In South India's Tuḷunādu region, the daivārādhane worship of local deities blends psychology, religious rites, and performing arts. Sacred spirits possess human mediums, enabling visible communication, miracles, and influence over political and economic affairs. This tradition negotiates relationships between deities and people across castes, ethnicities, and genders, and it adapts by incorporating new figures and contemporary issues. However, the possession performances are choreographed to limit spontaneity, restricting unplanned communication with the gods.
A comparativist psychoanalytic approach to studying religion reveals how unconscious subjective experience is shaped by culture. This framework helps recognize culturally specific forms of human suffering and the ambivalent nature of desire. Analyzing ethnographic case studies of spirit possession, the work examines how possession opens and maintains connections with the dead and the living within individuals' minds. Spirit possession is discussed as a "co-habitation" of subjectivities, drawing on Michael Lambek's concept and Theodor Adorno's idea of subjectivity. The psychoanalytic reading of Vincent Crapanzano's ethnography "Tuhami" focuses on the creative and destructive dimensions of subjectivity and desire as individuals symbolize their internal worlds and negotiate boundaries between human and spiritual realms, without being diagnostic or pathologizing.
Spirit possession is best understood not as a universal phenomenon but as a culturally specific practice shaped by social context. Based on fieldwork in Brazilian religious communities, particularly candomblé, the chapter presents an interview with a member about his difficult path into the religion and his experience with the divine. Comments from candomblé members reflecting on their personal experiences of possession are used to argue for a deictic approach that emphasizes the importance of local social and cultural contexts over universalist interpretations.