Divided into six parts, this 165-page book (medium format) presents an in-depth analysis of so-called "popular" traditional practices in the treatment of symptoms present in people suffering from psychological pathologies.

The psychoanalyst proposes tools for an approach of the human being in its globality starting from a context and particular situations, proposing tracks of reflection which make it possible to articulate the discourse of the beliefs with that of the discourse of science and the language.

In the introduction to the book, the author considers that "popular traditions are irrational, but depending on the context, irrational practices and beliefs can be used to fuel a rational approach".

Through the transmission of psychoanalysis in a cultural and linguistic context different from Europe, the psychoanalyst writes that he was able to "hear human subjectivities, analyze unconscious behaviors, sufferings and physical disorders in their historicity", affirming that "the interest of this work is to propose a new approach that takes into account the contribution of traditions in the Maghreb and theoretical advances developed in the West".

Bennani has, throughout his work, cited writers, philosophers, psychiatrists and psychoanalysts from the Arab and Western civilization and who have marked the field by the nature of their work as the writer Abdelfattah Kilito who mentioned the attributes of the jinn in Arabic literature, the neurologist Freud who stressed that witchcraft appears as the art of influencing minds, by treating them as we treat people in identical conditions, or of the French psychoanalyst of Egyptian origin, Moustafa Safouan, who postulated that any magic technique is a technique of words.

The writer further argues that traditional interpretations relate the onset of (psychic) illness to external forces acting on individuals and activated in certain circumstances, such as attributing responsibility for an illness to the jinn, which allows the patient to answer the question "Why me?"

Jalil Bennani thus puts forward a new approach to psychological suffering, joining extra-western knowledge to that of psychiatry and psychoanalysis.

Interested in the epistemological ruptures in the theory, it opens up avenues of reflection that make it possible to articulate the discourse of belief and that of science, reinterrogating transmission and rethinking the heritages, the cultural and linguistic crossings that constitute a plural universal.

Jalil Bennani is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in Rabat, author of several books, including "Le corps suspect” (the suspect body) (1980), "Psychanalyse en terre d'Islam” (Psychoanalysis in the land of Islam) (2008) and “Un psy dans la cité” (a shrink in the city) (2013).

Associate researcher at the "Centre de Recherches psychanalyse, médecine et société" of the University of Paris and holder of the Habilitation to direct research at the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, Jalil Bennani received in 2002 the Sigmund Freud Prize of the city of Vienna for his work.