Ede Frecska The Physiology of Ritual Trance

Social Bonding in the Modulation of the Physiology of Ritual Trance Author(s): Ede Frecska and Zsuzsanna Kulcsar Source:
Ethos, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Mar., 1989), pp. 70-87 Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Anthropological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/640305 . Accessed: 18/03/2014 12:16
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Social
Bonding in
the
of
the
Modulationof
Physiology
Trance
KULCSAR
Ritual
EDE FRECSKA and ZSUZSANNA
"FAITH ... QUENCHED THE VIOLENCE OF FIRE." (HEBREWS 11:34)
All traditional shamanic practices pursue the same end: to destroy "profane" sensibility.1 The monotonous chants, the endlessly repeated refrains, the fatigue, the fasting, the dancing, the narcotics, and so forth, create a sensory condition that is wide open to the "supernatural." This is not only, of course, a matter of physiological techniques: traditional ideology directs and imparts values to all these effortsintended to break the frame of profane sensibility. What is above all indispensable is the absolute belief of the subject in the spiritual universe that he desires to enter; nothing can be attained without the "faith." (Eliade 1976:85) Over the past decade it has become obvious on several levels that social attachments are important to normal human development
EDE FRECSKA is Research Psychiatrist and Clinical Pharmacologist at the National Institute of Nervous and Mental Diseases, Budapest, Hungary. ZSUZSANNA KULCSAR is Professor of Psychology at the Lorand Eotvos University, Budapest, Hungary.
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and psychobiological functioning. Disruption of attachment may lead to psychological disturbances, physiological disorganization, and ill health, while social bonding appears to be related to improved health and well-being. With a range of attachments, that is, early parent-infant relationships, subsequent peer interactions and later intimate adult-adult bonds, Homo sapiens is clearly a social animal and develops and functions optimally in an environment where such links are available. This is neither a new, nor a culturespecific phenomenon, since complex social attachments and relationships are common to all cultures and eras, and appear to have constituted a major factor in our species' evolutionary history (Reite and Capitanio 1985). In this essay we examine from a psychobiological perspective some of the characteristics of healing rituals, which are considered as neurobiologically mediated, complex forms of attachment, and which result in a deep psychobiological synchrony between adults. In the course of recent studies in psychological anthropology, a consensus has emerged that the vast majority of ritual ceremonies are primarilyconcerned with healing in a general sense because they exert influence on well-being, heighten identity and enhance community cohesion. In spite of the cultural diversity of therapeutic institutions and practices, the fundamental healing principles show a good deal of cross-cultural uniformity. The basic factors are inherent in the healer-patient relationship and in cultural belief systems. These include:
the world view shared by patients and healers; the healers' culturally ascribed extraordinarypowers; their labeling of the illness, designation of its cause, and selection of therapeutic measures based upon these; the patients' expectancy and hope; and, of course, the overriding importance of suggestion and the placebo effect. [Prince 1982a:299]
Faith in protective others, in the healers themselves and/or in transcendental beings, is essential in healing practices. In this way the healer is able to manipulate the reintegration of patients into their social group, which also plays a significant role in the healing process. Ritual therapeutic experience relies on the patients' own intrinsic healing forces by various altered states of consciousness (dreams, micro-psychoses, religious experiences, spirit possession and trance states, for example), which healers have learned to manipulate and control. However,
One of the foremost dilemmas in ethnomedicine is understanding how it is that the manipulations of the shaman or healer actually influence the physiological state of the patient. [Moerman 1983:156]
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RITUAL TRANCE AND ENDOGENOUS OPIOIDS The conference entitled "Shamans and Endorphins" held in Montreal in 1980 proposed an internal defensive power to endorphins (the body's endogenous opioids) and suggested that the trance state might be the result of the mobilization of these substances. To some extent healing practices are indeed aimed at triggering the release of endogenous opioid peptides. Austere conditions such as strict fasting and thirsting, forced strenuous exercise, seclusion, hyperstress with feelings of terror, inducing of pain, temperature and kinetic stimulations, all known to produce altered states of consciousness, are used as treatment modalities in the rituals. These stressors are the best agents to elicit endogenous opioid release resulting in the well-known opiate effects such as analgesia, anxiety reduction, euphoria and amnesia (Jilek 1982a). Miraculous cures of even strictly somatic complaints might also be interpreted on this basis if we take into consideration the finding that some of the endogenous opioid peptides increase immunocompetence (Morley and Kay 1986; Teschemacher and Schweigerer 1985). This neurobiological interpretationof anthropologic observations is supported by other findings concerning the physiological role of endogenous opioid peptides in privation, in conservation or expenditure of bodily resources and energy (Margules 1979), and in confrontation with stress and pain especially in situations of helplessness (Maier 1986). Maier emphasized "uncontrollability"2 as a main factor in the opioid-inducing effect of pain. He has found that the opioid form of pain-induced analgesia occurred only if the shocks were inescapable, and suggested that the opioid system is more activated when the organism learns that it has no control over aversive events to which it is being exposed. When an aversive situation is behaviorally uncontrollable, pain and anxiety, as fightflight signals, lose their adaptive value. Rather, it is adaptive to act palliatively to repress the consequences of the stressful situation and conserve energy resources until a time when active behavioral coping becomes possible. Margules (1979) argued that the activation of endogenous opioid systems tends to function to conserve energy in a variety of emergency situations, and Maier (1986) added that decreased pain sensitivity would make it easier to withdraw and conserve energy in a painful situation. Therefore passive endurance of pain or other stress is one of the most effective strategies for mobi-
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lizing endogenous opioids. The paradigm of "learned helplessness" as an opioid-dependent state was the first attempt to connect endogenous opioid functions to complex psychological phenomena. Nevertheless, the question arises: How are the healer's role and the patients' group participation involved in these neurobiological processes? Why can nothing be attained without the "faith," as it is emphasized by Eliade (1976)? RITUAL TRANCE AND ATTACHMENT Henry (1982) pointed out that ritual trance almost invariably occurs in a social context and that expectation is one of the main characteristics associated with trance induction. He characterized those most susceptible to enter trance as persons whose social position predisposes them to the experience: leaders of the community or priests who are expected to provide an example or guidance. Others are individuals participating for personal reasons, including those fulfilling an obligation to a deity or those disadvantaged by ill health, poverty or fear of evil spirits. We would add that healing power is related to the fulfillment of social expectations: it is a function of the participants' identification with the community. In other words, social attachments facilitate trance. ATTACHMENT AND ENDOGENOUS OPIOIDS
The clearest evidence for involvement of endogenous opioids in social behavior derives from the pattern of emotional responses most infants exhibit when they are separated from their mothers. Infants show a predictable set of behaviors during separation. The initial anxious phase, that of "protest," begins almost immediately with distress vocalization, searching activity and agitation. During the succeeding phase of "despair" the infant's behavior suggests increasing helplessness, characterized by retarded activity, reduced and postural collapse appetite, insomnia, hypo-responsiveness, (Bowlby 1969). Individual variability and species differences do occur, but the broad outline and even some of the details are similar for different species. The need for affiliation seems to be a primary drive, its expression appears to require no previous learning, and it is likely that these reactions are direct manifestations of innate neural circuits. Presently there is a growing body of knowledge con-
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cerning brain mechanisms that sustain the social motive. The approach of Panksepp, Herman, Vilberg, Bishop, and Deeskinazi (1980) to this problem emphasizes the analogy between social separation symptoms and the biphasic syndrome subsequent to withdrawal from narcotics (lacrimation, irritability, agitation, and vegetative disturbances as an initial response, followed by lethargy, insomnia, and anorexia). According to these authors, withdrawal distress, whether opiate or social, manifests itself physiologically through common response systems. The degree of symptom overlap between the two processes suggests that both may arise from a common neurobiological substrate. Considering the similar dynamic of opiate addiction and affiliative social interaction3 (both are characterized by the development of powerful dependencies and intensified by punishment), brain opioid systems should be reasonable candidates for providing neurochemical mediation of social bonding. For the evolutionary minded it comes as no surprise that a higher order behavioral process such as social attachment (whose major elective advantage is to enhance survival) should have arisen from elementary brain structures (which subserve a compatible function), in this case from the opioid system (which mediates defense mechanisms). These lines of inference suggested the notion that endogenous opioids might be involved in primary social affiliation. The idea has been evaluated experimentally in infant animals: opioid agonists decreased while opioid antagonists selectively increased the signs of distress caused by social deprivation as well as other indices of the social motive (Fabre-Nys, Meller, and Keverne 1982; NewbySchmidt and Norton 1981; Panksepp, Herman, Conner, Bishop, and Scott 1978). An abundance of furthercorroborativeevidence for opioid control of social processes has been presented by other laboratories. Morphine effects on social proximity (Plonsky and Freeman 1982) and play (Beatty and Costello 1982) have been reported, and naloxone has been found to disrupt schooling behavior in fish (Kavaliers 1981). Social isolation has been shown to modify brain opiate receptor densities (Bonnet, Miller, and Simon 1976) and to increase voluntary opiate consumption (Alexander, Coambs, and Hadaway 1978). Utilizing substractive auto-radiography, Panksepp and Bishop (1981) have demonstrated that brain opioid systems are quite active in the presence of social stimuli, namely during the normal course of play.
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While little data is still available regarding the maternal side of attachment, Panksepp, Siviy, and Normansell (1985) suggest that the elevated plasma opioid activity observed during pregnancy (Csontos, Rust, Hollt, Mahr, Kromer, and Teschemacher 1979) and parturition (Facchinetti, Centini, Parrini, Petraglia, D'Antona, Cosmi, and Genazzani 1982) might facilitate the subsequent bonding process. It seems that the hormonal levels at the time of parturition are critical in determining the attachment of mother to infant. Once this attachment has occurred, it persists for an important part of the life cycle. To a less dramatic degree the same occurs in humans. Of course, we must be very careful in attempting to generalize across vast phylogenetic distance; nonetheless, we know that evolution tends to be conservative, using what is available and adding new features in new species, but retaining much of the old. Klaus and Kennell ( 1981) have shown that if a mother must defer the fondling of her newborn baby for hours or even days, it is harder for her to become attached and devoted to it. Such is not the case if she is allowed to care for it within minutes of birth. The precise circumstances, especially the elevated endogenous opioid levels at the moment of delivery, are important factors in her later behavior. On the one hand, opioids affect social emotions and, on the other, loss of social bonds has a biphasic effect on opiate-dependent analgesia. Brief periods of isolation increase pain sensitivity in infants, while concurrently diminishing the analgesic efficacy of morphine. These indicate a deficit in socially generated endogenous opioids. Conversely, when infants are isolated for prolonged periods, stressrelated opioid peptides are induced and responsivity to morphine increases (Alleva, Caprioli, and Laviola 1986). In summary, opioids alleviate separation distress and separation modulates opioid analgesia. This reciprocal relationship suggests the following ideas. Modulation of distress vocalization by endogenous opioids is a mechanism that could be selected for phylogenetically. The infant that does not respond vigorously at the time of initial separation reduces the probability of maternal detection. The converse strategy is also dangerous; whether in isolation or in the nest, the infant that does not temper its level of vocalization increases the likelihood of falling victim to a predator (Kehoe and Blass 1986). Endogenous opioids modulate the range: on the one side, as stress hormones they exert a calming effect in circumstances of prolonged separation and, on the other, as reward transmitters
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they help to elaborate the positive affective state of social comfort in maternal reunion (Panksepp et al. 1985). These effects are most likely mediated by different neurobiological processes at different neuroanatomical sites. Although many brain areas surely contribute dimensions to social behavior, it is tempting to suppose that the affect of social comfort and the other pleasurable qualities of social interactions are mediated by the enkephalins of the ventral tegmental area, which is known to participate in self-stimulation reward and where the positive incentive effects of opiate drugs are most pronounced. Alternatively, the negative symptoms, that is, the signs of discomfort, are mediated by those structures that are involved in physical dependence to drugs (for example, periventricular gray matter) where withdrawal symptoms can be precipitated in addicts (Wei, Loh, and Way 1973). Distress vocalization control circuitry is concentrated in this part of the brain (Herman and Panksepp 1981). The powerful stress opioid, beta-endorphin, may quell separation distress at this area. Of course, strict analytical separation of such functions could be misleading because, in the functioning organism various limbs of the opioid system are activated at the same time. From studies on complex brain organization of social behavior so far it appears that the integrity of three cortical areas-the orbital frontal cortex, the temporal pole, and the amygdala-is crucial to the maintenance of affiliativeinteractions and social bonds. It is striking that these areas have the highest density of opioid receptors (mu type) and are precisely the same as those involved in processing multimodal sensory information. These areas also play a role in selective attention, and even perform top-hierarchical physiological regulation (Steklis and Kling 1985). This latter function strongly indicates that attachment may influence core biological functions. ATTACHMENTS AS REGULATORS Hofer and his colleagues have tried to identify the specific processes within the mother-infant relationship that were withdrawn by separation. They have reported a comprehensive and systematic series of findings on the multiple roles of the mother in regulating the physiology of the infant (Hofer 1981). From their work the infant's homeostatic system appears to be relatively "open" and biological regulation is delegated in part to the mother. Body temperature, blood circulation, oxygen consumption, sleep patterns, activ-
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ity levels, growth, and immunocompetence all depend on maternal factors such as milk and body warmth as well as tactile, vestibular and olfactory stimulation. The separation symptoms seem to result from withdrawal of these hidden regulators. For instance, metabolically significant biochemical effects of maternal deprivation in infant rats can be ameliorated with a highly specific form of brisk stroking that may mimic components of normal maternal behavior (Butler, Suskind, and Schanberg 1978; Evoniuk, Kuhn, and Schanberg 1979). However, separation reactions are not limited to infants. They occur at all ages. In adult bereavement, for example, there are changes in the cardiovascular, endocrine, and immunologic systems, as well as disturbances in body temperature and sleep, muscular strength and body weight. According to Hofer, the features of maternal stimulation that structure the mammalian infants' organization become increasingly complex during development (and are thus more difficult to identify). Separation effects that are attributable to the loss of simple sensorimotor stimuli for young organisms are mediated by increasingly complex configurations of stimuli in older ones in which such mediation appears increasingly social. Hofer concluded that independent self-regulation may be limited even in adulthood, and homeostatic regulatory mechanisms remain under environmental control at least to a certain degree. Social interactions with "significant others" may continue to play an important role in the everyday regulation of biological systems throughout life and, at least in primates, they help to set internal clocks. Biological rhythms, in others words, are under social entrainment (Hofer 1984). It has been postulated that the properties of biological pacemakerswould be affected by opioid peptides and this interaction has been shown in rodents (Meck and Church 1984). The notion has emerged that indeed one, if not the major, component of attachment is the promotion of psychobiological synchrony between attached organisms, and such synchrony between participants' rhythms is essential for the integrated functioning of these individuals (Reite and Capitanio 1985). Also, although this synchrony is evident most clearly in mother-infant interactions, it seems to persist through life (Field 1985). Human relationships are conducted originally at the sensorimotor level, but in the course of ontogeny the role of internal representations becomes prominent, and symbolic signs or mental images
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may take the place of actual persons. Thus, it seems possible that the regulating influence of important social relationships upon biological systems may be transduced not only by the sensorimotor and temporal patterning of the actual transactions, but also through the internal experiences of the relationship as it is carried out in the mind of the subject involved (Hofer 1984). "Identification" is a suitable term for labeling the complex process of internalization of social relationships that can maintain the psychobiological synchrony mentioned above. EXPERIENCE OF IDENTITY AND ENDOGENOUS OPIOIDS The conclusion that can be drawn from Panksepp's (Panksepp et al. 1980) concept and findings is that social (first of all maternal) induction of endogenous opioid activity serves as the basis for the experience of trust, whose roots lie in the anticipation of social reward. This early experience receives representation at the cognitive level, and plays a fundamental role in the subject's worldview. Early (and thus more directly mediated) positive social experiences establish identity and, in an appropriate cultural milieu, determine religious beliefs such as faith in an internalized, omnipotent, protective other. The social connotation of endogenous opioid release may arise when these substances are mobilized in another way, for example, in hyperstress, in confrontationwith stress and pain, in situations of helplessness or in the multimodal instance of trance. The same happens in the case of the "omnipotence maneuver" (Prince 1982b) in near-death experiences when the threatened and helpless individual suddenly experiences a feeling of passive resignation to death accompanied by tranquillity, and the dissolution of loneliness with a sense of the presence of a protective other. The subject links these experiences with the idea of supernatural intervention and designates it as the "grace of God," or attributes it to spiritual powers, depending on cultural belief systems. On the other hand, endogenous opioid mobilization may more easily occur in response to a real person who is regarded as protective and omnipotent, since this situation involves a regressive, symbiotic form of attachment and closely resembles the early ontogenetic situation. We postulate this type of social attachment, which applies in particular to ritual experiences.
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In summary, we propose that the social connotations and activation of the endogenous opioid system become cross-conditioned during early ontogenesis, so that later in life whenever the opioid system is activated by stress and pain, social connotations could arise together with the paradoxically occurring euphoric states and, vice versa, opioid-mediated euphoric and trans-like states are enhanced by social affiliation (Kulcsar, Frecska, and Varga 1987). The need for and the possibility of identification are interwoven at a psychobiological level: regression promotes endogenous opioid mediation while endogenous opioids mediate affiliation, and help depersonalization by loss of ego boundaries. IMPLICATIONS FOR RITUAL EXPERIENCE On the basis of this long survey it seems plausible that the experience of social identity (that is, the experience of being affiliated) has a mobilizing effect on endogenous opioids and, conversely, ritually induced endogenous opioid activity supports social identity. Thus we interpret Henry's remarks concerning trance susceptibility as follows. Leaders or priests, whom onlookers and participants expect to set an example and provide guidance, may have an intensive sense of duty, thus a better ability to experience group identity. Those participating for personal reasons, especially those fulfillingan obligation, commit themselves to the deity who is a symbol of their group's social conscience and this kind of identity experience helps them to enter an altered state of consciousness. In the case of disadvantaged, helpless individuals who sufferfrom diseases, privation and fears of losses, their "uncontrollable" distress generates endogenous opioids (videsupra)as an internal mechanism that enhances identification and trance. Let us consider now a condition described by Jilek (1982b) as "spirit illness" among the American West Coast Indians. This condition is in many respects analogous to the initiatory sickness of Siberian shamans. In this illness-like state subjects sufferanorexia, insomnia, weakness and emaciation, and experience hallucinatory or illusional perceptions of a psychogenic type. According to Hofer:
Evidence from the studies on sensory deprivation and chronobiology indicate that we are surprisingly dependent on the level and patterns of stimulation in our everyday lives for maintaining and regulating the complex organization of our mental and physical functioning. We are not directly aware of the role that this stimulation plays until it becomes insufficient or its patterning is radically changed. Then, we
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notice that our concentration and attention are impaired, our perception is somewhat distorted, we do not sleep well, our appetite is reduced . . . and we are periodically overcome with fatigue. In its extreme form, we feel that we are falling apart mentally. We see and hear things that are not there. [1984:191]
The similarities between these symptoms and the symptoms of "spirit illness" are striking. One could interpret this as the subjects' sufferingfrom the withdrawal of patterns of community ritual stimulations that had been exerting a hidden regulating action on the participants' mind and on their physiological function, and what is more, subjects had become addicted to the opioid effect of trance state. It was the essence of traditional "spirit illness" that suffering became actually a reward and was anticipated by those who had previously sought spirit power individually. This ailment was no more than a strictly seasonal, highly stereotyped, goal-directed, ritualized pathomorphic (illness-like but not pathologic) prelude to the public experience of this power in the winter dance ceremonial (Jilek 1982b). From our psychobiological perspective, their symptoms seem to manifest an avid desire for socially induced endogenous opioids and are due to the lack of transactions and experiences gained in regular ceremonials. Differential seasonal patterns of opiate responsivity, with a graver abstinence syndrome in the fall, are not unknown phenomena in pharmacology (Beckman, Llados-Eckman, Stanton, and Adler 1982). Moreover, circannual variations in the concentrations of endorphins and opioid receptors have also been observed with highest levels occurring in the winter (DeCeballos and DeFelipe 1984; Von Knorring, Almay, Johansson, Terenius, and Wahlstrom 1982). These phenomena presumably serve as the basis of greater reward mentioned above. There is a circadian variation of opioid responsiveness as well, with the greatest sensitivity late in the evening (Frecska, Arato, Banki, Bagdy, Perenyi, and Fekete 1987), a typical time for many shamanic activities (Winkelman 1986). "Anomic" depression is a chronic dysphoric state with a similar symptom pattern, accompanied with a sense of rootlessness and cultural alienation common to adolescent West Coast Indians as a consequence of deculturation and perplexed identity. This syndrome essentially corresponds to "spirit illness" and approximates Western "neurotic/reactive" depression, and is a foundation for understanding the high rates of alcoholism, suicide, violent death, and the adjustmentproblems among native youth. These disorders are often
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refractory to Western therapeutic approaches but responsive to healing ceremonials through personality depatterning and reorientation in altered states of consciousness. The task of initiation is no longer only to provide entrance into a ceremonial but to overcome, by obtainding a new identity, the sickness and faulty behavior contracted by exposure to an alien culture (Jilek 1982b). The ancestral names are revived, the traditional "others" are internalized and conditioned to the endogenous opioid flush of trance which has potent rewarding effect. In this way ancestors become "significant" and plant cultural values. Moerman (1979) regarded ritual healing as a version of a therapeutic procedure that he called "symbolic healing." In an outline for the universal structure of symbolic healing Dow proposed its stages as follows:
(1) a generalized cultural mythic world is established by universalizing the experiences of healers, initiates, or prophets, or by otherwise generalizing emotional experiences. (2) A healer persuades the patient that it is possible to define the patient's relationship to a particularized part of the mythic world, and makes the definition, (3) The healer attaches the patient's emotions to transactional symbols in this particularized mythic world. (4) The healer manipulates the transactional symbols to assist the transaction of emotion. [1986:66]
Dow considers emotions as generalized media that link the psychic sphere and the somatic system. By means of emotions transactional symbols may generate a curing effect. He definitely states that the social environment acts by symbolic transfer not solely on the mind but on the biological system of patients. The opioid way of social bonding and its conditioning to cognitive structures may explain his statements. For example, due to the strong reinforcing effect of opioid release in the trance of initiation ceremony, the culturally determined "transactional symbols" receive their emotional value, the "mythic world" is established and the cross-conditioning between cognitive and endocrine spheres takes place. In this manner cultural norms are effectively transferred. In addition to the role of modulation, social relationships can become regulators of trance states in community healing ceremonials with "boiling energy" among the Kalahari !Kung (Katz 1982a). The transformation of consciousness is also at the core of their experience of healing. This transformation, which comes only after a painful transition accompanied by sweating into an altered state of consciousness, brings on a sense of relatedness between a spiritual healing power (that is, culturally connoted endogenous recuperative
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mechanisms), the healers and their community. Critical to this transition is the control and regulation of the healing power, a process whose physiological and behavioral components merge, leading to a deep psychobiological synchrony. The healers serve as a medium to channel healing from the community back to the community. Their spiritual strengths are drawn from the public, and the community in turn benefits from the battles healers carry on with the malevolent ghosts of ancestors and with their own inner fears. The net effect is a body of protective "spiritual energy" endlessly recycled from healer to community and back in a process that extends deep into the past and represents a whirling, reciprocal kind of identification. Healers experience trance more intensely and share it with the members of the community. The singing, clapping and rubbing of the participants helps to regulate the depth of the trance, keeping dynamic balance between its risks and benefits (Katz 1982b). For example, the experience of pain in their trance is a homeostatic process controlled by others but we assume that the same holds true for body temperature as well. Katz writes:
The dance fire is one of the specific elements used in the regulation of n/um.4There is n/umin the fire, and the !Kung work with the fire to help heat up the dancer's nl um.The singers will rub coals in their hands before they work on a dancer who has fallen in !kia.5Dancers will go to the fire, walk in it, put their heads in it, pick up coals and rub them over their hands and body. But it is not just the fire's heat that helps dancer's n/um boil. Healers use the same word (da'a) to describe both the central dance fire and the fire within their own bodies that heats up the n/um.The fire also helps the dancer toward !kia because it adds its own n/umto the dancer's n/um.This makes the fire an especially strong stimulant for !kia. [1982b:358]
Relevant to this ethnographical description is the neurobiological finding that ambient temperature and the body's water content do have a strong influence on endorphin release during strenuous exercise, with hot and dehydrated conditions producing the greatest increase, followed by hot and euhydrated conditions (Kelso, Herbert, Gwazdauskas, Goss, and Hess, 1984). It is striking how sweat is the critical element of their healing. As sweat first pours out of the healer, it is the visible expression of "boiling energy," a sign of trance. The !Kung believe that human sweat generated during the medicine dance trances has a powerful therapeutic effect. Trancers rub the sweat from their skin onto the body of the person being healed and upon others to protect them from illness.
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In the following section we shall attempt to provide an explanation for this therapeutic tradition. RITUAL EXPERIENCE AND EXOGENOUS OPIOIDS It seems that below both the symbolic level of identification and the psychophysiological level of sensorimotor stimulation there lies a core biological level of social contacts. Work currently going on has made it clear that the skin as the largest organ of the body directly exposed to the environment is not merely a package. Rather, it is a blotter, a transmittal device, where a great deal of interaction between the inside and outside of the body goes on, even on the humoral level. In addition to its digestive function, the same goes for the gut as well. Identical bioactive peptides secreted by the cells of the so-called "diffuse neuroendocrine system" (Margules 1981) in the brain, gut and skin suggest this trans-
mittal role. It is thus tempting to speculate that concomitantly with the initiation of trance (when n/umbegins to boil and to induce !kia) sweat
glands secrete extra opioid peptides or substances enhancing the opioid effect, acting endogenously in trancers, modifying thermoregulation, supporting energy expenditure, stimulating alteration of consciousness, and being able to penetrate the skin, thus acting exogenously as well. It can be assumed that in other participants of the healing ritual they prevent hyperthermia and affect immuno-
competence. Opioids released during proximity to companions are

known to decrease hyperthermia (Frohm and Wallnau 1983) but to date such a paracrine feedback role of the sweat glands in thermoregulation has not yet been established.
However, the idea of exogenously acting opioid peptides is not

uncommon in neuropharmacology. There is new evidence that such substances as opioid casomorphin, morphiceptin and gliadin from dietary sources escape digestion and are capable of getting through gastrointestinal bounds, entering the circulation and passing the blood-brain barrier, thus exerting an opioid effect both peripherally and centrally (Brantl, Teschemacher, Blasig, Henschen, and Lottspeich 1981). These so-called exorphins, or exogenous
opioid peptides, may have functional relevance for the homeostasis and behavior of infants (Panksepp, Normansell, Siviy, Rossi, and Zolovick 1984).
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The phenomenon of placentophagia indicates that such an effect is not limited solely to infants but exists in adults, at least at the subhuman level. Ingestion of the placenta dramatically enhances analgesia that results from increased opioid level in labor. It is likely that the placenta contains or stimulates the release of a substance that enhances the effect of opioids already in the system (Kristal, Thompson, and Grishkat 1985). The advantage of an opioid facilitator is clear for the parturient and for attachment bonds. We are of course aware that several points of this paper are clearly speculative in nature. However, we think it is necessary to try to see what the latest results of psychobiology can tell us that might get us to look at human questions in a new way. Ethnological and psychobiological data have to be linked up in order to arrive at a holistic theory of human behavior. SUMMARY In this essay we examined some phenomena of community rituals, especially healing ceremonials, which are considered as neurobiologically mediated, complex forms of attachment. Recent studies in medical anthropology have pointed out that the ritual therapeutic experience relies on the patients' own healing processes by means of various altered states of consciousness that healers are able to control. Ritual trance invariably occurs in social context and the healer's personality and the expectation of community are profoundly involved in the induction of altered states of consciousness. Trance state is regarded as a result of the mobilization of endogenous opioid peptides, as an outcome of the release of an organism's defensive substances in face of the stress of ceremonial. On the other hand, there is a growing body of evidence that opioid mechanisms are involved in social behavior as well, especially in symbiotic bonds. It is suggested that this is the neurobiological reason that attachment facilitates trance induction. The homeostatic role of social relationships as physiological regulators is also discussed. NOTES
We want to thank Jolan Haraszti, Mihaly Hoppal, Zoltan Kovecses, Acknowledgments. Maria Kristof, and Klara Majoros for their comments and assistance in preparing this manuscript. 'This paper was presented in part at the 2nd World Congress of Neuroscience, August 1621, 1987, Budapest, Hungary.
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in earlychildhood 2It deserves is a typicalcondition that "uncontrollability" mentioning

and in near-death situations. 3Affiliative social interactions are those behaviors that promote the development of and
thatserveto maintain individuals and Kling 1985).In thispasocialbondsbetween (Steklis underthe conceptof "attachment." perwe discussthesekindsof socialinteractions
4healing power 5trance
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Ede Frecska The Physiology of Ritual Trance

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Social Bonding in the Modulation of the Physiology of Ritual Trance Author(s): Ede Frecska and Zsuzsanna Kulcsar Source:

EDE FRECSKA and ZSUZSANNA

"FAITH ... QUENCHED THE VIOLENCE OF FIRE." (HEBREWS 11:34)

competence. Opioids released during proximity to companions are

However, the idea of exogenously acting opioid peptides is not

in earlychildhood 2It deserves is a typicalcondition that "uncontrollability" mentioning

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