Emotional Indigestion: Illness Shaping Bodies, Families, and Communities

"What we repress returns-healing begins when silence is broken."In this groundbreaking book, Dr Branny Mthelebofu exposes the silent epidemic of emotional indigestion-the unprocessed pain that shapes marriages, families, and communities. This book offers a psychoanalytic exploration of how attachment, repression, transference, and ego dissolution operate within African contexts of family, marriage, and identity.
Dr Branny Mthelebofu applies Freud's and Jung's frameworks to real-world case reflections-from rural women in arranged marriages, to educated professionals in Pretoria, New York City, London, Australia, Angola, Zimbabwe, to men negotiating fragile masculinities in the Limpopo and North West. By unpacking the hidden dynamics of repression and emotional pain, this work challenges conventional understandings of mental health in patriarchal and communal societies.
It further illuminates how even therapists and helping professionals remain vulnerable to their own "emotional indigestions, " perpetuating cycles of unresolved trauma. Part story, part psychology, part healing guide, offers not only insight but also practical tools to reclaim selfhood. The book closes with a practical workbook section, designed for both individuals and professionals, offering tools to identify repression patterns, work through transference dynamics, and reclaim authentic selfhood.
Scholarly yet accessible, deeply local yet globally relevant, this book is essential reading for students, researchers, therapists, and anyone concerned with the intersections of psychology, culture, and emotional health.