More Things in Heaven and Earth: Spirit Possession, Mental Disorder, and Intentionality.

Spirit possession, a global phenomenon where a non-corporeal agent interacts with a human host, can cause maladies or displace a person's agency and identity. Drawing on fieldwork in Egypt, this paper links spirit possession to concepts of personhood and intentionality, extending Daniel Dennett's intentional stance. It proposes the 'spirit stance': an intentional strategy that explains behavior by attributing beliefs and desires to a spirit agent, but only invoked when a person's mental states fail normative distinctions. Applied to behaviors often labeled as mental disorder, this stance preserves intentionality where otherwise a malfunctioning physical mechanism would be blamed. Long before modern psychoanalysis restored meaning to madness, spirit possession socially preserved the intentionality of deviant behavior.

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Abstract

Spirit possession is a common phenomenon around the world in which a non-corporeal agent is involved with a human host. This manifests in a range of maladies or in displacement of the host's agency and identity. Prompted by engagement with the phenomenon in Egypt, this paper draws connections between spirit possession and the concepts of personhood and intentionality. It employs these concepts to articulate spirit possession, while also developing the intentional stance as formulated by Daniel Dennett. It argues for an understanding of spirit possession as the spirit stance: an intentional strategy that aims at predicting and explaining behaviour by ascribing to an agent (the spirit) beliefs and desires but is only deployed once the mental states and activity of the subject (the person) fail specific normative distinctions. Applied to behaviours that are generally taken to signal mental disorder, the spirit stance preserves a peculiar form of intentionality where behaviour would otherwise be explained as a consequence of a malfunctioning physical mechanism. Centuries before the modern disciplines of psychoanalysis and phenomenological-psychopathology endeavoured to restore meaning to 'madness,' the social institution of spirit possession had been preserving the intentionality of socially deviant behaviour.