"POSSESSION" IN A REVIVALISTIC NEGRO CHURCH.

This article focuses on "possession" or trance in a revivalistic Negro church. As maintained by the authors, trance has an almost world wide distribution, provided one includes the ecstatic states of the shaman and priest, possession induced by the physiological action of various drugs and multiple possessions at religious and semi-religious ceremonies. Excluding the chemically induced trance, the other forms may be distinguished on two possible groups, that of, a suggested but not proved, physiological and psychological difference between the two states and the valid sociological distinction that in one case people occupying particular and limited statuses within a wider group experience trance, and in the other case, the experience is open to all members of a defined group, irrespective of the status. The trance state can further be defined by behavior patterns involving mild body convulsions, prolonged dancing, usually to music that appears to be a semi-stupor state and falling to the floor either with body contractions or remaining still as in a faint. Participants describe the later behavior as a prolonged or momentary loss of voluntary control over body movements.