Be Motor Impaired and “Psychically Re-inhabit” His Body While Incarcerated: A Case Study of Adult Incarcerated in Cameroon

Abstract

The motor disability leads to a limitation and a restriction of some activities due to an alteration of physical function. Through this study, the author aims to understand the meaning of body confinement experience to the incarcerated adults faced with a motor deficiency. Three adults met at the Mfou principal prison (Cameroon). The semi-directive interview and Rorschach’s projective test have been used as tools to collect data. The semi-directive interview guide was based on themes link to the history of the incarcerated situation, the experience of body confinement, the nature of body image structuration and the body investment or disinvestment. In the Rorschach test, there is no projection of the body known by the person, and which would be the object of cognitive activity, but the body as it is lived, felt, desired as an object and subject of emotional activity. The thematic content analysis was used for the interview. The qualitative and quantitative analysis were used to analyze Rorschach test. The result of the interview shows that the subject painfully experiences the body confinement, the shame and humiliation feeling makes the body to be perceived as ‘body-object’. The psychic fragility is shown and generated a set of symptoms that goes to self fold, body disinvestment, up to suicide attempt. The Rorschach test results show a fragmented and weakened body image, difficult to‘re-inhabit’ psychically. There is a need for a psychological accompaniment strategies in order to facilitate a ‘psychic re-appropriation’ of the subject’s body.