Ritual trance and possession
Explanation
States of ritual trance and possession (in which a person, during a religious or therapeutic ceremony, enters an altered state of consciousness and behaves as if "possessed" by a spiritual entity: god, ancestor, spirit) are one of the most universal phenomena of human spirituality. They have been documented in Africa (Vodún in Benin and Togo, Yoruba religions, South African sangoma, Ethiopian zar); in their American diasporas (Haitian Vodou, Brazilian Candomblé and Umbanda, Cuban Santería); in Asia (Siberian shamanism, Indonesian dukun, Taiwanese tang-ki); in much of the ancient world (Dionysian maenads, Sibyls, biblical prophets).
The phenomenological characteristics of possession trance include: apparent identity change (the person says they are another entity, speaks as it does, receives veneration as it does), post-trance amnesia (when "returning", the person says they do not remember what happened), unusual capacities (insensitivity to pain, athletic behaviours, unusual eloquence, unlearned knowledge, "unknown" languages), specific bodily expressivity (each spirit or deity has its "dance" and "gestures"). These manifestations are culturally modulated: each tradition has its "language" of possession.
Anthropologists such as Erika Bourguignon (who in her famous 1973 comparative study found that 90% of documented societies had some kind of institutionalised trance), I.M. Lewis (Ecstatic Religion, 1971), Paul Stoller, Karen McCarthy Brown and Janice Boddy have analysed these phenomena. They distinguish between central possession (the religious elite, priests) and peripheral possession (frequently involving women and marginal groups, expressing social frustrations and allowing indirect agency).
Psychological and neuroscientific explanations of ritual trance range from dissociation (Pierre Janet's model, Ernest Hilgard on dissociation), suggestibility (ritual hypnosis), specific activation of brain networks by intense rhythmic music (especially percussion), dance, hyperventilation, fasting, psychoactive substances. Neurological studies (electroencephalograms during trance) have shown specific patterns of brain activity.
For the theory of consciousness, possession trance raises fundamental questions about the unity and continuity of the self: if Joana's ordinary consciousness can be "displaced" by that of the goddess Yemayá (in Santería) or by the ancestor's spirit, what does this tell us about the nature of the self? Is the self unitary and permanent, as we believe in the West, or is it a contingent construction that admits radical reorganizations? Modern clinical cases of dissociative identity disorders offer secularised analogies.
Possession traditions have shown therapeutic roles: in many societies, ritual trance allows catharsis of individual and collective tensions, expression of repressed aspects, symbolic resolution of conflicts. Anthropologist Gilbert Rouget in Music and Trance (1980) studied the relationship between ritual music and altered states. More recently, neuroscientists have studied brain activity in Vodou dancers, in whirling Sufis, in Pentecostals in ecstasy. As one of the great chapters of the comparative phenomenology of consciousness, ritual trance and possession offer precious materials to understand the plasticity of the self and the richness of conscious states that humanity has developed throughout its history.
Strengths
- Globally widely documented phenomenon.
- Emerging neural correlates in research.
- Challenge to unitary conceptions of the self.
- Integration with community practice and healing.
Main critiques
- Ontological status of possessing entities not consensually agreed.
- Risk of exoticisation in Western research.
- Hard to separate psychological, social and ontological factors.