Transcript Possession - Teesside University

Possession
Lecture 13
Consciousness
overview
The last few weeks we have examined
agency – who is in control of our
actions?
 This week’s lecture focuses on
experiences when we are taken over by
others
 Spirit possession
 Mediums and channelling
 Dissociative Identity Disorder

Spirit Possession
Accounts of spirit possession exist in the
Bible and are common in spiritualist
churches today
 Common throughout the world

Bourguignon (1973) found religiously
altered states in 90% of societies, with
spirit possession in 52% of cases
 Suggests that it is a cultural
phenomenon

What happens in spirit
possession?
Varies as a function of the culture
 Requires a prior belief in spirits
 Typically in a social sanctioned ritual
involving music and chanting
 The host then will go limp
 Then into convulsions
(e.g. Boddy, 1994; Goodman, 1988)

Mischel and Mischel (1958)
Studied the Shango religion in Trinidad
 Often the possessed are those of a
lower social status
 Allows for the possessed to engage in
what would otherwise be inappropriate
behaviour – the alibi theory of spirit
possession

Speaking in tongues
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Glossolalia (i.e., speaking in tongues) is vocalization that
sounds language-like but is devoid of semantic meaning or
syntax (Samarin, 1972).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkf7DpnnNck
Some go into convulsions or lose consciousness; others are
less dramatic.
Some seem to go into a trance
some claim to have amnesia of their speaking in tongues.
All believe they are possessed by the Holy Spirit and that
what they utter is meaningful.
What does it feel like to be
possessed?
Degree of amnesia about events
 Perceived as involuntary
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Are people experiencing an altered
state, or are they merely pretending?
Oohashi et al. (2002)
Used a portable EEG to measure brain
patterns among the spiritually
possessed of Bali (known as Kerauhan)
 Only one of the participants went into a
trance
 Increases in theta and alpha frequency
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Is possession an altered state of
consciousness?
Spanos, Cross, Lepage, and
Coristine (1986)
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Sixty subjects listened to a 60-second sample of
glossolalia (defined to them as pseudolanguage) and
then attempted to produce glossolalia on a 30s
baseline trial.
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Afterward, half of the subjects received two training
sessions that included audio- and videotaped samples
of glossolalia interspersed with opportunities to
practice glossolalia.
 About 20% of subjects exhibited fluent without training
 70% of trained participants spoke fluent glossolalia on
the post-test.
Explained findings with reference to Social Learning
Theory
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Spiritualism
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Earliest example of spiritualism came from the Fox sisters
of New York State.
 Communicated with the spirit of a pedlar
 Audible rapping noises were heard
led to an interest in the psychic phenomena
Magicians and hoaxers
Pepper’s Ghost
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A viewer looking through the red rectangle sees a ghost
floating next to the table. The illusion is created by a large
piece of glass or a half-silvered mirror, situated between
viewer and scene (green outline). The glass reflects a mirrorimage room (left) that is hidden from the viewer.
Spiritualist Churches
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Despite the unmasking of the Davenports and
others, by the eventual admission of Margaret
Fox (in 1888) there were 8 million spiritualists
in the US
Spiritualist churches still survive today
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The service is usually conducted by a medium.
an opening prayer, an address, hymns and
finally a demonstration of mediumship.
Mediumship
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Like possession 19th century mediumship
involved an induction process
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Messages were produced from beyond the
grave
Ectoplasm
The medium claimed that the process was
involuntary
Modern mediumship falls into two categories
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Trance channelling
Conscious channelling – which we will discuss
later in the module
Famous spirits
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Seth
 Channelled by Jane Roberts after using a Ouija board in
the 60s.
 Roberts went into a trance and channelled Seth
 The material discusses the nature of physical reality, the
origins of the universe, the theory of evolution, the Christ
story, and the purpose of life, among other subjects.
 According to Roberts, Seth claimed to be speaking from
an adjacent plane of existence
Elvis
 Paula Farmer has channelled Elvis and produced the
seminal work “Elvis Aaron Presley: His Growth and
Development as a Soul Spirit within the Universe”
 Elvis discusses his views on life, death, God, popular
music, etc.
Common mistakes in
Channelling
The evidence for trance channelling
appears slim
 Many channellers makes mistakes in
diction, or accent or grammar when
channelling ancient spirits.
 guides to channelling often seem to be
guides to pretending

Channeling: How to reach
out to your spirit guide
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“as people begin to channel, they almost
inevitably feel as if they are making it
up… When my students complain that
they’re just making it up, I tell the, ‘Good.
Continue to make it up.’ Allow your
imagination to roam freely. ..Don’t allow
your rational mind to rule at that time.
Push its thoughts aside; soon enough it
will be back in control”
Dissociative Identity
Disorder
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Although earlier cases have been recognised multiple personality
disorder (now DID) gained a wider attention through the book and
film Sybil:
“One day, when she was talking to me about something that
should have made her angry, she jumped off the couch, went over
and struck her fist through one of the window panes in my office. I
jumped out of my chair, ran over, grabbed her wrist and said "Let
me see if you cut yourself." She ducked down and hunched her
shoulders, peered up at me and said, "Let me go." I said, "No, I
want to see your hand, and if you cut yourself." She looked at me
and said, "Am I more important than the window?" I said,
"Certainly. A handyman can fix the window, but if you are cut, it
would take a doctor to sew you up." She had not cut herself, but
she was not talking like her typical self. She looked younger and
frightened, so I asked her a spontaneous question, "Who are
you?" She said, "I am Peggy." I thought immediate that this must
be a dual personality, but I said nothing to the patient about this.”
DID is assumed to occur as a response to
childhood trauma
 Average number of personalities is 13
(Putnam et al., 1986)
 The personalities often differ in terms of age,
name and gender, speech and physical
symptoms
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Birnbaum and Thomann (1996)
over a 3-year period tested a patient
with DID differences in dominant
handedness, response to the same
medication, allergic sensitivities,
autonomic and endocrine function, EEG,
VEP, and regional cerebral blood flow.
 Differences also found in visual function
including variability in visual acuity,
refraction, visual field, colour vision,
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Socio-Cognitive explanations
Spanos (1996) comments that the
incidence of DID varies with the
therapist
 He views DID as a very similar process
to hypnosis and glossolalia, as "rulegoverned social constructions."

Hunjens et al. (2005)
People with DID report inter-identity
amnesia – i.e. they are not aware of
other identities
 Used an implicit learning task to assess
procedural memory
 Real-simulator design
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Results seemed to suggest a pattern of
inter-identity amnesia for both DIDs and
simulators
Gennaro, Herrman and
Sarapata (2006)
Argue that the memory failures in DID
are failures associated with the unity of
consciousness
 They argue that many slips of action
(e.g. forgetting things, forgetting to do
something) are less dramatic examples
of such failures
 The same mechanism accounts for both
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Wegner (2002)
Argues that spirit possession,
channelling, and DID are all
manifestations of his theory of apparent
mental causation
 Argues that we all possess virtual
agents, and that they vary within each
person
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References
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Wegner, D.M. (2002). The illusion of conscious will. MIT
press: Cambridge, MA. Chapter 7 covers virtual agency.
Huntjens, R.J.C.; Postma, A.; Woertman, L.; van der Hart, O.;
Peters, M.L (2005) Procedural memory in dissociative
identity disorder: When can inter-identity amnesia be truly
established? Consciousness and Cognition, 14, 377-389.
Lilienfeld, S O., et al. (1999). "Dissociative Identity Disorder
and the Sociocognitive Model: Recalling the Lessons of the
Past," Psychological Bulletin, 125(5) 507-523.
Spanos NP, Cross P, Lepage M, Coristine M. (1986).
Glossolalia as learned behavior: an experimental
demonstration. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 95, 21-23
Spanos. N. (2002). Multiple Identities and False Memories.
(parts 3 and 4).