Maintaining the use of alternative medicine: pathologizing thoughts and reconstructing an authentic identity[Le maintien de l’usage de médecines alternatives : pathologisation des pensées et reconstruction d’une identité authentique]

While alternative medicines are used to fill the gaps in conventional medicine in terms of care, their medical inefficiency limits their long-term use. In this article, we show that consumers maintain their consumption of alternative drugs by learning a therapeutic system that explain the illnesses by the thoughts. By pathologizing their mental states, interpreted as the product of an imposed social identity, consumers of alternative medicine engage in a long-term therapeutic process of constructing a new identity deemed authentic or natural, favorable to healing. The absence of improvement in the state of health induced by this therapeutic process is thus interpreted not as the absence of effectiveness of the therapy, but as a personal failure of the patient to discover his true identity, which can lead to an aimless quest for identity generating financial, health and social risks.