworking internal conflicts through collective ritual.

In India, the Durga Puja festival celebrates the goddess Durga, a figure of strength and protection. Processions, dances, and communal rituals reaffirm social bonds, especially in regions affected by violence or disaster. The ritual becomes a space of transformation, where trauma is narrated, shared, and symbolized through protective archetypes.

Siberian Shamanic Ceremonies: Healing Through Symbolic Journey

Among Indigenous peoples of Siberia, shamanic rituals are used to restore psychic and social balance. The shaman enters trance to communicate with spirits and reestablish harmony after traumatic events. These ceremonies allow chaos to be symbolized and reintegrate the subject into a cosmic and communal order.

Native American Talking Circles and Sweat Lodges

Indigenous communities in North America practice talking circles and sweat lodges as rituals of purification and healing. These practices offer a structured space for narrating trauma, where body, speech, and group are engaged together. In this context, the healer is not an external expert but a member of the circle, safeguarding the space and the narrative.

Greek Theater: A Foundational Model of Catharsis

In his Poetics, Aristotle defines tragedy as the imitation of actions that evoke pity and fear, leading to catharsis — a purification of emotions. Ancient Greek theater provided a collective space where spectators could experience intense emotions through tragic heroes, within an aesthetic and ritualized framework. This therapeutic function of classical drama anticipates modern communal healing practices, where shared storytelling becomes a tool for transformation.

Culture as Therapeutic Mediation

As Marie-Rose Moro emphasizes, culture is a therapeutic resource. It allows the subject to be understood within their context, history, and affiliations. It offers symbolic mediations where verbal language may fall short. It also enables suffering to be recognized in its collective, historical, and sometimes spiritual dimensions.

In transcultural clinical practice, the therapist becomes a mediator of connection, a guardian of structure, and a witness to narrative. The goal is not to “normalize” the patient, but to help them reflect on themselves within their culture, body, and community.

Culture, Healing, and the Commons

The work of Thomas Piketty and Michael J. Sandel on equality reminds us that health, education, and culture must not be commodified. These domains belong to the commons, just like the environment. Their dialogue highlights the corrosive effects of market logic on social solidarity and calls for a democratic renewal in which care and culture are recognized as fundamental rights.

In this light, informal and community-based healing rituals represent a form of resistance to the privatization of connection and the fragmentation of meaning. They affirm that psychological healing cannot be separated from the cultural and social fabric in which it is embedded.

Conclusion

In the face of trauma, collective ritual acts as a stage for catharsis. It allows for replay, transformation, and symbolization. It offers a framework where the subject can speak, connect, and heal. Whether at Congo Square, Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, Durga Puja, or in sweat lodges, these practices show that healing is also a matter of culture, memory, and connection — and as such, it must not be reduced to a commodity or economic transaction. Reclaiming these spaces of collective care means affirming that healing does not rely solely on clinical protocols, but also on stories, gestures, rhythms, and presences — all of which belong to the commons, not the market.

📚 References (APA – English version) :

Aristotle. (1991). Poetics (J. Hardy, Trans.). Flammarion.
Altounian, J. (2005). La survivance: Traduire le trauma. Dunod.
Drewski, J. (2022). Écologie et responsabilité sociétale: Pour une politique du bien commun. Université Paris Cité.
Hamayon, R. (1990). La chasse à l’âme: Esquisse d’une théorie du chamanisme sibérien. Gallimard.
Lee, S. (Director). (2006). When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts [Documentary film]. HBO.
Moro, M.-R. (2012). La culture dans la psychiatrie: Une clinique de l’altérité. La Découverte.
Nathan, T. (2007). L’influence qui guérit: Thérapie et rituel. Odile Jacob.
Piketty, T., & Sandel, M. J. (2024). Ce que l’égalité veut dire: Éducation, justice et bien commun. Seuil.