Description
Book SynopsisThe cognitive science of religion has made a persuasive case for the view that a number of different psychological systems are involved in the construction and transmission of notions of extranatural agency such as deities and spirits. Until now this work has been based largely on findings in experimental psychology, illustrated mainly with hypothetical or anecdotal examples. In The Mind Possessed, Emma Cohen considers how the psychological systems undergirding spirit concepts are activated in real-world settingsSpirit possession practices have long had a magnetizing effect on academic researchers but there have been few, if any, satisfactory theoretical treatments of spirit possession that attempt to account for its emergence and spread globally. Drawing on ethnographic data collected during eighteen months of fieldwork in Belem, nothern Brazil, Cohen combines fine-grained descriptions and analyses of mediumistic activities in an Afro-Brazilian cult house with a scientifically-grounded explanation for the emergence and spread of ideas about spirits, possession and healing.Cohen shows why spirit possession and its associated activities are inherently attention-grabbing. Making a radical departure from traditional anthropological, medicalist and sociological analyses, she argues that a cognitive approach offers more precise and testable hypotheses concerning the spread and appeal of spirit concepts and possession activities.
Trade ReviewThe Mind Possessed should be required reading for scholars of religion and for anthropologists interested in spirit beliefs and their role in social organization. * Ilkka Pyysiäinen Temenos Nordic Journal of Comparative Religion *
Table of Contents1: Introducing Posession 2: Historical and Ethnographic Setting 3: The Research Community 4: Describing, Interpreting, and Explaining Spirit Possession 5: Medicalist, Physiological and Sociological Explanations 6: Spirits as Concepts 7: Observing Possession 8: The Social Relevance of Spirits 9: Explaining Distributions of Spirit Concepts and Spirit Possession
