Fractured Selves and Fragmented Realities: Trauma, Repression and Modes of Healing in Rachel Zadok’s Gem Squash Tokoloshe

Abstract

In South Africa, there has long been a difficulty in addressing trauma, particularly in a manner which
accounts for both western and traditional forms of healing. This article examines Rachel Zadok’s Gem
Squash Tokoloshe, an engaging narrative which has not received a wealth of academic criticism, and explores
the lasting effects of childhood trauma. Drawing on the findings of Melanie Klein’s childhood studies
as a means to interpret protagonist Faith’s behaviour, which occasionally borders on the schizophrenic, I
attempt to provide a viable paradigm for delineating traditional African healing within western clinical terminology.
In understanding the role that traditional healers play in South Africa, I draw on Gavin Ivey and
Tertia Myers’s study, “The Psychology of Bewitchmentâ€. In their study, Ivey and Myers make extensive
use of the Kleinian psychoanalytical model to interpret a more traditional African belief and integrate its
manifestations within a western therapeutic understanding. Although the two models appear to be divergent,
the integration of two different schools of thought that nevertheless reveal an epistemological congruity
in treating ideas as things allows psychotherapists to manage a broad spectrum of patients.