Abstract
The ethnographic itineraries of the ill availing themselves of the multiplicity of recourses offered, in France and Italy, by the charismatic renewal sheds light on the multiple facets of the no tion of a specialized cure for psychic suffering which certain com munities of worship claim as their specificity. The apparent opposition between practices centred on the medical model of laic psychotherapies and practices centred on the religious model of exorcism correspond to a limited number of common techniques which bring about the conversion of the sick person into a devotee by putting into relationship three types of anamnesis- psychological, initiatory and mythical — effectuated through a ritual invention the efficacity of which no longer depends upon the fixed repetition of a formal ritual, but upon the voluntary evoking into action of meaning.