Traditional Healing in Kenya Versus Psychotherapy
Personal Perspective: How belief and healing differ across cultures.
Posted June 1, 2026 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan
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 anthropologist Sarah LeVine writes, in Kisii the function of a diviner “is to identify the [cause] of the afflictions and determine appropriate ritual restitution or counterattack.” A friend, who served as my interpreter, arranged a meeting for me with a middle-aged woman who practiced divination. We waited outside Kemunto’s hut as she prepared herself for my visit. I could hear preternatural sounds from inside. That was the diviner, my friend said. She speaks in a different voice when she divines.
After we waited for some time, she invited us into a windowless, unlit room filled with smoke from a three-stone fire in the center of the dirt floor. She sat on a mat wearing a beaded cap and began asking me questions.
Kemunto had misunderstood my intention, so instead of my interviewing her, she asked me questions. Every so often, she threw millet chaff on the three-stone fire pit set in the ground between us, causing the fire to sputter. I could hardly see as even more smoke filled the lightless room. She continued to use her strange voice, talking as she breathed in, not out.
Through her persistent questioning, she learned that I had children who occasionally had nightmares, my wife once had been in a bicycle accident, sometimes I had a bad stomach, and around my Long Island house, we had thunder and lightning storms. After about half an hour, she presented her analysis of the cause of my various afflictions: Living amongst those who were not my clan. This was unwise, as I was vulnerable to strangers’ witchcraft. Her remedy was to bring together my extended family and offer a black goat as a sacrificial feast. (When I told her it wasn’t my custom to sacrifice to ancestors, she looked at me with a whiff of pity, as if to say that explained everything.)
Did Kemunto’s divination work? She did get me to articulate some, admittedly minor, problems. Maybe someone who came believing in the process would immediately state their problem. I don’t know. Nevertheless, divination must have some efficacy; otherwise, its appeal would dissipate. Perhaps it has remained embedded as a cultural practice because of its presumed efficacy, which may be attributable to the placebo effect . As pointed out in an article in Michigan Medicine, “Research suggests that the placebo effect is caused by positive expectations, the provider-patient relationship and the rituals around receiving medical care.”
Those employing diviners bring to the visit positive expectations and trust in the person performing the divination. They are directed to engage in a healing ritual that brings the community together. This is consistent with a family-systems approach, which focuses not on feelings and insights of an individual as much as it does on strengthening relationships. In this instance, it is the act of bringing people around food without recrimination or blame that is key.
I am unaware of a study that looks at the effectiveness of divination in Kisii. But the approach is consistent with the factors that contribute to the efficacy of a placebo. Of course, I don’t know how many followed her instructions, but I suspect most did.
If so, how does this compare to the effectiveness of psychotherapy ? One meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials of psychotherapies concluded that overall their efficacy is relatively small. My experience in Kenya leads me to believe that if a person believes in the power of diviners, the prescribed remedies are as likely to succeed as are Western psychotherapies in resolving clients’ presenting problems.
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Arthur Dobrin, DSW, is Professor Emeritus of University Studies, Hofstra University and Leader Emeritus, Ethical Humanist Society of Long Island. He is the author of more than 25 books, including The Lost Art of Happiness and Teaching Right from Wrong .
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.