| Saint Lucia, a small country among the Windward Islands is the background for a system of therapeutic pluralism orientated toward four major fields. With the attempt to handle psychological distress, biomedicine, Churches, lodges as well as the traditional medicine intersect within a variegated mixture of oppositions, exchanges, and "co-operation". Questioning the current liveliness of the traditional medicine, usually called obeah, and analysing qualitatively the answers of the local people, it seems that the drive of every domain of caring does not rest in modernity, age or Western rationality, but rather within the health-seeking process motivated by the demand of therapeutic effectiveness addressed to a domain. This efficacy is located at the encounter of technical and symbolic exercises of caring that nourish the faith of the patient toward a place of care. Moreover, that same effectiveness makes the relationship between a sufferer and a domain of care a real cultural experience. |
