ABSTRACT
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), is a model by means of which problems inherent in cataloguing and classifying mental disease can be addressed. Many of the critics surveyed by Transcultural Psychiatry believed that the criteria in the DSM-IV for identifying possession trance as a disorder overlooked fundamental contemporary issues such as the social construction of personhood or personal identity and the nature of consciousness. Jungian theory can contribute to the historical discussion of Dissociative Trance Disorder in the DSM-IV as a potential epistemological break, as discourse that was poised in the contradiction between nosological completeness and cultural inclusiveness. Neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists place dissociative phenomena at the centre of their theories of cognitive functioning. Towards the end of his life, C. G. Jung issued an epistemological challenge to an international congress of psychiatrists.
