Approaches to trance and possession in anthropology have tended to use outmoded models drawn from psychodynamic theory or treated such dissociative phenomena as purely discursive processes of attributing action and experience to agencies other than the self. Within psychology and psychiatry, understanding of dissociative disorders has been hindered by polemical "either/or" arguments: either dissociative disorders are real, spontaneous alterations in brain states that reflect basic neurobiological phenomena, or they are imaginary, socially constructed role performances dictated by interpersonal expectations, power dynamics and cultural scripts. In this paper, we outline an approach to dissociative phenomena, including trance, possession and spiritual and healing practices, that integrates the neuropsychological notions of underlying mechanism with sociocultural processes of the narrative construction and social presentation of the self. This integrative model, grounded in a cultural neuroscience, can advance ethnographic studies of dissociation and inform clinical approaches to dissociation through careful consideration of the impact of social context.
This article explores the biocultural bases of spirit possession mediumship in the Afro‐Brazilian religion, Candomblé. After a brief review of the literature, the article moves beyond the biomedical and social‐structural explanations that have dominated the theoretical landscape, by attempting to construct an etiology of mediumship that is traced through the interface of individual characteristics with the cultural belief system that forms their context. Data were collected from a total of 71 individuals over the course of a year‐long field study in Salvador, Brazil. Analyses of social ethnography, life history and semistructured interviews along with results from psychological inventories, suggest that altered states of consciousness should not be considered the central and defining element of mediumship. An alternative model is proposed, in which the combination of social conditions and somatic susceptibilities causes certain individuals to identify with the mediumship role, and predisposes them to dissociate. However in the context of Candomblé, dissociation is not a pathological experience, but rather a therapeutic mechanism, learned through religious participation, that benefits individuals with a strong tendency to somatize.
Anthropologists have become increasingly interested in embodiment-that is, the ways that socio-cultural factors influence the form, behavior and subjective experience of human bodies. At the same time, social cognitive neuroscience has begun to reveal the mechanisms of embodiment by investigating the neural underpinnings and consequences of social experience. Despite this overlap, the two fields have barely engaged one another. We suggest three interconnected domains of inquiry in which the intersection of neuroscience and anthropology can productively inform our understanding of the relationship between human brains and their socio-cultural contexts. These are: the social construction of emotion, cultural psychiatry, and the embodiment of ritual. We build on both current research findings in cultural neuroscience and ethnographic data on cultural differences in thought and behavior, to generate novel, ecologically informed hypotheses for future study. In addition, we lay out a specific suggestion for operationalizing insights from anthropology in the context of cultural neuroscience research. Specifically, we advocate the development of field studies that use portable measurement technologies to connect individual patterns of biological response with socio-cultural processes. We illustrate the potential of such an approach with data from a study of psychophysiology and religious devotion in Northeastern Brazil.
Discontinuities in the experience of self are distressing especially when they are unexpected, unsanctioned, and resist attribution. Such discontinuities are often a product of psychosocial and physical suffering. In this article I present a model of self that incorporates bodily experience as a fundamental building block and key source of discontinuity for a sense of self. Analysis of data from adherents of an African‐derived spirit possession religion in northeastern Brazil illustrate the ways in which embodied mechanisms, including psychophysiological processes, contribute to the construction, deconstruction, and repair of selves. With case studies from Candomblé, I reveal how subjects use cultural tools to contribute to transformations in both cognitive and bodily processes of incoherence, ameliorate distress, and create positive looping effects that allow selves to recohere. In developing this position I advance understanding of the dynamics of embodied forms of self‐healing and contribute to the literatures on Candomblé in particular and possession more generally. [embodiment, spirit possession, healing, self, Brazil]
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