A diviner is part of a therapeutic system of practitioners.

The steps a diviner recommends for healing may lead to healing, possibly due to the placebo effect.

Where people believe in divination, the recommended interventions may be as successful as psychotherapy.

Soon after completing my training in family therapy at the Ackerman Family Institute, I returned to Kisii, Kenya, for several months after having been a Peace Corps Volunteer there a decade earlier. What I learned from my time in this rural area was that the traditional approach to medical and psychological treatments was complex, consisting of herbalists who prescribe compounds from locally grown vegetation, good and evil witches, and surgeons who remove part of the skull on fully awake patients and also perform goat-to-human rib transplants. In a previous blog post, I wrote about observing an hours-long head operation under a tree; the patient was without anesthesia or antisepsis.

Visiting a Diviner in Kenya

During my second visit to Western Kenya, I witnessed another part of the traditional approach to dealing with ailments—this time not as an observer, but a client, if you will. I went to a diviner, a person who diagnoses personal problems and offers prescriptions.

As........

© Psychology Today