psychic structure, giving the
constructing DSM categories,
notion of
an
entirely
&dquo;possession,&dquo;
as
used in
different slant.
REFERENCES
Koss, J.D. (1986). Symbolic transformations in traditional healing
rituals: Perspectives from analytical psychology.
Analytical Psychology, 31, 341-355.
KOSS-CHIOINO, J. (1992). Women as healers, women
Journal
as
of
patients.
Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.
MAGEO, J.M. (1991). Ma’i Aitu: The cultural logic of possession.
Ethos, 19, 352-383.
PRESSEL, E. (1977). Negative spirit possession in experienced
Brazilian Umbanda spirit mediums. In V. Crapanzano and V.
Garrison (eds.) Case studies in spirit possession (pp. 333-364). New
York:
Wiley.
SAMPSON, E.E. (1991). The debate
on individualism: Indigenous
psychologies of the individual and their role in personal and societal
functioning. American Psychologist, 43, 15-22.
DISCRETENESS OR DISCRETION?
MICHAEL LAMBEK
It is difficult to comment on the specific content of the new entry in
DSM-IV without saying some words about the assumptions which
underlie the whole exercise. As an anthropologist who has spent
considerable time trying to understand the complexities of spirit
possession in one specific locale (Lambek, 1980, 1981, 1988a,
1988b) as well as worrying about questions of comparability with
superficially similar phenomena in other locales (Lambek, 1989,
n.d.), I stand in some awe of psychiatry’s ability to distinguish
discrete phenomena. Without wishing in any way to denigrate
psychiatry’s classificatory impulse, I believe that there is a fundamental incommensurability between a catalogue of reified disease
entities, whatever their specific definitional criteria, and however
subtly derived these criteria may be (as they evidently are in this
instance), and the constitution of cultural complexes such as spirit
possession. This is somewhat akin to the well-known discordance
between ’disease’ and ’illness’ developed by Kleinman and his
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(e.g., Kleinman, 1983), a distinction which has served
recognize paradoxes in our thinking than to resolve them.
The point is simply that there are no clear, absolute, readily
distinguishable boundaries between &dquo;spirit possession&dquo; as it is found
among the Bongo Bongo and neighbouring phenomena, whether
&dquo;ancestor worship&dquo; or &dquo;seizures&dquo; among the Bongo Bongo, or &dquo;spiritt
possession&dquo; among other peoples. Hence, the very distinction
between &dquo;trance&dquo; and &dquo;possession trance&dquo; in the proposed criteria
for &dquo;Trance and [sic] Possession Disorder&dquo; (a distinction stemming
from the work of the anthropologist Erika Bourguignon, e.g., 1967),
associates
more to
is itself of dubious value for any cultural system that does not try to
reach absolute distinctions between reified entities.
In my way of thinking, spirit possession is better understood in
terms of text and context than in terms of an organic metaphor.
Hence, where the proposed DSM criteria properly include reference
to the important condition that &dquo;the trance or possession trance is not
authorized as a normal part of a collective cultural or religious
practice,&dquo; I would want to add that such authorization may be
precisely what is at issue, what is being negotiated by the participants in a given expression or series of expressions of possession.
To say that the two orders of thought or expression are incommensurable is not to resort to the complacent cultural relativist attitude
that the aim of the DSM is simply wrong. But it is to question just
what it is that the DSM describes or creates. And it is to ask the
proponents of the DSM to remind the readers of their manual to ask
themselves just for what purpose they want to make a specific
distinction or identification. It seems to me that when users of the
manual attempt to make a specific diagnosis, they are moving back
from the system of abstract classification, the world of reified
entities, to matters of text and context. In this move from theory to
practice, from classification to authorization, they must ask themselves not only about the presenting &dquo;symptoms&dquo; but also about the
possible consequences of labelling a certain behaviour one way or
another, or even of having to label it at all. In the end, the point of
the diagnostic criteria ought to be to help distinguish when a discrete
and positive identification might have therapeutic use and when it
might be better to stand back and leave matters of expression and
authorization to the rightful subjects of the possession phenomena.
There are moments when wisdom is silence.
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REFERENCES
BOURGUIGNON, E. (1967). World distribution and patterns of possession states. In R. Prince (Ed.) Trance and Possession States (pp.
3-34). Montreal: R.M. Bucke Foundation.
KLEINMAN, A. (1983). Editor’s note. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, 7, 97-99.
LAMBEK, M. (1980). Spirits and spouses: Possession as a system of
communication among the Malagasy speakers of Mayotte. American
(2), 318-331.
Ethnologist, 7
LAMBEK, M. (1981). Human spirits: A cultural account of trance in
Mayotte. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cambridge Studies in Cultural Systems, Clifford Geertz, series
editor.
LAMBEK, M. (1988a). Spirit possession / Spirit succession: Aspects of
social
Ethnologist, 15 710-731.
continuity in Mayotte. American (4),
LAMBEK, M. (1988b). Graceful exits: Spirit possession as personal
(1), 59-69.
performance in Mayotte. Culture VIII
LAMBEK, M. (1989). From disease to discourse: Remarks on the
conceptualization of trance and spirit possession. In C. Ward (Ed.),
of Consciousness and Mental Health: A CrossCultural Perspective (pp. 36-61). London: Sage Press.
LAMBEK, M. (n.d.). On being plural. Paper presented to the Canadian
Altered States
Anthropology Society, Montreal, May
1992.
ARE TRANCE AND POSSESSION DISORDERS
LINKED TO HIGH HYPNOTIZABILITY?
CAMPBELL PERRY
In the Introduction to DSM-III-R, Spitzer and Williams (1987)
pointed to the central issue posed by any new proposed classification
of a mental disorder in general. It is this particular litmus test against
which the proposal for any new nosological category in medicine or
psychiatry such as Trance and Possession Disorders must necessarily
be evaluated. They wrote about the process leading to the publication
of DSM-III-R in these terms:
&dquo;In attempting to evaluate proposals for revisions in the
classification and criteria, or for adding new categories, the
greatest weight was given to the presence of empirical support
from well-conducted research studies, though, for most
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