Introduction

Rituals are almost more important to human beings than words are to thought, in so far as one can always know something and only afterwards find the words to explain it (Le Breton, 2005). As soon as one takes an interest in rituals, one runs into a serious problem of definition. As Segalen (1998) points out, the trouble with rite is that there is no really settled definition of it. Ritual is just as hard to define, the term having become commonplace nowadays, made equivalent to a repetition, a habit, almost a synonym for routine (Neuburger, 2006).

The term rite was first taken up in the field of ethology, to describe courtship displays in certain bird species, or the behavioural sequences involved in managing hierarchy among the great apes. Ethnology and anthropology then took an interest in rites and rituals, notably magical or religious ones (rites of sacrifice, of purification, of offering to the gods, of mourning, and so on). Sociologists next turned to the analysis of rites belonging to the everyday life of contemporary societies; and last of all: therapists.

Although it is precisely with this last category that we identify, the findings and theories of the other disciplines are not only relevant to us but essential to take into account, if we regard our field of study as an open one (Bowen, 1988).

The terms “rite” and “ritual” come from the Latin ritus, meaning “prescribed order”, itself thought to derive from a form of the Vedic Indo-European rta or arta, evoking the order of the cosmos (Picard, 2002). This etymology already points to various functions of rite, in particular those of harmonisation and socialisation.

Some sociologists justify the difference between rite and ritual by a dichotomy: religious/profane (Javeau, 2003). “Rite” would then correspond to everything belonging to the religious and the sacred, and “ritual” would be associated with all profane acts. In the same vein, others, such as Émile Durkheim (1925), point out that profane actions can be regarded as rituals in so far as they regulate interactions. From there, the term ritual has acquired a broadened definition that places it in a metacategory with respect to rite, which is why it is the preferred term here, all the more so as another subcategory will flow from its waters into this classification of rituals: routines; we shall come back to them.

A student once asked the anthropologist Margaret Mead what she thought was the first sign of civilisation in a culture. The student expected Mead to speak of tools, of fire or of paintings, but that was not the case. She answered that the first sign of civilisation we can detect was a broken, then healed, femur. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal. A broken femur that has healed is proof that someone took the time to stay with the one who had fallen, bound the wound, carried them to a safe place and helped them recover; this is the point where civilisation begins (Byock, 2012). And this civilisational starting point was made possible by two developments: the first being the capacity of humans (Homo sapiens) to cooperate on a large scale by telling one another stories they were able to believe collectively (Harari, 2015); the second being the way they used that skill to create myths (which we shall define further on), from which flowed rituals that structured human society (Wulf, 2005). We might therefore say that, in a sense, rituals are a sine qua non of the emergence of civilisations. The anthropologist Arthur Maurice Hocart moreover put forward, in the 1950s, the idea that rituals were the source of humanisation (Hocart, 1954). These phenomena can even appear vital, in so far as they create a sense of belonging that protects the members of a group (Neuburger, 2006).

The rituals that have structured human societies for millennia seem to be tending to disappear in our modern societies. Again according to Robert Neuburger (2006), they are now experienced as constraining behaviours that run counter to the current myth of autonomy. And yet, if we look more deeply through the layers of society, we can still find traces of these structuring traditional rites, even if they change in form, in structure or in connotation. According to E. Dessoy (1997), any human group is able to take up on its own account a tradition abandoned at the macrosocial level, even in a pared-down, simplified form (Roosens & Ritz, 2007).

For young Peruvian girls, the celebration of the fifteenth birthday is a founding event that culturally marks the end of childhood. In its traditional staging, this rite of passage places the nuclear and extended family at the heart of the proceedings; it announces marriage and signifies an entry into female adulthood. But in its contemporary forms it emphasises the participation of peer groups, at the expense of family and kinship (Cavagnoud, 2012). Michèle Fellous (2001) speaks of “modern rite” to describe the various examples of innovation in certain social groups that produce ritualised spaces within their everyday life; and this even in our societies described as individualistic, technologised, without any marked and operative rite (Galland, 2009). In the context of the growing importance of individualism and of the idea of the subject’s self-determination, some theorists hold that rituals are superfluous and can be replaced by other social practices; according to Christoph Wulf (2005), that idea does not appear to withstand analysis. According to the same author, rituals are expected today to compensate for the experiences of loss bound up with modernity, such as the loss of a sense of community, of identity, of authenticity; in a context of rising individualism, of phenomena of virtualisation and of the erosion of social and cultural systems.

It is in this great contextual bath that we take our place in this story, we therapists, a sort of healer, mage or shaman of modern times. The comparison may come as a surprise; and yet, do we not have exactly the same function in our contemporary systems as they had in their traditional ones? Our interventions produce change, structure thought, transform narratives, re-enchant the inner world and dignify lives (Crettenand & Soulignac, 2021). We know that words harbour powerful spells capable of bringing about deep change, and if you accept the idea stated in the first sentence of this article, rituals come even before them, touching something more essential, magic in the raw. If the magicians of entertainment and show business never reveal their tricks, it is different for us, because lives and destinies depend on our tricks, and we have a duty to spread them.

Family therapists sensed the effectiveness of ritual and have used it, for more than fifty years now, for its capacity to bring about change. It was assimilated to the ritualised prescriptions of the Milan school (Selvini Palazzoli et al., 1987) and gradually fell out of use; and yet it proves to be a powerful lever for change (Courtois, 2006). The ritualised prescription is thus used by some therapists as a way in to remobilise family myths (Imber-Black et al., 1988; Kobak et al., 1984; Seltzer et al., 1983). In that case, it is more a matter of prescribing behaviours to be repeated within the family setting than of prescribing a one-off ritual moment, clearly set apart in time.

In 1978, Van der Hart broadened the Milan group’s definition by defining rituals as prescribed symbolic acts, which must be carried out in a certain way and in a certain order, and which may or may not be accompanied by verbal formulas. For him, a ritual can be a sequence of repeated actions and/or be performed only once. What we are aiming at here is the maximum effectiveness of the ritual in a single prescription.

In clinical work, then, it is possible to distinguish several broad types of ritual that have health-giving effects. Here is the definition of rituals I propose to you, and from which the presentation that follows flows.

In his evergreen book on family rituals, Robert Neuburger (2006) states that he has given up any classificatory description of the many rituals he has observed, preferring to adopt a functionalist point of view, on the idea that what characterises a ritual is not so much its form as its function. I place myself within that line of thought, and it is with this functionalist logic that I propose the classification that follows. Behind its anthropological features, it reveals its clinical face as one studies them more closely.

This functional classification therefore groups rituals into three broad categories, as follows.

Ordinary rituals

Ordinary rituals make up the whole set of routines that inscribe a quality of familiarity in our everyday life, structuring the way it unfolds so as to save energy. This category divides into two others: simple rituals and useful rituals.

Simple rituals

Simple rituals can be defined as the whole set of life habits which, by their repetitive and predictable character, inscribe a feeling of familiarity in everyday life. These repertoires of behaviours, acts or actions settle in gradually, in an unconsidered and unpremeditated way. They play a crucial part in reducing stress and easing anxiety by offering constant, reassuring landmarks.

Marcel Proust (1919) expressed this idea with poetic clarity: “It is our attention that puts objects in a room, and habit that takes them out of it and makes space for us there.” The quotation illustrates how simple habits structure our environment and our inner life, creating mental and emotional room in which to navigate the complexity of the everyday.

Simple rituals are scattered through our daily life, bringing stability and connection. In one family, the children’s bedtime ritual is a comforting gesture; having put them to bed, the parents come back in to kiss their children in their room when they go to bed themselves. In another family, putting together the playlist for a long journey is a moment of complicity and sharing, even if the negotiation can be rough and hard fought.

These simple rituals, although often invisible, play an essential part in balance, because they allow familiarity to be found in repetition and constant landmarks to be created in a world that would otherwise be nothing but chaos.

Their absence or their loss can bring about a deep sense of strangeness in daily life, a loss of bearings and confusion. For example, moving to a foreign country, far from one’s habits, can cause considerable distress. These rituals offer an anchor of familiarity, and without them one can feel uprooted and disoriented.

Useful rituals

Where simple rituals settled in beyond the reach of our awareness, the opposite holds for useful rituals, which are designed on purpose. These bring together the routines that organise our daily life in a conscious, considered way, thereby inscribing a quality of predictability in our lives. These repertoires of attitudes and behaviours, well planned and anticipated, serve to save and preserve energy, which can then be allocated to other, more creative or more restful activities.

To illustrate their importance, think back to when we learned to drive. The amount of information to be processed overloads the mind to such a degree of clutter that it becomes unbearable to hear the radio presenter on the airwaves, and we find ourselves turning down the volume in order to concentrate better. With the routine repetition of those actions, on the other hand — mirror, clutch, brake, gear change, hands at ten to two on the wheel, indicator — we carry them out without even thinking about them, and our energy can then be allocated to listening to our favourite radio programme. It is the same in our everyday life. If a certain number of routines are missing from our life, the consequences will be felt across every sphere of our existence; and yet routines seem to have a very bad press in collective opinion.

Jean-Claude Kaufmann sums this idea up perfectly: “In our societies, where the idea of routine is largely rejected, people fantasise about an invented life. But the reality is quite the opposite: routine cannot be avoided. Without it, life would be hell. The cognitive sciences have shown that habits serve to free up the brain thanks to those gestures that happen all by themselves. The problem is that routine can become stifling, but the case against it is exaggerated” (Kaufmann, 2009).

Useful rituals bring structure and harmony to the handling of daily tasks. Sharing the housework — where, when one cooks, the other does the washing-up — makes it possible to avoid conflict and ensures the household tasks are handled efficiently, freeing up time and energy for other activities. For a couple, coordinating the evening routines — where, when one puts the children to bed, the other tidies the living room and cleans the kitchen — guarantees a fair division of tasks and allows both partners to enjoy their evening without stress or resentment; so does the timetable pinned to the fridge in the family that organises its housework that way.

In the absence of useful rituals, several negative consequences can emerge. Without them, the organisation of daily life becomes chaotic, leading to a prolonged morphogenesis in which continual adaptation and change exhaust vital energy, translating into a perpetual race against time and inevitable exhaustion. Household tasks that are undefined or badly shared can generate mutual reproach and resentment, creating an imbalance that feeds a vicious circle of frustration. Stress and fatigue can drain the couple’s intimate and sexual life, thinning out the moments of closeness and affecting the quality of the relationship. Finally, family reunions become less frequent, each member being absorbed in their own concerns, leading to family disengagement.

So the energy saved thanks to ordinary rituals can be reinvested in various areas of personal and collective life. By structuring daily life through simple and useful rituals, one frees up mental and emotional energy that can be reallocated to enriching activities. Sometimes a simple explanation of the importance of these rituals and of the benefits they bring allows a clear understanding of the gains in terms of well-being and stress reduction, and can motivate their adoption. Therapists can help to create and prescribe ordinary rituals to be carried out at a certain rhythm. Once integrated, rituals can transform daily life, because the energy thus preserved can be allocated to other spheres of construction and investment.

In a parallel way, this type of ritual can also have a significant impact on our lives and produce deep changes in our representations. In certain circumstances, a simple ritual prescription can bring about decisive shifts in representation, by a kind of experiential snowball effect. Thus the pupil who is disengaging from school and is challenged to sit in the front row and ask one question per lesson will not only come to see himself differently, little by little; it is his whole social environment that will also perceive him differently. By circular feedback, his teachers will see in him a courageous pupil who does not dwell on his difficulties, rather than a dunce disrupting the class, and this pupil will see himself perceived differently and invested in surprisingly, which allows him to develop another repertoire of behaviours. After a while, it is highly likely that the representation of this pupil will change, and with it each of his behaviours, without further effort.

These rituals show that, to alter the course of their lives, people do not need to make great changes. As James Clear points out in his book Atomic Habits (Clear, 2018), it is the smallest changes, well integrated and coupled with a sound understanding of psychology and neuroscience, that can have a revolutionary effect on our existence and our relationships. A popular illustration of this idea is wonderfully played by Pierre Mondy and Alexandre Astier, as Caesar and Arthur of Britain respectively, in the French television series Kaamelott. In the scene that concerns us, the very young Arthur Pendragon, propelled into high military rank in record time by a political turn of events, comes before Caesar convinced that he does not deserve to be a leader. Caesar answers him, in substance, that one never becomes a leader because one deserves it: one becomes one by a turn of events, and only deserves it afterwards. He himself, he says, took ten or twenty years to stop swimming inside his own uniform, and he has only one piece of advice for the young man: pretend — pretend to be dux, to deserve his rank, to be a great war leader — until the day when he no longer needs to.

Constitutive rituals

Constitutive rituals are symbolic acts inscribed in an expected behavioural sequence, consistent with a founding myth; they provide a sense of coherence, of embodiment and of existential anchoring. By linking myths (language) to acts (rituals), these rituals create a self-referentiality that gives meaning and depth to our experiences and relationships. Robert Neuburger explains this relation as follows: “Of myth, which is language, nothing can be said, and of ritual, which is act, one can speak without difficulty: the order of myth and that of ritual are constantly brought into relation and defined by one another in a self-referential way, as content is by form and form by content” (Neuburger, 2010).

To illustrate them: a couple may celebrate their anniversary in a very specific way, based not on their first kiss or on the moment their relationship became official, but on the day of their first meeting, marked by a memorable incident such as a glass of wine spilled over a new dress. Every 10 December, they are duty-bound to drink a glass of red wine in memory of that moment, a ritual that anchors their shared history in a unique and meaningful tradition.

By way of further examples: in a couple, when one partner goes away on a trip without the other and always leaves a letter hidden somewhere in the flat, the gesture symbolises waiting and the importance of maintaining the emotional connection despite the distance. Or Élise and her family, who spend a week each summer renovating their country house; besides keeping the house up, this annual ritual strengthens family bonds and perpetuates each generation’s childhood memories, anchoring their sense of belonging and of family continuity. Léa, for her part, plants a tree in the family garden at every birth, marriage or major graduation. This ritual turns the garden into a living symbol of growth and of the changes in the family’s life, offering a space for reflection and a visual link with their family history.

By fitting into meaningful behavioural sequences and by being associated with founding myths, these constitutive rituals provide a deep existential anchoring and a sense of continuity and coherence. If losing them over a brief span of time is destabilising but bearable, the perpetuation of that loss will inevitably lead to a devitalisation of the system and to a deep injury to its very foundations, through the symbolic attack on its founding myth. It will then be health-giving to restore those lost rituals, like hunters of buried treasure, or else to create new ones, always bearing in mind that they must be related to the founding myth of the system.

By way of example: for the couple who had promised each other always to give themselves time, come what may, whatever the obligations and living conditions that might be imposed on them, the construction of this rule, essential to their balance, made it possible to restore the sacred link with their founding myth: the rule of three ones (one evening a week, one weekend a month and one week a year set aside for the couple alone).

Performative rituals

Performative rituals are ceremonies or striking acts that symbolise a crucial passage, and whose significance lies in their capacity to bring about second-order change. These rituals are distinguished by their power to mark a before and an after, leaving an indelible historical trace and offering a new frame of reference to the protagonists involved.

Performativity is the fact, for a linguistic sign (utterance, sentence, and so on), of itself accomplishing what it states. The term performative derives from the English perform, usually associated with the noun action, and it indicates that the act of utterance is the expression of an action that is not regarded as a mere speech act (Austin, 1970). By way of example, when an accused person is tried, the sentence pronounced by the judge will be performative in the sense that it will determine that person’s future; they will become either “guilty” or “innocent”, both words having a considerable impact on their identity.

This is the distinction recalled by Watzlawick and Nardone (1996). The performative dimension of rites is organised not only through elements of language, the words spoken and their symbolic impact, but also in bodily representations, in stagings, in the aesthetic dimension of the ritual ceremony. As a set of formal acts and words, the ritual order is accomplished if and only if those acts are performed and those words are spoken (Wulf, 2004).

Performative rituals include various types of ceremony marking significant passages in the lives of individuals. The notion of rite of passage, as described by Lalanne (2006), accounts for the fact that every individual, in the course of their life, occupies a certain number of successive statuses, and that human societies set up rites to facilitate these transitions. These rites orchestrate the leap from one stage of life to another, prompting change and acting as powerful temporal markers, allowing time to move on (Dessoy, 2004). In line with the conception of Arnold Van Gennep (1969), the first theorist of rites of passage, their aim is to move an individual from one determined situation to another, just as determined.

Performative rituals are powerful tools of transformation, personal and collective. By marking a before and an after, they give structure and meaning to life transitions. They are particularly powerful because they allow participants to reinterpret their existence, to take on new identities and to navigate transitions with a renewed sense of meaning. Moreover, the ritual frame is always associated with a double meta-message (Handelman, 1977). The first, “this is serious”, implies that the message conveyed or the action performed in the ritual is associated with an important, even sacred, stake. The second meta-message, “this is play”, underpins a different connotation of the message from the one it would have in an everyday context. According to Bateson, play constitutes a set of behaviours defined by a negation, yet not equivalent to the behaviours denied by that negation (Bateson, 1956, p. 194, pp. 209-224). In this zone of freedom, one can go to the very edge of a behaviour without entering the next class and without risking the consequences inherent in it (Piette, 2005). This limbo zone makes it possible to devise rites that stage behaviours which could be questioned from an ethical point of view if one were not within this very particular in-between zone. Alejandro Jodorowsky’s film Psychomagic, a Healing Art (2019) brilliantly shows the power of this type of ritual, and did a great deal to push back the limits of what I could imagine it possible to prescribe in devising them.

Building a performative ritual

Building a performative ritual rests on three key phases: the preliminal phase, the liminal phase and the postliminal phase (Van Gennep, 1909). Each phase has specific aims and distinct therapeutic interventions that help to guide the participants through symbolic, transformational change. Van Gennep’s art was to make the mystery intelligible; his analysis makes it possible to take the staging apart, to render comprehensible the ordering of the ceremonial sequences that characterise symbolic passage.

Preliminal phase

This phase prepares for the end of one cycle and the beginning of another. It aims to increase each person’s capacity to welcome the change to come. The therapist’s interventions are crucial in preparing the participants for this transition, by creating a favourable environment and strengthening their mental and emotional readiness.

First of all, the intervention in the preliminal phase consists in increasing the permeability of the system. The notion of permeability could be defined as the propensity of any person, or any system, to modify its balance in response to changes in its environment (Jaccarini, 2012). Certain techniques can be used to strengthen this permeability of the family system, among them positive connotation. The therapist’s interventions aim to establish a climate favourable to the emergence of a new order, to increase each person’s capacity to welcome the change to come, whose essence might bring about a shift in places and roles within the family.

It is during the preliminal phase that it will be important to choose the people with whom the therapist will work, in particular during the first two phases. The diversity of family configurations and the singularity of each system make generalisation difficult; it is nonetheless possible to say that it is necessary — as far as possible — to gather together everyone who makes up the close circle of the person about to live through the ritual. Since the ritual draws its vital force from communal experience and from validation by the group, the energy expended in bringing the family members together will therefore always be regarded as strategically useful.

In climbing there is a discipline known as “adventure terrain”, which refers to the ascent of a face that has not been equipped in advance, with no anchor point in the rock, untouched by any human passage. The therapeutic exercise of the preliminal phase might be compared to this trial on unknown ground. One of the most important points is, first of all, to prepare the ascent as well as possible. To do so, the first step might consist in a reconnaissance of the terrain, of the soundness of the rock as well as of its composition. Is it made of crumbling limestone or of solid granite? Analogously, the therapist will have to ask what family representations are made of, what their composition is. What does it mean to be an adult in this family? How does one become an adult? This exploration will be conducted with a view to spotting the possible anchor points, the places in which to insert what climbers call “nuts”, and to which they can clip the quickdraws holding the rope as they climb. As far as we are concerned, these anchor points are narrative elements that will serve as footholds on which to build the ritual ascent, and will mark out the climb by tracing a symbolic route for the one who will have to take that way. These elements, spotted in the family’s narrative universe, will have to be reused in the performative pronouncements made in the liminal phase. Technically speaking, it will be important to attend to the lexical field used preferentially, and to the sensory preferences in the composition of the discourse; these elements are brilliantly described by Paul Watzlawick (1978).

Finally, it is in this phase that the actions the individual will have to carry out in order to cross the symbolic boundary will be devised. These actions will have to take account of everything gathered beforehand and be firmly anchored in the family culture in order to make sense.

The therapist helps the participants to recognise and accept the end of the current phase of their life. This can include discussions about past experiences, acknowledgement of achievements and the release of emotional attachments. With the participants, the therapist devises the actions and the performative sentences that will be staged during the liminal phase. This preparation makes it possible to clarify expectations and to define everyone’s role in the ritual. By increasing each person’s capacity to welcome change, the therapist ensures that the participants feel supported and safe enough to engage fully in the ritual process.

Liminal phase

This phase marks the passage and the tipping point between a before and an after. It is the most symbolically charged moment of the ritual, when the actions devised in the preliminal phase are staged and the performative sentences pronounced.

This phase represents a threshold between two worlds, one a past that is over, the other a future still out of reach. The initiate is in another space, a threshold, a margin, an in-between world that he inhabits. Stripped of his past identity, without yet possessing the one that will accompany him for the rest of his life (Goguel d’Allondans, 2002). From this liminal position, where his identity is broken, dismantled, the initiate will have to put on a new identity form (Santamaria, 2009).

During the liminal phase, such elements as the physical location of the ritual, the moment at which it is carried out and, above all, the form it takes, rest on the therapist’s understanding of the preferred mode of communication, of the actions available to the people in therapy, of their values and their myths. Through their exchanges, their metaphors and their questions, people always provide the essential elements of the canvas on which the symbolic actions are to be embroidered when designing the ritual. As regards location, rituals can be carried out either in session or outside it. Three factors influence the choice of using a ritual outside the session. The first factor concerns the importance of the location for the family system and the symbolic value it may carry. This place can be suggested by the therapist, and will always be explicitly defined with the family. The second factor involves the notion of time: whether or not the ritual needs to last several hours or several days. And the third relates to the usefulness of involving in the ritual people who do not come into the therapy space (for example grandparents who cannot travel, family members in prison, and so on).

It is during this phase that the performative sentences will be pronounced, sentences whose composition will have been carefully thought through beforehand so that they can take the form of a narrative graft. For that graft to take on the family body, it is of course essential that the DNA of those pronouncements should have as many elements as possible in common with that of the family. Each family member can be active in the liminal phase of the ritual, and it is worth proposing that each of them make a contribution. This way of involving every individual in the process is an element that will amplify the power of the ritual.

The theatrical aspect of the ritual is essential. Each participant knows their role and what is expected of them. This staging strengthens the symbolic charge and the emotional impact of the ritual. The symbolic actions and the performative sentences are carried out to signify the passage from one state to another. These elements are carefully chosen to represent and anchor the desired change. The therapist ensures that emotional intensity is maintained, allowing the participants to live the moment of transition fully and to feel the depth of the change.

In his book on institutional rites of passage in a medico-educational institute, Éric Santamaria (2009) speaks of work placements as initiatory rites, as “trials” meant to test the novice’s capacity to enter the adult world, to allot him a living space, a place in society. This placement period can be defined as a period of retreat, that is, an ordeal the novice faces alone, corresponding at the institutional level to the liminal phase of the rite of passage.

Postliminal phase

This final stage marks the entry into a new state, a new ordering of reality. It is the time of celebration and festivity, when the change is anchored and acknowledged.

This phase is just as important as the other two. Celebration makes it possible to strengthen the participants’ new status or state, creating a sense of closure and of recognition of the change. The participants take the time to make their new state their own. The therapist can guide reflective activities or discussions that help to integrate the experiences of the ritual and to anchor the change in their daily life. The therapist encourages the participants to adopt new habits or behaviours that reflect their new status. This can include symbolic commitments or concrete actions that support the transition.

As for the community, it organises itself differently, redistributes new roles, integrates new norms, and finds a new homeostasis (Roosens & Ritz, 2007).

In conclusion, building a performative ritual involves meticulous preparation, symbolic staging and an integrative celebration. Each phase is essential to ensure that the ritual brings about significant and lasting change, marking a before and an after in the lives of the participants. Therapeutic interventions are crucial at every stage to guide and support the participants on their path of transformation.

Clinical vignette

Sophie is a young woman of remarkable intelligence, but her inner pain is just as deep. At our first meeting, her sharp, incisive mind contrasted cruelly with her heart, heavy with unresolved suffering. She lives in growing isolation, fed by thwarted feelings. As a child, nothing foreshadowed this inner din: a well-off family, a comfortable social standing and a mother who was a therapist. And yet Sophie found herself wedged between two brothers who absorbed all the family attention, leaving her in a desperate quest for affection. A sentence from her mother, “It is hard to love you, Sophie”, still echoes in her years later.

A brilliant pupil, she struggles to establish stable relationships. Always rejected or abandoned, she sees a self-fulfilling prophecy come true. She never believes her friends or lovers when they show her affection, and she over-interprets signs of detachment or of judgement. Her anxieties, more and more invasive, now prevent her from working, from going out, from eating.

In the first phase of the therapy, the externalising conversations dear to narrative theories (White & Epston, 1990) made it possible to bring the problem out in the guise of a character well known to fans of the Harry Potter series. Sophie describes her problem as a Voldemort, an insidious, invisible entity that steals from her everything precious in her life. “He steals my natural joy, my desires, my drive, even my sense of life. He goes after ordinary things too, like my appetite or the wish to watch a film. He stole Claire from me, who was so alive and cheerful, and who could not stand him any longer. He made me certain that I would always end up being dumped. He stole Corentin and Amauri from me. My health is deteriorating, I neglect my food, my clothes, my toothbrush.”

Sophie feels that this entity, this “Voldemort”, seeps into every part of her life, depriving her of her self-esteem, of her independence. She describes him as a parasite that feeds on her positivity, leaving her only crumbs. “He steals my ability to perceive the positive and to feel nourished by it. I have to make do with crumbs, but I am hungry for the positive. He manipulates my certainties, plunges me into doubt and confusion. Is he like Voldemort, unkillable, intangible?” Sophie wants to bury him and never go back to his grave. She wants him to disappear from her life. She wants to grow within herself the conviction that it is she who has the upper hand over him. She longs for a life without him, with her cooking, her routines, her plans, her loves and her friends at peace.

For those who know the literary saga, Voldemort, the great antagonist of the story, has placed parts of his soul in seven entities or objects called “Horcruxes”, whose complete destruction is the only possibility of salvation for humanity. Except that our hero himself turns out to be one of those famous Horcruxes, which necessarily implies a sacrificial act if Voldemort is to be got rid of once and for all. We are going to use this symbolic aspect for our ritual, which will have to include a destruction of the Horcruxes in Sophie’s life and will therefore involve the symbolic separation from a part of herself.

The preliminal phase will include a Gryffindor notebook to symbolise courage, determination and bravery, music playlists corresponding to each period of her life, a chess set to symbolise her intellectual struggle against Voldemort, the white coat of the scientist to represent the quest for truth and the beauty of physical equations. Letters of friendship or of love from her past, photographs, an LGBT flag, an antiseptic to symbolise purification, and a CBD lollipop to relax will also be used.

The liminal phase will see Sophie return to the significant places of her life, stay there, listen to the music of those periods and let herself be flooded by memories. At each place, she will carry out symbolic gestures: burning papers, tearing up letters, cutting her nails and burying them, lighting incense. The symbolic destruction of the seven Horcruxes of the Voldemort of her existence will allow her to move on to the postliminal phase, which will consist in organising a gathering with her friends to share her experience and celebrate the beginning of her new life.

This is how she will prove to herself that she can have the upper hand over Voldemort and live a fulfilled life, free of his hold. This ritual is not only a symbolic act, but a deep commitment towards herself and towards those who love her. In proceeding this way, Sophie wishes to change for good, no longer to tell the same story of suffering, but to write a new page of courage and freedom. She wants this performative ritual to be the turning point of her life, the starting point of an existence without the oppressive presence of her inner Voldemort.

The purpose of this short final paragraph is to recall, at the risk of stating the obvious, that the choice of ritual interventions depends on the very context of the therapeutic encounter, the essential lying in the adaptation and creativity that draw their substance from the unique, subtle and delicate encounter between an individual, a couple or a family and a therapist; and more generally, between sentient beings. Magicians, male and female, I hope these few elements will inspire your relational magic and suggest to you a few new spells whose secret you will pass on in your turn.