Mind over Mind: The Anthropology and Psychology of Spirit Possession

This text explores the phenomenon of spirit possession from anthropological and psychological perspectives. Spirit possession is ritually important in many cultures from India to Brazil to Madagascar, but has tended to be narrowly regarded from modern American and European perspectives as a psychopathological problem of multiple personality disorder. This book proposes an integration of anthropological and psychological approaches, concluding with a new analytical framework for understanding spirit possession and resolving the controversy surrounding the reality of possession. The issues raised are thus essential to both the anthropology of religion and the psychology of altered states of consciousness. At the same time, the book confronts the most challenging philosophical issues of human consciousness and anthropology. At the most general level, this study argues for the unequivocal importance of an interdisciplinary approach to spirit possession and for the integral significance of anthropology for the other human sciences.