Children enacting idioms of witchcraft and spirit possession as a response to trauma: therapeutically beneficial, and for whom?

Children in parts of Africa use idioms of spirit possession and witchcraft to express and cope with social crises and traumatic stress. In Northern Uganda, haunting spirits allow children to articulate complex feelings about their precarious family and community situations. While local symbolic healing practices can help, obstacles such as generational gaps reduce their effectiveness. Witchcraft idioms sometimes heal the group but harm the accused child. These idioms reflect how children navigate the moral universe of postconflict communities, though they may also increase anxiety. Urgent interdisciplinary research is needed on the microprocesses leading to children being haunted or accused, including emotional and physiological effects.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This article examines children's enactment of spirit possession idioms and witchcraft in Africa including the meanings such idioms provide and the local healing resources they mobilize. Idioms of haunting spirits in Northern Uganda and witch-children elsewhere in Africa can be interpreted as manifestations of social crises and mass traumatic stress. On the other hand, such idioms also allow children to articulate, reflect upon, and communicate the complex feelings resulting from their precarious positions within families and communities under duress. With the help of Dow's transactional model of symbolic healing, this article explores obstacles to the effectivity of the rich variety of symbolic healing available for haunting spirits in Uganda and points to the generational gap between children and their families and communities. Elsewhere, witchcraft idioms may act as a healing resource at the group level, but at the expense of the accused child. The idioms of evil spirits and witchcraft speak of these children's navigation of the moral universe of their postconflict communities. Given that children's appraisal of their experiences through these notions may also exacerbate their anxiety, interdisciplinary research examining the microprocesses that lead to children being haunted or accused, including emotional and physiological levels effects, is urgently needed.