Possession occupies a complex and contested terrain within the depth-psychology library, traversing at least four distinct registers: the clinical-psychological, the anthropological-shamanic, the neurological-historical, and the philosophical-ontological. Jung and his heirs treat possession primarily as the ego's involuntary subordination to an autonomous psychic content — a complex, an archetype, or a partial personality — that commandeers consciousness without consent. Stein, summarizing Jung, frames the eruption of complexes as their capacity to 'take possession of the ego's functions,' a formulation that preserves the phenomenological gravity of the concept while grounding it in structural psychology. Eliade brings a comparative-religious dimension, distinguishing classical shamanic ecstasy (soul-flight) from the more diffuse and historically variable phenomenon of spirit-possession, noting that 'embodiment' by spirits represents a later innovation in Central Asian religious complexes. Jaynes pursues a neurological hypothesis, proposing that spontaneous possession activates the speech areas of the right, non-dominant hemisphere — the same mechanism he attributes to the oracular voices of the bicameral mind. Karl Abraham redirects 'possession' toward libido theory and its anal-erotic substrates, revealing how the drive to own, retain, and control objects encodes archaic psychosexual dynamics. Across these positions, the core tension is between possession as pathological intrusion and possession as legitimate — even revelatory — encounter with dimensions of the psyche or cosmos that exceed the ego's ordinary jurisdiction.
In the library
16 passages
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 his neurological hypothesis that possession — both spontaneous and oracle-induced — reflects activation of right-hemisphere speech areas, linking the phenomenon to his broader bicameral mind theory.
Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, 1976thesis
complexes have the ability to erupt suddenly and spontaneously into consciousness and to take possession of the ego's functions.
Stein identifies possession as the defining clinical consequence of autonomous complexes seizing ego-functions, establishing it as a central structural concept in Jungian psychology.
Stein, Murray, Jung's Map of the Soul: An Introduction, 1998thesis
It is the spirit that takes possession of the shaman or shamaness that reveals the cause of the illness and tells them what action is to be taken (usually a sacrifice or offerings).
Eliade documents spirit-possession as a diagnostic and healing mechanism in shamanic practice, distinguishing it from the soul-flight model while acknowledging its functional centrality in South Asian shamanism.
Eliade, Mircea, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951thesis
the increasingly familiar relations with 'spirits' that result in their 'embodiment' or in the shaman's being 'possessed' by 'spirits,' are innovations, most of them recent, to be ascribed to the general change in the religious complex.
Eliade situates spirit-possession historically as a late development within shamanic traditions, shaped by cultural contact and the declining role of a Supreme Being in Central and North Asian religions.
Eliade, Mircea, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951supporting
The idea of possession was one of those. But it was absorbed in a transcendental
Jaynes traces how Christianity absorbed pre-existing pagan possession practices and reframed them within a transcendental theological structure, illustrating the cultural transmission of the concept.
Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, 1976supporting
in the middle stage of his libidinal development the individual regards the person who is the object of his desire as something over which he exercises ownership, and that he consequently treats that person in the same way as he does his earliest piece of private property, i.e. the contents of his body, his feces.
Abraham roots the psychological drive toward possession in anal-erotic libidinal organization, demonstrating how object-ownership is structured by pre-genital dynamics and ambivalence.
Abraham, Karl, Selected Papers on Psychoanalysis, 1927thesis
This position of the libido in respect of its object has left traces in the forms of speech of various languages, as in the German word besitzen, for instance, and in the Latin possidere. A person is thought of as sitting on his property.
Abraham uses etymological evidence — besitzen, possidere — to argue that the concept of possession encodes a bodily, anal-erotic relation to the object, visible in the very structure of language.
Abraham, Karl, Selected Papers on Psychoanalysis, 1927supporting
some neurotics avoid spending money on food, because it is not retained as a permanent possession. It is significant that there is another type of patient who readily incurs expense for food in which he has an over-great interest.
Abraham maps the neurotic compulsion for permanent possession onto anal-retentive character structure, showing how the fantasy of lasting ownership governs otherwise irrational economic behavior.
Abraham, Karl, Selected Papers on Psychoanalysis, 1927supporting
Pride is a denial of God, an invention of the devil, contempt for men... It is the cause of diabolical possession, the source of anger, the gateway of hypocrisy.
Within Orthodox ascetic theology, diabolical possession is presented as the direct consequence of pride — the radical inversion of the properly ordered soul — linking possession to the psycho-spiritual pathology of self-inflation.
Coniaris, Anthony M., Philokalia: The Bible of Orthodox Spirituality, 1998supporting
Charcot's discovery that hysterical symptoms were the consequence of certain ideas that had taken possession of the patient's 'brain.'
Jung traces the clinical lineage of possession-language to Charcot's neurology, where fixed ideas seizing the patient's brain provided the proto-psychological model that Freud and Janet would develop into the theory of the complex.
Jung, Carl Gustav, The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature, 1966supporting
begin negatory possession, versus possession, in psychotics, and reading, in schizophrenia
Jaynes's index entries signal his systematic distinction between hallucination and possession as two distinct but related phenomena, both mapped onto the neurological and historical terrain of the bicameral breakdown.
Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, 1976supporting
As for Possession, if the term is used comprehensively, why are not all its modes to be brought under one category? Possession, thus, would include the quantum as possessing magnitude, the quale as possessing colour.
Plotinus subjects the ontological category of Possession to rigorous philosophical critique, questioning whether it constitutes a coherent single category or dissolves into incommensurable modes of having and belonging.
the crucial word here is participate, not possess, for only material realities can be possessed.
Kurtz draws a sharp boundary between spiritual participation and material possession, arguing that spirituality by its nature exceeds the logic of ownership and control.
Kurtz, Ernest, Ketcham, Katherine, The Spirituality of Imperfection Storytelling and the, 1994supporting
Because it is beyond control, it is also beyond possession: We can't own it, lock it up, divide it among ourselves, or take it away from others.
Kurtz frames the impossibility of possessing spirituality as constitutive of its nature, positioning the attempt at possession as the characteristic error of the addictive or controlling personality.
Kurtz, Ernest, Ketcham, Katherine, The Spirituality of Imperfection Storytelling and the, 1994supporting
This is possession in the sense of those who as yet have not, needing to seek other people.
The Taoist I Ching reframes possession as relational abundance achieved through receptive alliance with strength, rather than as individual accumulation or control.
Thomas Cleary, Liu Yiming, The Taoist I Ching, 1986aside
a surrender of the demand for certitude; it can be pictured as a letting fall of fetters, a shucking of bonds of fear and possessiveness now experienced as no longer binding.
Kurtz treats possessiveness as a psychological fetter that the spiritual act of 'letting go' dissolves, framing recovery as the release from compulsive ownership-anxiety.
Kurtz, Ernest, Ketcham, Katherine, The Spirituality of Imperfection Storytelling and the, 1994aside