September 2009
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53 Reads
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6 Citations
Le Divan familial
Violence to wives and male anxieties in Cameroonian husbands From official report on the frequency of violence to women in Cameroon, the author examines this issue from the mother-child relationship’s point of view in traditional societies. He underlines that this violence rests on cultural stereotypes, attested by storytelling, where the concept of « marital mothering » holds a major place. The ambivalence of the female figure in the male fantasies would lead the man to dominate and control the woman to avert his own dead. The traditional repression of female sexuality through the excision ritualizes already the control of women’s omnipotence which is potentially life-threatening the human being they produced. In this context, male violence could be the symptom of a narcissistic frailty.