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This article discusses the relationship between magic, witchcraft, cure, and contemporary Colombian social conflict. Based on an ethnographic study of a clinical case of mental sickness, the argument seeks to show how a situation of social conflict and chaos offers a privileged scenario for witchcraft practices. Magic and witchcraft, it is argued, offer a via regiaforexploring the maze created bysuffering, repression and guilt (the pathos) in our culture -i.e. an analytical road to explain what Sigmund Freud called "the malaise of civilization". In the discussion, the social pathology of the family -especially of the antioqueño family-receives a particular attention.