ABSTRACT
The Burmese term pude is typically translated by English-speaking Burmans as possession. With respect to nats, possession, in the literal sense of body intrusion, can be of two kinds, when a nat falls in love with a human, it is believed that the nat's soul has entered into and has united with the soul of the human. When a nat wishes to harm a person, the nat himself enters the body of the human. From the Burmese point of view there may be possession without dissociation; and the scientist, viewing such cases, can only agree that possession or, more accurately, the belief in possession, has occurred without dissociation. Proceeding, then, to those experiences in which the actor perceives, rather than is possessed by, a spirit, the author again have a difference of opinion between traditional Burmese and scientific points of view.
