Conceptualizing Spirit Possession: Ethnographic and Experimental Evidence

We report the findings of a programmatic series of studies designed to investigate the cognitive underpinnings of cross-culturally recurrent forms of possession belief. Possession phenomena are frequently portrayed in the anthropological literature as incompatible with common cultural assumptions and biases guiding Western notions of ‘‘self’’ and ‘‘personhood’’ and as resisting generalization and explication in comparative theoretical analysis. Our findings concerning the cognitive capacities and constraints that facilitate the emergence and transmission of possession concepts support the position that certain fundamental aspects of these concepts’ forms are explainable in terms of ordinary, panhuman cognitive function. Ethnographic and experimental data indicate that successful possession concepts (e.g., those that entail the effective displacement of the host’s agency by the possessing spirit’s agency) emerge and spread, in part, because they effectively exploit universal cognitive mechanisms that deal with our everyday social and physical worlds and that this contributes to their enhanced incidence, communicability, memorability, and inferential potential relative to less ‘‘cognitively optimal,’’ less widespread possession concepts. [spirit possession, cognitive science of culture, cultural transmission, Afro-Brazilian religion, mind-body dualism] In this article we present the findings of a series of controlled studies designed to explore specifically why possession beliefs take the forms they do, and why certain possession beliefs enjoy more widespread transmissive success than others. Our research agenda stems from a number of observations raised by the ethnographic literature on spirit possession and mediumship. This vast literature reveals many different varieties of possession belief. The reported configurations of minds, spirits, agencies, and bodies in space and time, and the variable contexts in which possession phenomena arise, appear so dissimilar as to call into question the existence of any important cross-cultural recurrences. Nevertheless, deeper analysis reveals that the range of possession beliefs that may be encountered cross-culturally rest on certain key assumptions. As Bourguignon noted, ‘‘The concept of spirit possession is clearly dependent . . . on the possibility of separating the self into one or more elements’’ (1968:4). More precisely, possession-trance concepts frequently entail a (literal or effective) separation of mind (or agency, spirit, person, self) from the body. For example, the agency of the host is frequently represented as withdrawing from the body or assuming a passive role in relation to the 246 ETHOS ETHOS, Vol. 36, Issue 2, pp. 246–267, ISSN 0091-2131 online ISSN 1548-1352. & 2008 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-1352.2008.00013.x. control of the body, which is subsequently occupied or animated by the possessing spirit. Indeed, despite the presence of a wide variety of concepts of possession-trance (and additional logically possible concepts), one in particular appears with considerable frequency across the ethnographic record. This concept entails the complete displacement of the host’s agency by another agent’s agency, such that a bodiless agent effectively acquires the bodyF but not the mind or selfFof a living being. Below we present evidence supporting our hypothesis that the frequent recurrence of displacement conceptions of possession, relative to other possible models, is due in some part to basic human social-cognitive architecture. People from culturally rich spirit-possession traditions or from contexts of relatively impoverished exposure to such events and ideas will ordinarily tend to understand possession in terms of a displacement of agency because of how human cognitive structures process information about minds. The ‘‘displacement’’ model of possession-trance minimally entails the following conditions: During the possession episode, the agency of the host is completely replaced by an agency other than the host’s. No trace of the host’s agency remains or fuses with the possessing agency. The entity that possesses (i.e., the possessing agent) completely controls the behaviors of the host’s body. The possessing agent is wholly responsible for all behaviors for the duration of the episode. James Frazer, for example, describes possession as the moment when a spirit enters into a person. The person’s ‘‘own personality lies in abeyance during the episode,’’ and all utterances ‘‘are accepted as the voice of the god or spirit’’ (1958:108). Melville Herskovits similarly writes of the Haitians, ‘‘The supreme expression of their religious experience is a psychological state wherein a displacement of personality occurs when the god ‘‘comes into the head’’ of the worshipper. The individual thereupon is held to be the deity himself’’ (1948:66–67). More recently, Paul Stoller describes spirit mediumship among the Songhay of Niger as resulting ‘‘from the temporary displacement of a person’s double by the force of a particular spirit. When the force of the spirit enters the medium’s body, the person shakes uncontrollably. When the deity’s double is firmly established in the dancer’s body, the shaking becomes less violent. The deity screams and dances. The medium’s body has become a deity’’ (1989:31). In his ethnography of Trinidadian ‘‘orisha work,’’ Kenneth Lum writes, ‘‘After an orisha had manifested on a person, it was that orisha who was now animating that person’s body. . . . The displaced [host’s] spirit only returned when the orisha had left’’ (2000:156). In Mayotte, according to Lambek, spirits are said to ‘‘enter the bodies of human beings and rise to their heads, taking temporary control of all bodily and mental functions.’’ He continues, ‘‘Despite the fact that the body remains the same, it is now occupied by a different person. . . . During CONCEPTUALIZING SPIRIT POSSESSION 247