The Hypnotic Trance, Magico-Religious Medicine, and Primitive Initiation Rites

The purpose of this study is to integrate some of the recent concepts and findings from the experience of the present writer in clinical and experimental hypnosis with the relatively little data available to us regarding trance experience in primitive groups. The main issues involved deal with death, rebirth, and some aspects of sexuality.

It is necessary at the start to comment on the trance and the hypnotic state. Most writers on hypnosis when alluding to primitive and archaic cultures seem to accept almost without question the fact that hypnosis was employed by these early groups and that references to trance states among them may be regarded as synonymous with hypnotic states. Specific references are practically never furnished. Occasionally an historically oriented writer will mention hypnosis in a similar vein. For example, Zilboorg says that the shamans of some Siberian tribes definitely used hypnosis, and that in Cochin China and the eastern part of the Malay Archipelago, priests used “a form of hypnotic treatment” with an assistant as medium. No specific reference source is given. Ackerknecht in his paper on primitive societies enclosed the word mesmerism within quotation marks. In a more recent paper, Rose quotes Elkin to the effect that the witch doctor or “clever man” practices “mass hypnotism.” He says too that a familiar form of hypnosis is described by Elkin in a free translation of a native text. It pertains to a clever man diverting sorcerers from their intentions. It speaks of their feeling but not hearing his words because their “nerves are deadened.” Reference is made to their weakening and becoming “as if asleep” under his gaze.

On the other hand there is a tendency for some references to hypnosis to be obscure and questionable. Rose again, for example, in referring to “the more or less straightforward practice of hypnotism” appearing “to be used regularly by clever men, but not always