Possession State

possession is a transformation of a particular sort, a derivative of bicamerality in which the rituals of induction and the different collective cognitive imperatives and trained expectancies result in the ostensive possession of the particular person by the god-side of the bicameral mind.

Jaynes defines possession states as culturally patterned derivatives of bicameral hallucination, distinguishing them from ordinary trance by their dependence on collective cognitive imperatives and ritual induction.

Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, 1976thesis

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Are the speech areas of the right nondominant hemisphere activated in spontaneous possession, as I have suggested they were in the induced possession of the oracles? And are the contorted features due to the intrusion of right hemisphere control?

Jaynes advances a neurological hypothesis for possession states, locating their mechanism in the activation of right-hemisphere speech areas and the consequent intrusion of contralateral motor control.

Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, 1976thesis

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his argument is vitiated by the assumption, still common among people who have never seen a ‘medium’ in trance, that ‘possession’ is necessarily a state of hysterical excitement.

Dodds critiques the reduction of possession states to hysterical excitement and insists on distinguishing possession — in which an alien spirit enters — from shamanic ecstasy, in which the practitioner’s own spirit departs.

E.R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, 1951thesis

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There is the explicit metaphor here of the medium as a cavalo or horse. A particular spirit is supposed to lower himself into his cavalo. As this is happening, the head and chest of the cavalo, or medium, jerks back and forth in opposing directions like a bronco being ridden.

Jaynes documents the phenomenology of possession in Afro-Brazilian ritual, emphasizing the somatic markers — counterclockwise movement, postural shift, facial contortion — as evidence of right-hemisphere intrusion.

Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, 1976supporting

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The Pythia became entheos, plena deo: the god entered into her and used her vocal organs

Dodds traces the classical Greek understanding of oracular possession as literal divine indwelling, in which the deity commandeers the medium’s speech apparatus — a pattern structurally continuous with what Jaynes calls bicameral voice.

E.R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, 1951supporting

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Complexes have the ability to erupt suddenly and spontaneously into consciousness and to take possession of the ego’s functions.

Stein articulates the Jungian psychodynamic equivalent of possession: the autonomous complex’s capacity to seize and displace the ego’s executive functions, producing a state phenomenologically analogous to classical possession.

Stein, Murray, Jung’s Map of the Soul: An Introduction, 1998supporting

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begin negatory possession, versus possession, in psychotics, and reading, in schizophrenia

Jaynes’s index entry locates possession states within a broader taxonomy that includes hallucination, hypnosis, schizophrenia, and negatory possession, suggesting a spectrum rather than a discrete category.

Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, 1976aside

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A will transcending his consciousness seized hold of him, which he was quite unable to resist. Naturally enough he feels this overwhelming power as ‘divine.’

Jung describes the phenomenology of being overpowered by a force beyond ordinary ego control — a description that overlaps conceptually with possession states while remaining within his framework of unconscious autonomy.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy, 1955aside

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the ego falls a victim to a very dangerous inflation — that is to say, to a condition in which consciousness is ‘puffed up’ owing to the influence of an unconscious content.

Neumann frames ego-inflation as a form of possession-by-unconscious-content, placing it on the same continuum as more dramatic possession phenomena while grounding it in the ethics of individuation.

Neumann, Erich, Depth Psychology and a New Ethic, 1949aside

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