Undermining the Tendency to Pathologize Spirit Possession
Analytical psychology does not differentiate between the many cultural or nthropological variations of ‘spiritual’ experience. Instead it conflates all transcendent phenomena – such as spirit possession and mystical experience – into one general kind of psychological experience.
It refers to this experience as ‘dissociation’, or being in a ‘dissociated state’. To understand the nature and underlying dynamic of spirit possession in terms of dissociation
is not a new interpretation of spirit possession, per se. However, ‘dissociation’ as it is understood in analytical psychology remains relatively unfamiliar to scholars of spirit possession and transcendent experience in general. The unheard voice of analytical psychology within debates on the nature of such phenomena is unfortunate as its contribution is noteworthy.
Perhaps the most notable contribution it makes is its departure from those psychological interpretations of spirit possession that pathologize and objectify its phenomenal variations, and consider them to be symptomatic of undesirable and maladaptive behaviour.
Generally speaking, anthropologists do not pathologize spirit possession, but on the contrary, interpret it as an appropriate – even desirable – phenomenon of particular cultures and communities (cf. Kirmayer 1994).
Arguably it is a general tendency of the Western mindset to reduce non-Western cultural experiences to its own rational terms. That is to say, to translate human experience into human knowledge and, subsequently, to reduce human behaviour to categories of explanation.
As a consequence, experiences of ‘spirit possession’ have been identified with an array of psychological disturbances (such as paranoia, auditory and visual hallucinations, thought insertion, delusions, obsessions, amnesia, convulsive seizures, paralysis, heightened affects, and so on), and have subsequently been diagnosed as a variety of psychological and neurological disorders (including hysteria, dissociative identity disorder, epilepsy and schizophrenia).
The parameters of what constitutes mental illness and health are not categorical; they are relative to cultural conceptions, and gradually evolve in light of changing cultural concerns. It would take a paradigmatic shift of grand proportion in the Zeitgeist of Western culture for it to become less rationally oriented (or ego-centred) and more accommodating of nonrational values of interpretation.
In the meantime, the tendency of Western psychological interpretation is arguably one that discriminates against spirit possession by explaining its behavioural presentation in terms of ‘abnormality’ and ‘pathology’.
Dissociation is itself both a necessary and inevitable feature of a healthy psychological disposition to life and to everyday experience generally.
Simply put, dissociation is a mechanism of the mind that enables one to establish what we might call the foreground of experience by splitting off from consciousness those thoughts, feelings, sensations and intuitions that are irrelevant to one’s immediate concerns.
For instance, if you are carefully reading this chapter you have successfully dissociated from other experiences that might otherwise concern you, such as the various sights and sounds that continue around you.
According to the anthropologist M. J. Field, dissociation is the ‘splitting of the stream of consciousness into parallel streams’, and this he says is ‘familiar to anyone who can “do two things at once”, such as playing the piano and simultaneously planning a summer holiday, or driving a car “automatically” while thinking about something quite different.’ (1969, p. 3).
Dissociation is thus the mechanism by which streams of consciousness are suspended and unavailable to experience. The activation of dissociation requires energy, and, consequently, the prolonged splitting of streams of consciousness can be very draining and fatiguing to the personality as a whole.
Dissociation operates within the context of a consciousness that is multifaceted and which comprises different streams – or what we might call ‘ego-states’ – that are in dynamic relationship. In this model, the personality is conceived as a divided self that experiences the world according to the interplay of its parts; that is, according to whichever ego-state or combination of ego-states occupies consciousness at any one moment.
Dissociation becomes problematic to the functioning of the personality when one ego-state seeks to dominate or annihilate others. In such cases, we may talk about dissociative disorders of the personality, where the overall personality becomes fragmented in such a way that the usual processing of information is disrupted.4
The parallel between dissociative ego-states and spirit possession is relatively clear. Thus, in the words of M. J. Field (1969, p. 3), ‘The possessed person is in a state of dissociated personality whereby a split-off part of the mind possesses the whole field of consciousness, the rest being in complete abeyance.’
Spirit possession and dissociative ego-states similarly describe a situation where a person seems to lose identity and the cohesiveness of his or her personality to become another person altogether.
The obvious and often asked question is whether such experiences of possession are pathological. The answer to this, however, is not so obvious. Indeed, in this chapter I shall argue that, from the perspective of analytical psychology, it is in fact an inappropriate question to ask.
According to analytical psychology, spirit possession defies diagnostic criteria; it cannot be explained in terms of pathology, or indeed, of health. In the course of this chapter we shall arrive at a different question – and perhaps one that is more appropriate to the aims of anthropological study, and more comfortable with its conclusions.
We shall not ask whether spirit possession is itself pathological, but whether the ego of the possessed person can tolerate and integrate the possession experience into his or her personality as a whole.
For, as I shall argue, possession merely facilitates mental health or illness according to the disposition of the ego. It is thus the disposition of the ego and not the phenomena of possession that lends itself to possible diagnosis of pathology. ~Lucy Huskinson, Spirit, Possession and Trance, Page 71-73
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