Trance

Trance occupies a pivotal position within the depth-psychology corpus, functioning simultaneously as a clinical phenomenon, a religious-ecstatic state, and a structural feature of consciousness itself. The literature refuses a single valence: Jodorowsky reframes trance not as irrationality but as an expansion of rational awareness into subconscious terrain, while Jaynes situates it within a neurological and bicameral-mind hypothesis, linking hypnotic trance and oracular trance as vestigial remnants of pre-subjective consciousness. Eliade treats trance as the defining technology of shamanic practice—the controlled departure of the soul—distinguishing genuine cataleptic trance from its mime or chemical substitutes, and correlating its occurrence with specific ecological and physiological conditions. Dodds brings classical philology to bear, documenting trance symptomatology from ancient Greek oracular practice to modern spiritualist mediumship and finding structural continuity across millennia. Bremmer situates trance within the early Greek concept of the free soul: sleep, trance, and death constitute the occasions on which the soul vacates the body and undertakes autonomous journeys. James treats the trance as a threshold case for mystical experience and its pathological neighbors. Herman, without naming it trance, describes its traumatic analogue in dissociative constriction. Together these voices reveal a contested conceptual field: trance as higher consciousness, as regressive dissolution, as neurological vestige, and as controlled technique of soul-travel.

In the library 13 passages

a trance is not an unconscious or irrational state. It begins with an intensification of attention and ends with the abolition of the spectator/actor reality. The person in a trance does not observe herself; she dissolves into herself.

Jodorowsky argues that trance is a heightened rather than diminished consciousness, distinguished by the collapse of the observer-observed split and the dissolution of rational insularity into expanded awareness.

Jodorowsky, Alejandro, The Way of Tarot: The Spiritual Teacher in the Cards, 2004thesis

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the hypnotic trance is called just that. It is of course usually different from the kind of trance that goes on in other vestiges of the bicameral mind. Individuals do not have true auditory hallucinations, as in the trances of oracles or mediums.

Jaynes distinguishes hypnotic trance from oracular and mediumistic trance, treating both as vestiges of the bicameral mind in which normal consciousness is diminished and an external authority-structure is internalized.

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

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The symptoms of trance are said by Iamblichus to vary widely with different ‘communicators’ and on different occasions; there may be anaesthesia, including insensibility to fire; there may be bodily movement or complete immobility; there may be changes of voice.

Dodds catalogues the classical phenomenology of trance from Iamblichus and Psellus, arguing that ancient and modern trance states are structurally analogous and that the ‘trance personality’ is a stable, practice-formed entity.

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

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The only difference between a shaman and an epileptic is that the latter cannot deliberately enter into trance. In the Arctic the shamanic ecstasy is a spontaneous and organic phenomenon.

Eliade defines the shaman’s trance against involuntary pathological states by the criterion of deliberate control, and distinguishes genuine cataleptic Arctic trance from the induced or mimed semitrance of sub-Arctic regions.

Eliade, Mircea, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951thesis

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shamanic trance is a specific type of ASC, involving mastery or control over the onset and duration of ASC, post-trance recall, and the ability to communicate with the audience during ASC.

Sun and Kim synthesize ethnological and Jungian frameworks to define shamanic trance as a controlled altered state of consciousness distinguished by intentionality, recall, and interactive capacity—linked neurologically to brain-structure transformation.

Sun, Hang; Kim, Eunyoung, Archetype Symbols and Altered Consciousness: A Study of Shamanic Rituals in the Context of Jungian Psychology, 2024thesis

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The Aristeas legend then reveals the journey of the free soul in a trance but not so far any influence from shamanism. The legend of Hermotimos recounted by Apollonius also presents the free soul wandering away during a trance.

Bremmer maps trance onto the Greek concept of the free soul, reading the legends of Aristeas and Hermotimos as evidence that trance is the occasion of autonomous soul-travel rather than mere unconsciousness.

Jan N. Bremmer, The Early Greek Concept of the Soul, 1983supporting

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The occasions of bilocation—sleep, trance, and death—are those when the free soul leaves the body, and it seems very likely that the key to this type of story is to be found in the concept of the free soul.

Bremmer identifies trance as one of three structurally equivalent states—alongside sleep and death—during which the free soul departs, thereby grounding bilocation narratives in a consistent early Greek psychology.

Jan N. Bremmer, The Early Greek Concept of the Soul, 1983supporting

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Through ritual practices, shamans can connect with archetype within the collective unconscious, utilizing trance-inducing techniques for ‘hallucinatory exploration’.

Sun and Kim reframe shamanic trance in Jungian terms as the principal mechanism by which archetype symbols within the collective unconscious become accessible to experiential exploration.

Sun, Hang; Kim, Eunyoung, Archetype Symbols and Altered Consciousness: A Study of Shamanic Rituals in the Context of Jungian Psychology, 2024supporting

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Thereupon The Blessed One entered the first trance; and rising from the first trance, he entered the second trance… and rising from the realm of neither perception nor yet non-perception, he arrived at the cessation of perception and sensation.

Campbell cites the Pali canonical account of the Buddha’s sequential trance states as the paradigmatic narrative of consciousness progressively transcending phenomenal identity, culminating in the cessation of perception itself.

Campbell, Joseph, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, 2015supporting

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Trance is obtained by swinging on the top (rewe) of the sacred ladder. During the whole ceremony much use is made of tobacco.

Eliade documents a specific South American technique for trance induction—postural and rhythmic rather than pharmacological—illustrating the diversity of methods by which shamanic practitioners access ecstatic states.

Eliade, Mircea, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951supporting

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This trance recurred with diminishing frequency until I reached the age of twenty-eight. It served to impress upon my growing nature the phantasmal unreality of all the circumstances which contribute to a merely phenomenal consciousness.

James presents an autobiographical trance account as a specimen case on the boundary of mystical experience and pathology, raising the epistemological question of which state—trance or ordinary waking life—constitutes genuine reality.

James, William, The Varieties of Religious Experience Amazon, 1902supporting

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This altered state of consciousness might be regarded as one of nature’s small mercies, a protection against unbearable pain… Events continue to register in awareness, but it is as though these events have been disconnected from their ordinary meanings.

Herman describes traumatic dissociation as a trance-like altered state—marked by perceptual numbing, time distortion, and depersonalization—functioning as an involuntary protective mechanism against overwhelming affect.

Herman, Judith Lewis, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror, 1992supporting

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Trance states, 29, 30, 55, 63, 97, 125, 126, 155; ‘giving up the ghost,’ 39-40. See also Relaxation

Ferenczi’s Clinical Diary index links trance states to the phenomenon of ‘giving up the ghost’ and to relaxation technique, indicating that trance appears throughout his clinical thinking as a category contiguous with deep regression and near-death surrender.

Ferenczi, Sándor, The Clinical Diary of Sándor Ferenczi, 1932aside

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