What is Spirit Possession? Defining, Comparing, and Explaining Two Possession Forms

Abstract

Reviewing anthropological analyses of possession forms cross-culturally and drawing from recent advances in cognitive psychology, this paper attempts to explain recurrent features of spirit possession. Spirit possession concepts fall into broadly two varieties: one that entails the transformation or replacement of identity (executive possession) and one that envisages possessing spirits as (the cause of) illness and misfortune (pathogenic possession). The cross-culturally recurrent features of these divergent conceptual structures may be explained, at least in part, with reference to distinct processes of human psychology, one set of which deals with the representation of person-identity and another that deals with notions about contamination.