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Suffering and Healing, Subordination and Power: Women and Possession Trance
Author(s) -
BOURGUIG ERIKA
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
ethos
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.783
H-Index - 44
eISSN - 1548-1352
pISSN - 0091-2131
DOI - 10.1525/eth.2004.32.4.557
Subject(s) - trance , possession (linguistics) , psychology , gratification , distress , assertion , social psychology , psychotherapist , psychodynamics , argument (complex analysis) , psychoanalysis , sociology , philosophy , medicine , computer science , linguistics , anthropology , programming language
This article is an argument that for women, possession trance constitutes a psychodynamic response to powerlessness by providing them a means for the gratification of wishes ordinarily denied to them. Powerful alters enable them to act out wishes they cannot express directly. Possession serves both as an idiom of distress and of indirect self‐assertion, facilitated by ritualized, culturally structured dissociation.