ABSTRACT
One of the perennial and most elusive topics in psychology is consciousness. In 1992, Imants Baruss, writing in the journal Anthropology of Consciousness, asked what academics and professionals mean by the term. This chapter focuses on altered states of consciousness and their cultural construction, interpretation, valuation, and use—dreams, trance, and shamanism. Dreams have been of interest to anthropologists since the rise of psychological anthropology; early practitioners of the culture-and-personality school, like Cora Du Bois and Geza Roheim, influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis, considered dreams to be valuable data on individual and collective mental processes. George Devereux made the important connection between dreams and learning, with special reference to shamanism. Writing on dream interpretation in Haiti, Erika Bourguignon made the point that "cultures differ greatly in the importance they place on dreams." "Islam is the largest night dream culture in the world today," writes Iain Edgar.
