The Distancing of Emotion in Ritual [and Comments and Reply]

Author(s): Thomas J. Scheff, Brenda E. F. Beck, Michael P. Carroll, Arlene Kaplan

Daniels, Richard Day, Stephen Fuchs, Jeffrey H. Goldstein, Don Handelman, Arlie
Russell Hochschild, Bruce Kapferer, Ivan Karp, Aaron Lazare, Philippe Mitrani, Kurt O.
Schlesinger, John D. Stoeckle, Jan Van Baal, W. E. A. Van Beek and Thomas Rhys
Williams
Source: Current Anthropology , Sep., 1977, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Sep., 1977), pp. 483-505
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation
for Anthropological Research

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2741403

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CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Vol. 18, No. 3, September 1977
? 1977 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research
The Distancing of Emotion in Ritual'
by Thomas 3. Scheff
CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL SCIENCE has two seemingly contradic-
tory orientations toward ritual. The positive orientation views
ritual, along with myth, as the foundation of all culture-the
basis of human consciousness. The negative one sees it as an
empty shell, a residue of beliefs and practices whose functions
are lost in an irretrievable past. Both of these traditions are
deeply rooted in basic perspectives in anthropology, sociology,
and psychology. The purpose of this paper is to outline a
theory of ritual which subsumes both orientations.
The positive theory of ritual was clearly stated by Durkheim:
Religious beliefs and practices not only create and sustain the
fundamental social structure of a society, but maintain the
members' sense of reality. Kluckhohn's (1942:64) evaluation of
this view is representative: "[Myths] have the (to us) scarcely
understandable meaningfulness which the tragedies had for
the Greek populace. As Matthew Arnold said of these, 'their
significance appeared inexhaustible.' " Chapple's work (1970)
in behavioral anthropology is a strong affirmation of the
positive approach to ritual. Chapple indicates that myth and
ritual are forms which mediate between social organization
and the biological rhythms of human existence. His purview
includes not only rituals of the life cycle, the rites of passage at
birth, initiation, marriage, and death, but also interaction
ritual, which involves the moment-to-moment transitions of
daily life. His analysis (p. 304) of the custom of saying grace
before a meal is a case in point:
This is a ritual associated with an institutional crisis.... Super-
ficially, it may appear incongruous to apply the term, crisis, with
all its overtones of emergency, to a group of people assembled to
eat a common meal. Yet it is a good case to begin with if we are
to understand crises in the institutional sense....
Before the meal is to begin, members of the family have been
engaged in other activities . . . adults working, older children
' Discussions with Maurice Stein contributed to the inception of
this paper. Stephen C. Scheele provided research assistance, and
Robert I. Levy made helpful suggestions about an earlier draft.
THOMAS J. SCHEFF is Professor of Sociology at the University of
California at Santa Barbara (Santa Barbara, Calif. 93106,
U.S.A.). Born in 1929, he was educated at the University of
California, Berkeley (Ph.D., 1960). He taught at the University
of Wisconsin, Madison, from 1959 to 1963 and has been at
Santa Barbara since that time. His research interests are the
sociology of emotion, the sociology of mental disorder, and sex
roles. Among his publications are Being Mentally Ill (Chicago:
Aldine, 1966), Mental Illness and Social Processes (New York:
Harper and Row, 1967), Labeling Madness (Englewood Cliffs:
Prentice-Hall Spectrum, 1976), and "Audience Awareness and
Catharsis in Drama" (Psychoanalytic Review Winter-Spring
1977).
The present paper, submitted in final form 25 xi 76, was sent
for comment to 50 scholars. The responses are printed below
and are followed by a reply by the author.
Vol. 18 * No. 3 September
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being taught . .. women in the kitchen preparing the meal, and
younger children playing outside.... These now end; the family
members come together ... as a group....
What are the stresses? First . . . the change from one situation
to another requires a change in interaction pattern.... Second,
the transitive properties of human beings make possible the carry-
over of temperamental reactions into . . . the new adjustments
required.... Finally, the interaction patterns within the family
are reinforced through the . . . interaction forms which the meal
specifies. This has emotional benefits as the members return to or
begin new relationships....
For Chapple, the ritual of grace facilitates the transition from
one social and biological set of rhythms to another, completely
different set and in doing so resolves a regularly repeated
minor crisis.
Mandelbaum's (1959) analysis of funeral rites illustrates the
positive approach to the rituals of the life cycle. He shows how
the funeral and the ceremonies of mourning of the Kotas of
southern India not only assuage the grief of the bereaved, but
fulfill important social functions, such as the reinforcement of
the order of precedence in the village. He repeats Firth's
(1951:63) comment with approval: "A funeral rite is a social
rite par excellence. Its ostensible object is the dead person, but it
benefits not the dead, but the living."
Contrary to these affirmations of the value of ritual, there is
a sizable body of opinion that rituals are useless. Turner
(1967a:1010) comments: "To those who find not only religious
ritual but also marriage ceremonies, funerals and memorial
services, initiation ceremonies, and graduation exercises devoid
of meaning, it is unclear how ritual could add vitality and
reality to anything." Mandelbaum (1959) writes of the "de-
ritualization" of American society and Klapp (1969) of the
"poverty of ritual." To be sure, some of the thrust of this
orientation is directed not to ritual per se, but to the ineffective-
ness of ritual in modern societies. Mandelbaum's comments
about "deritualization" imply, in part, a comparison of the
ineffectiveness of contemporary ritual with its effectiveness in
traditional societies. But there is a much darker tone to many
statements. Freud (1948:35) likened ritual to the obsessional
symptoms of the neurotic patient: ". .. one might venture to
regard the obsessional neurosis as a pathological counterpart
to the formation of a religion, to describe this neurosis as a
private, religious system, and a religion as a universal obses-
sional neurosis." Even Malinowski (1931:639), who celebrates
the significance of ritual, flirts with a similar idea: "Fear moves
every human being to aimless but compulsory acts; in the
presence of an ordeal one always has recourse to obsessive
daydreaming." He goes on to make the point that ritual
serves to allay anxiety in those areas of a culture in which there
is great uncertainty. Although Malinowski is a supporter of
ritual, the underlying thought is quite negative, since it
1977 483
suggests that ritual has as little value for society as the symp-
toms of obsessive neurosis have for the suffering neurotic.
Goffman (1971:62) gives the curtest definition of ritual in the
negative tradition: "Ritual is a perfunctory, conventionalized
act through which an individual portrays his respect and regard
for some object of ultimate value....." The operative idea in
this definition is not that individuals have objects of ultimate
value, but that the ritual act is perfunctory and conventionalized.
The formulation by Geertz of religion as a symbolic system
follows the negative tradition in its outlines. He argues that
religion attempts to cope with the ungovernable forces in
human experience: ignorance, pain, and injustice. Geertz sees
some utility in religious symbolism, since it establishes long-
lasting motives toward the real world. Like Malinowski and
Freud, however, he views the emotional components of
religion, which he considers to be the creation of pervasive
moods, as ephemeral: "Motives have a directional cast, they
describe a certain overall course, gravitate toward certain,
usually temporary, consummations. But moods vary only as to
intensity: they go nowhere.... Like fogs, they just settle and
drift; like scents, suffuse and evaporate" (Geertz 1965:208).
This treatment of the emotional component of religion seems
to me characteristic of the modern temper in social science,
alienated both from ritual and from emotion.
Myth and ritual have been systematically investigated by
Levi-Strauss (1969), Turner (1967a), Firth (1972), Douglas
(1970), and many others. Their analyses emphasize cognitive
and verbal aspects, however, to the virtual exclusion of emo-
tions. Levi-Strauss, Firth, and Douglas for the most part
ignore the affective components. Even Turner, who is more
sensitive to some of the emotional elements in ritual, considers
emotions in a global and undifferentiated and, therefore, quite
superficial way. None of these authors indexes any of the main
emotions I shall discuss: grief, fear, shame, and anger.
I believe that the deemphasis of emotion found in the work
of Malinowski, Freud, Geertz, and other social theorists is part
of a rationalistic bias which gives undue emphasis to the
cognitive elements in a culture and ignores or glosses over the
emotional elements. Such a perspective is also ethnocentric,
since it derogates that aspect of ritual which Western culture
effectively deals with, through knowledge and science, and
ignores that part-emotion-which our culture handles poorly
if at all. I shall argue that ritual performs a vital function: the
appropriate distancing of emotion. I shall propose a theory of
ritual and its associated myth as dramatic forms for coping
with universal emotional distresses.
RITUAL MANAGEMENT OF DISTRESS
In the game of "peekaboo," the mother first hides her face with
her hands; then she removes her hands, moving her smiling
face toward the baby, and says "Peekaboo !" This cycle is
repeated over and over. If the mother's timing is right, the
baby will begin to laugh each time she shows her face. If she
hides too long, the game is spoiled; the baby may cry or
become frightened. If she does not hide long enough, the baby
will not become sufficiently aroused to laugh.
This game contains, in a simple form, the three necessary
elements for the successful ritual management of distress: (1) the
evocation of the distress (that of separation); (2) a distancing
device (the baby knows that the mother has not really gone);
and (3) the discharge of the distress (the baby laughs). (For
another interpretation of peekaboo, see Maurer 1967.) These
three elements are characteristic of many types of ritual,
including various forms of funeral rites and curing rituals.
The ritual which most clearly contains the elements found
in the game of peekaboo is the vastly elaborated set of rites
concerned with life after death. These rituals and myths are
centered around the distress of separation caused by death, the
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distancing device is the complex of beliefs and practices which
indicate that the deceased person is not actually lost forever,
and the discharge of distress usually takes the form of weeping.
As in peekaboo, the dead person is both present and absent.
Again as in peekaboo, if the conditions are right, the mourners
may attain sufficient distance from their distress that discharge
may take place, in this case, in the form of weeping. To under-
stand the kind of ritual conditions which give rise to the proper
distance for discharge, it is necessary first to consider Freud's
theory of catharsis.
THE THEORY OF CATHARSIS
In 1881 Joseph Breuer discovered a method of psychotherapy
which his first patient, Anna O., called "the talking cure" or,
more colorfully, "chimney sweeping." Breuer was surprised to
find that when he allowed the patient to reexperience the
events and fantasies which she associated with her symptoms,
the symptoms, including paralysis and visual disturbances,
disappeared. It was from Breuer that Freud learned this
technique, which he in turn employed with his patients. Freud
evolved most of the psychoanalytic theory-the concepts of
repression, trauma, the unconscious, resistance, mechanisms of
defense, and transference-from his work with the cathartic
method.
Freud and Breuer's (1966:40-41) formulation of the theory
of catharsis refers both to the cause and to the cure of neurosis:
[Cause:] In traumatic neuroses the operative cause of the illness
is not the trifling physical injury but the affect of fright-the
psychical trauma. In an analogous manner, our investigations
reveal, for many, if not for most, hysterical symptoms, precipitating
causes which can only be described as psychical traumas. Any
experience which calls up distressing affects-such as those of
fright, anxiety, shame or physical pain may operate as a trauma
of this kind ...
[Cure:] ... we found, to our great surprise at first, that each
individual hysterical symptom immediately and permanently
disappeared when we had succeeded in bringing clearly to light
the memory of the event by which it was provoked and in arousing
its accompanying affect, and when the patient had described that
event in the greatest possible detail and had put the affect into
words.
Freud argued further that the causal traumas were usually in
groups and that these groups came to light in a reverse chrono-
logical order which he called "the file." The method Freud
and Breuer discovered was to follow the patient's memories
back through her "file," seeking to let the patient describe each
incident in the series "with appropriate affect." With their
first patients, they used hypnosis: the patient evoked the items
in her file in a hypnotic trance. Freud soon found, however,
that some of his patients could not be hypnotized. Undaunted,
he went on to use the file technique with patients in a normal
waking state, with occasional use of the device of "head pres-
sure" to overcome the patient's resistance to repressed memories.
After using this method for many years, Freud became con-
vinced that the cures produced were temporary, with a return
of the original or other symptoms with the passage of time
(Freud 1920:289). He lost interest in catharsis and began the
work of tracing the origins of the patient's resistance. This work
led to the theory of the Oedipus complex, which has become
the central feature of contemporary psychoanalysis. In this
later work, affect never again had the significance it held in
his theory of catharsis.
Even in the early work, his emphasis on affect was not
consistent. In some of his formulations, he stated quite clearly
that the evocation -of the accompanying affect was at least as
important to the cure as the verbal description. For example,
he said (Freud and Breuer 1966:41): "Recollection without
affect invariably produces no result. The psychical process
which originally took place must be repeated as vividly as
ANTHROPOLOGY
possible; it must be brought back to its status nascendi and then
given verbal utterance." Freud's record of the actual case
histories contradicts the emphasis on affect; it is quite clear in
both his cases and Breuer's that they emphasized the words
rather than the feeling. The crucial test is the case of Fraulein
Mathilde H. (pp. 204-5n), where there is a great deal of feeling,
but virtually no words:
I once learnt to my surprise that an "abreaction of arrears" ...
can form the subject-matter of an otherwise puzzling neurosis.
This was so in the case of Fraulein Mathilde H., a ... nineteen-
year-old girl. When I first saw her she was suffering from a partial
paralysis of the legs. Some months later, however, she came to
me for treatment on account of a change in her character. She had
become depressed . . ., utterly inconsiderate to her mother, irri-
table and inaccessible.... She was very easily put into a state of
deep somnambulism, and I [gave] her commands and suggestions
at every visit. She listened to these in deep sleep, to the accom-
paniment of floods of tears.... One day ... she told me that the
cause of her depression was the breaking off of her engagement....
Closer acquaintance with her fianc6 had brought out . . . things
that were unwelcome to her and her mother.... For a long time
they had both wavered.... In the end her mother uttered the
decisive negative on her behalf. A little later she had woken up as
though from a dream and begun to occupy her thoughts busily
with the decision that had already been made.... This process,
she told me, was still going on.... I did not succeed in inducing
the girl to talk again. I continued to address her while she was in
deep somnambulism and saw her burst into tears each time without
ever answering me; and one day, round about the anniversary of
her engagement, her whole state of depression passed off-an
event which brought me the credit of a great therapeutic success
by hypnotism.
Although the patient was cured, she was relegated to a footnote.
She didn't satisfy Freud's preconceived theory: he thought that
the trauma and its accompanying effect had to be described
in words, and Mathilde H. cried her depression away. Freud
found her case surprising and puzzling, but, conscientious
observer that he was, he reported it anyway.
Even though this case did not fit his theory, Freud went so
far as to invent a term for the neurosis and for the curative
process. The first he called "retention hysteria," which, he
said, occurs when a person is in a situation in which his or her
affects are not expressed, as in sicknursing (Freud and Breuer
1966:203). The curative process of crying he called the "ab-
reaction of arrears" (p. 204). Because the patient was sick-
nursing her father, she got into arrears with her crying. After
the father died, she caught up with her arrears, at her leisure,
as Freud said. He describes the abreaction of arrears in the
case of Mathilde H. and the "highly gifted lady," but in no
other cases.
It seems to me that the processes of the retention of affect
and the abreaction of arrears are the key elements that are
missing in Freud's otherwise sound theory of catharsis. If it
were the case that the verbal description of a trauma is usually
only a preliminary catharsis, a prelude to an intense and, in
some cases, very lengthy emotional discharge, this would
explain, among other things, why Freud's cures with the
cathartic method were only temporary.
Drawing upon ideas from a contemporary theory, Reevalua-
tion Counseling (Jackins 1965, Scheff 1972), I shall offer a
new theory of catharsis that retains Freud's major concepts but
introduces two new elements. The first is a precise definition of
catharsis, and the second is the concept of distancing. Both of
these elements are derived from Reevaluation theory, although
the concept of distancing involves a substantial modification
of that theory.
A REDEFINITION OF CATHARSIS
I define catharsis as the discharge of one or more of four
distressful emotions: grief, fear, embarrassment, or anger.
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Scheff: THE DISTANCING OF EMOTION IN RITUAL
These emotions are physical states of tension in the body pro-
duced by stress. For example, if a stranger slaps your face,
there is not only physical, but also emotional, distress, a mixture
of grief, fear, embarrassment, and/or anger. The fact that these
emotions are tension states can be most clearly seen in the case
of fear. The symptoms of acute fear-pallor, chill in the
extremities, and rapid, shallow breathing-are caused by
tension: constriction in the blood vessels, which interferes with
the circulation of the blood, causing pallor and chill in the
hands and feet, and constriction in the bronchi, interfering with
oxygen intake, leading to rapid, shallow breathing. In the
absence of interference, these tension states will be spontaneous-
ly discharged by convulsive, involuntary bodily processes whose
external manifestations are weeping, for grief, shivering and
cold sweat, for fear, spontaneous laughter, for embarrassment
or anger, and "storming" (rapid, forceful movement and
vocalization) with hot sweat, also for anger.
This definition of catharsis is unusual in making a sharp
distinction between emotion as distress and emotion as dis-
charge. We are accustomed to lumping the pallor, chill, and
panting of the distress of fear with the shivering and cold
sweating of the discharge of fear. Distress and discharge are,
however, two different and in fact opposite processes. The signs
of emotional distress are symptomatic of increasing muscular
and visceral tension, just as the signs of emotional discharge are
indicative of the rapid relaxation of tension. Our very language
seems at fault; the nouns we use to designate emotions lead us
to think in terms of states rather than processes, and we do not
have suitable terms to differentiate between the distress of grief,
fear, embarrassment, and anger and their discharge. Perhaps a
new set of terms which are all verbs is needed: griefing, fearing,
embarrassing, angering, for the distress side of the emotions,
and degriefing, defearing, deembarrassing, deangering, for the
discharge side.
In Freud and Breuer's theory, catharsis was considered to
take place when the memory of a traumatic experience, and its
accompanying affect, was evoked and put into words. In the
new theory, these verbal descriptions represent only a very
incomplete discharge of the painful experience. The verbal
descriptions are, for the most part, only means to an end. The
patient describes the trauma in order to reexperience it, so that
he/she can do what was not done in the original event-
discharge the emotions of grief, fear, anger, or embarrassment.
THE DISTANCING OF EMOTION
The reexperiencing of the trauma is not meant to be an exact
repetition, but a properly distanced recurrence. In order to
emphasize this point, it is helpful to refer to the concept of
distancing as it is used in discussions of drama.2
In dramatic criticism, distance from feeling is considered a
continuum. At one end are underdistanced dramas, which
evoke raw emotion in the audience. Members of the audience
not only feel emotion, but are drawn into the dramatic action
to the point where they experience it as if it were happening to
them. The recent film J7aws is an example of this effect. The
audience has difficulty in keeping its perspective: it experiences
the intense distress of fear as if a shark attack were actually
occurring. Under these conditions members of the audience
find it difficult to reflect on the experience, because they are
insufficiently distanced from it.
At the other extreme, overdistanced drama does not involve
2 In his very comprehensive description of the management of
emotions (grief, fear, anger, embarrassment, shame, crying, and,
although not indexed, laughter) among Tahitian's, Levy also uses
the concept of distancing, but in a way which only partly overlaps
with my usage here (Levy 1973:493-98).
1977 485
the feelings of the audience at all. Dramas of ideas, such as
some of Shaw's Man and Superman, have this effect. In this type
of drama, members of the audience may think about the
experience, but not feel it. Classical drama, because of the
unfamiliar language and locales, is often overdistanced from
modern audiences.
Between these two extremes are the dramas which have
esthetic distance. In these dramas, the audience experiences
emotions but is not overwhelmed by them. Members of the
audience maintain some awareness that they are in the theater
and that the dramatic action is not happening to them. They
identify with the major characters and participate in their
emotions, but also keep aloof and act as observers. The partici-
pant-observer role for the audience, which gives it esthetic
distance, is the mark of classical drama, just as underdistancing
is the mark of modern drama.
These three classes of drama can be related to the theory of
repression. Overdistancing corresponds to repression, under-
distancing to the return of repressed emotion. With under-
distanced drama, the audience identifies with the characters to
the point that most of its members relive unresolved scenes of
loss, danger, or embarrassment from their own lives. The
reliving is transformed by the mechanisms of repression, but the
emotional content is exactly the same. Just as the original
scenes were too overwhelming to allow discharge, so the scenes
as relived, which are emotionally identical, are too over-
whelming to allow discharge. In suspense and horror films,
members of the audience experience the distress of fear, but
not discharge, and leave the theater more tense than when
they entered.
In dramas with esthetic distance, repressed emotion is
restimulated, but the audience is not overwhelmed by it. Since
the members are both participants and observers, they are
able to experience the repressed feeling and do what they
were unable to do originally, i.e., discharge the distress. The
concept of esthetic distance provides a solution to the paradox
of repression. Distress which is unbearable is repressed. How
can one bear unbearable pain?-by experiencing it within a
dramatic frame, that is, by feeling assured that one can escape
from it, if necessary. At esthetic distance, one is both participant
in, and observer of, one's own distress, so that one can go in
and out freely.
I have observed children crying in a way that suggests a
cycle of participation and observation. The child draws into
itself to feel the pain, puts its head down and cries, but fre-
quently looks up at its mother to see if the situation is still safe.
While feeling the pain, the child also sees itself through the
mother's eyes, as an observer. Although it is by no means
completely clear, adults, under the proper conditions, probably
speed up this cycle, moving from participant to observer and
back in seconds. The phenomenon of crying when happy may
be an instance of moving back and forth between safety and
pain so fast that the individual is not aware of the movement.
Implicit in the concept of distancing is the idea that there
are two distinct types of consciousness-present-time and past-
time. In present-time consciousness, one is attending to the
actual surrounding environment. In past-time consciousness,
one is not responding to the present environment (although
one may think that one is), but compulsively reexperiencing a
distressful scene from the past. The past scene may have been
triggered by some stimulus in the present environment, but,
once begun, the inner experience transforms the present
environment and one reacts as if one were in the past environ-
ment again. Paranoia is a familiar case-one reads hostility
into smiling faces.
The degree of distance from one's emotion corresponds to the
extent to which one is responding to the present environment.
Total overdistancing involves responding only to the nonemo-
tional aspects of the present environment-there is no emotional
resonance at all. Total underdistancing means complete im-
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mersion in some past scene and complete oblivion to the
present. Esthetic distance involves a balanced experience of a
present and past scene, seemingly simultaneously. One seems
to be both deeply immersed in a powerful feeling from the past
and at the same time observing oneself feeling. As has been
indicated, this balance is probably an oscillating temporal
process, a rapid moving back and forth between past and
present.
Since either too much or too little distance may preclude
catharsis, distancing devices may be of two kinds. For situations
where the participants are underdistanced, the device should
produce greater distance, that is, more attention to the present.
In situations where the participants are overdistanced, the
requirement is reversed: the device must produce less distance,
that is, more attention focused on the past distress. I will
return to this issue later.
The concept of a continuum of distance suggests a way of
looking at repression outside of the theater. Underdistancing is
the return of repressed emotion in a situation in which it is
not appropriate. One may believe that one is experiencing the
present situation, because the content of the experience is
transformed by splitting, projection, displacement, and so on.
The emotional content, however, is an exact repetition of the
repressed experience. Deja vu, berserk, nightmares and dreams,
and the classic symptoms of neurosis and psychosis each
probably correspond to a particular degree of ulnderdistancing.
Psychotic fugues may be seen as totally underdistanced ex-
periences, with all attention taken up by a return of past
emotions and virtually no attention in the present. Deja vu,
on the other hand, is typically only slightly underdistanced,
with the amount of attention in the present only somewhat less
than the amount of attention in the repressed experience.
Transference in everyday life may also be viewed as an
underdistanced state. Emotions that originated in an earlier
relationship are restimulated by a current relationship. Love
at first sight is very likely to be a relationship of this type.
When a parent persistently calls his or her child by the wrong
name, usually the name of another relative, there is usually a
strong undertow of repressed and inappropriate emotion
directed at the child. Since the memory of the original relation-
ship is repressed, the parent is usually quite unaware that part
of his or her attention toward the child is based not on the
child, but on someone else.
At the other extreme, overdistancing represents experiences
in which selected emotions, both past and present, have been
filtered out of awareness. Overdistanced experience is com-
pletely cognitive. At extremes of overdistancing, the individual
may complain of feeling empty, hollow, or blank, of not knowing
what he/she wants or feels. Most overdistancing is not at this
extreme, however. In the masculine role, most, but not all,
fear and grief have been filtered out of awareness; these emo-
tions are stored as muscular tension and other physiological
anomalies. In the feminine role, much anger and embarrass-
ment lie outside of the woman's awareness. The male role can
be viewed as a socially induced "retention hysteria," to use
Freud's term, in which the affects of fear and grief are retained
and the female role as a retention hysteria in which the affects
of anger and embarrassment are retained. Under great stress,
or under conditions which relax the repressing forces, such as in
the theater or in psychotherapy, these emotions may be felt
and discharged.
At esthetic distance, there is a balance of thought and feeling,
There is deep emotional resonance, but the person is in control.
If a repressed emotion such as grief is restimulated at esthetic
distance, the crying that results is not unpleasant: it is not
draining or tiring-the person feels refreshed when it is over.
The same is true with fear, anger, and embarrassment. The
characteristics of the various states of emotion when over-
distanced, underdistanced, and at esthetic distance are shown
in table 1.
ANTHROPOLOGY
 The concept of distancing, as it is used here, suggests that the
theory of catharsis has not been properly tested. Modern tests
of the catharsis hypothesis have missed its core. Berkowitz
(1962) and others have investigated whether active retaliation
lowers the level of hostility toward the target. The most usual
finding is that it not only does not lower hostility toward
the target, but actually increases it. This finding is usually
interpreted as failing to support the catharsis hypothesis and
as supporting a theory of learning or imitation. However,
this theory of catharsis concerns not persons who act on the
basis of repressed emotion, but persons who feel it, in a safe
situation. Freud and Breuer's patients recounted their ex-
periences in the safety of the therapists' office, and the audiences
that Aristotle (1968) referred to were experiencing emotion
vicariously, in the safety of the theater, not acting upon it. In
terms of the theory discussed here, it would seem likely that
retaliation gives rise to anger, but anger that is either under-
distanced, as in losing one's temper, or overdistanced, as in
actions that are calculated or premeditated. As I have indi-
cated, in these conditions the person lacks the double vision of
participant-observation and is therefore unlikely to discharge.
Freud discarded the theory because he thought that the
results it produced were only temporary, but it may have been
his technique that was at fault. He usually allowed the patient
to abreact only once to any given experience. A close reading
of his case materials suggests that he then had the patient seal
the experience over by giving the patient the suggestion that
the memory had been experienced and should be forgotten. It
now seems likely that the first abreaction to a given memory is
only a prelude to further intensive discharge.
THE ACCUMULATION OF REPRESSED EMOTION
The need for repeated abreactions suggests a much larger
reservoir of repressed emotion than was envisioned by Freud
and Breuer. The accumulation of repressed emotion depends
upon two distinct processes, the generation of distress, on the
one hand, and the blockage of discharge, on the other.
Repeated episodes of overwhelming distress are unavoidable
in the course of even the most normal-appearing life. Grief, for
example, as a result of intense and incommunicable feelings of
Scheff: THE DISTANCING OF EMOTION IN RITUAL
separation and loss, would appear to be an inescapable feature
of infancy. Tomkins (1963:53-55) has suggested that the infant's
ability to form objects, and attachments to those objects, which
are separate from the self depends in a vital way upon crying.
He argues that to the extent that the infant is able to cry about
a lost object, and therefore work through the loss, it will be
able to risk attachment in the future. Obversely, if the infant is
unable to resolve the loss, it will be unwilling to risk attach-
ment. His formulation suggests a process to explain the inability
to love that is associated with the masculine role. To the extent
that men are socialized not to cry, their accumulated grief
forms a primitive barrier to risking attachment to others.
A similar argument can be made on the prevalence of fear
and anger. Fear is generated by danger to life and anger by
frustration. Since the infant is unable to comprehend or
control separation, even a brief separation from its mother can
generate unbearable waves of grief, fear, or anger. These
responses are instinctive and unlearned reactions to separation
from adults, who are the infant's only source of nourishment
and care.
Finally, embarrassment, generated by loss of face, is ubiqui-
tous during the course of maturation. The most common source
of embarrassment is making a mistake in public. Since children
must learn an entire culture by trial and error, it is virtually
impossible to become an adult without having committed
innumerable gaffes. Toilet training, touching one's body,
eating, and rules of ownership and respect offer the child the
prospect of a seemingly endless obstacle course. Language
socialization is particularly significant, since every child must
achieve a very precise command of myriad rules of meaning,
pronunciation, grammar, articulation, and so on. Increasingly
as the child interacts with peers, the slightest mistake in fluency
may bring loss of face. Stuttering and lisping, bloopers and
double meanings are the stuff of nightmares.
The second process responsible for the accumulation of
repressed emotion is the blockage of discharge. Even distress
which is communicable will usually not be completely dis-
charged because of the strong external and internal controls
on discharge. External controls occur because we all learn to
do work on others to suppress discharge. Children who are

TABLE 1

EMOTIONAL STATES AND DISTANCE

TYPE OF DISTRESS UNDERDISTANCED AT ESTHETIC DISTANCE OVERDISTANCED

Grief. Sadness, with or without tears. Sobbing with tears. Emotionlessness and/or
Headaches, nasal congestion, distraction in situa-
swelling of eyes. Feelings of tion of loss.
hopelessness.
Fear .................... Facial pallor, coldness in hands Shaking with cold sweat. Emotionlessness and/or
and feet, rapid and shallow distraction in situa-
breathing. Rapid heart beat. tion of danger.
Feelings of fright and immo-
bility.
Embarrassment .......... Blushing, immobilization, low- Spontaneous laughter. Emotionlessness and/or
ering or covering of eyes and distraction in situa-
face. tion of losing face.
Anger. Violence of movement or Hot sweat or spontaneous Emotionlessness and/or
speech, repetitiveness. laughter. distraction in situa-
tion offrustration
All of the above distresses
During discharge or
stress. Pain, feeling of loss of control, Not unpleasant feeling, No feeling, feeling of
tension. feeling of control, relax- control, tension.
ation.
After discharge or stress. Exhaustion, confusion of Exhilaration, clarity of Tension, clarity of
thought, withdrawal. thought, outgoingness. thought, outgoing-
ness.

NOTE: This chart is based, in part, on Jackins's (1966) theory of reevaluation. For a discussion of that theory, see Scheff (1972).

Vol. 18 * No. 3 * September 1977 487

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discharging may be told, "Don't be a crybaby," "Be a man,"
"Temper, temper, young lady," "Go to your room until you
can come out with a smile on your face," "If you don't stop
crying, I'll give you something to cry about," or one of the
variants of these phrases. Probably more important than these
are nonverbal gestures of anger, impatience, threat, ridicule,
or embarrassment. Adults who are crying, shaking, screaming,
or laughing in excess of the very stringent social limits for these
activities may be told to take a drink or a tranquilizer or to see
a psychiatrist.
In the face of the punitive response to discharge, children
develop internal blocks that interfere with their emotional
expression. A boy who is hurt learns very quickly to hide his
crying from his peers. Initially he is able to delay tears until
he is alone. After thousands of repetitions, however, the process
is overlearned. He blocks the tears so well that he forgets how
to cry. The prohibition against crying may be less severe with
girls, but it is still operative. The discharge of anger is much
more negatively sanctioned in girls than in boys, with the result
that many women have forgotten how to express anger.
To recapitulate: emotional distress is unavoidably and
repeatedly generated in the process of living, for both children
and adults. Since there are usually powerful external and
internal controls on the discharge of this distress, most persons
accumulate repressed emotion. In traditional societies, it seems
likely that ritual, with its associated myth, provided a context
that was both a psychologically enabling and a socially accept-
able occasion for repeated catharsis.
RITUAL AND DISTANCING
Given the discussion of catharsis and distancing above, it is
possible to define ritual, not only in terms of its object, as
Durkheim did, but in terms of the emotional dynamics of the
participants. For the purpose of this paper, I will define ritual
as the distanced reenactment of situations of emotional distress
that are virtually universal in a given culture. As indicated
above, there are three central elements in this definition:
recurring shared emotional distress, a distancing device, and
discharge.
Ritual usually develops around recurring sources of collective
distress. The pain of temporary separation gives rise to rituals
of farewell, just as the pain of permanent loss of the dead gives
rise to funeral rites and ceremonies of mourning. The transition
from one social status to another, as in marriage, creates the
pain of loss of one's old relationships and the fear connected
with one's apprehensions about the new status, which lead to
the rites of passage. The ceremony of greeting, perhaps, is a
ritual which coheres around the fear and embarrassment of
making contact with others, particularly strangers. Ritual
drama, as in the case of Greek tragedy, is concerned with the
universal human distresses: death, injustice, betrayal, exile.
Any device which allows participants to be both participants
in, and observers of, their own distress accomplishes the second
component in this conception of ritual, distancing. Belief in an
afterlife has already been mentioned. The ritual of prayer
exactly distances the communicant so that he/she is as much
participant as observer, so long as the communicant both
believes and disbelieves that he/she is in communication with
a supernatural being. This double vision,3 of both believing
and not believing simultaneously, which is characteristic of
participants in living ritual may be the source of the puzzle-
ment that marks the notes of many ethnoghaphers when they
describe the myths of cultures other than their own. For esthetic
distance, the communicant must both believe and disbelieve.
I The double vision of participant-observation exactly parallels
Koestler's concept of bisociation (1964:35). Significantly, he links
bisociation to laughing and crying, and to creativity, as I do here.
488 CURRENT
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From the point of view of the theory outlined here, the com-
municant who is both participant and observer can experience
repressed emotion and discharge it.
One example of a very ordinary distancing device is the
language of parting. In most languages, there is a phrase of
parting which is indicative of a presumably permanent separa-
tion: farewell, adieu, vaya con Dios. In most modern societies,
however, these phrases are seldom used. The almost universally
used salutation, even for permanent separations, is one that
intimates temporary leave-taking: I'll be seeingyou, hasta la vista,
Auf Wiedersehen. When the separation is in fact permanent,
these latter salutations are distancing devices: the participants
can both believe that the separation is temporary and disbelieve
it.
In curing rites, the belief in possession by spirits can be seen
as a distancing device. In the case of the exorcism reported by
Obeyesekere (1970), it is ostensibly not Alice Nona who
complains bitterly about her husband's failings, but the Lord
Vishnu, who has possessed her body. To the extent that she
simultaneously believes and disbelieves that she is possessed,
Alice Nona can maintain the proper distance for catharsis. This
is not to say that subjects of exorcism may not occasionally
almost totally believe that they are possessed. According to the
theory, however, if this happens the exorcism will not be
therapeutic, since the experience will be almost completely
underdistanced.
By far the most common situation in modern ritual, however,
is not underdistancing, the return of unbearable emotion, but
overdistancing, the absence of any emotion. It is in this sense
that the theory proposed here subsumes both negative and
positive orientations toward ritual. The negative orientation,
expressed as statements about the death of God, the poverty
of ritual, deritualization, peremptoriness, or meaninglessness,
focuses on one extreme of the distancing continuum, over-
distancing. The positive orientation, on the other hand, seems
to assume another fixed point of distancing, esthetic distance.
It is noteworthy that there is little criticism of ritual as under-
distanced-total absorption to the point that the participants
leave the ceremony more tense than when they began. Such
criticism exists: statements deploring the participant's total
involvement in the rituals of voodoo, the snake-handling cults,
and some of the ecstatic fundamentalist churches are cases in
point, but they are rare.
RITUAL AND CATHARSIS
I will consider some evidence connecting ritual, catharsis, and
a sense of well-being in two areas: funeral rites and curing
rituals.
Gorer (1965:126) has made the point that English society
has virtually no mourning ritual: "I think that the material
presented has . . . demonstrated that the . . . British people
are . . . without adequate guidance as to how to treat death
and bereavement and without social help in living through ...
the grief and mourning which are the inevitable responses in
human beings to the death of someone whom they have loved."
He argues that there are important social consequences of the
denial of mourning, such as increasing public callousness
toward the loss of human life and a preoccupation with violence
in the mass media. Pincus (1976:173-74) also points to the
denial of mourning and, through the use of case histories,
shows that unexpressed grief gives rise to serious individual
problems: "The four cases discussed in this chapter are exam-
ples of failures to mourn. In each of them, unresolved grief led
to a defense against emotional commitment, a denial of feeling,
and an impoverishment of the personality." Although she
focuses her attention on the personal and interpersonal sources
of the failure to mourn, her case histories are full of material
supporting Gorer's argument: the absence of adequate be-
ANTHROPOLOGY
reavement myth and ritual in modern society deprives the
survivors of the opportunity to mourn.
Insofar as a picture can be reconstructed of mourning in
classical and preliterate societies, the case was certainly differ-
ent. It would seem that myth and ritual provided a framework
for catharsis. Weeping was encouraged and accepted. In the
case of the Quechan, a California Indian tribe, "crying is
expected of one. Only by allowing yourself to let go of your
emotions do they know how badly you feel for the family....
The room is filled with tears, men and women joining together
paying their respects. This begins four days of mourning"
(Swift Arrow 1974:23). Like the Quechan, most traditional
societies have a defined period of weeping, as is the case in
traditional Jewish communities: "The second stage of mourning
represents the first three days of the seven day period (the
Shiva) which begins after the funeral. These three days are
devoted to unrestrained weeping and lamentation" (Pollock
1972:11). Many traditional societies have a special place
marked off, as well as a definite period, for weeping. In the
Bara culture, of Madagascar, callers are received in a hut
called the "house of many tears": "The closest kinswomen
begin to cry and the others gradually join in, the most recently
arrived mourners joining earliest and most vehemently. As they
wail the women cover their heads and faces, put their hands on
one another's backs" (Huntington 1973:67). It would appear
that public mourning was common in classic Greek society,
in connection both with funeral rites and tragic drama (Lucas
1968:273):
Since pity, especially in tragedy, is often pity for the dead or the
bereaved, it is akin to the shared or public lamentation which is
part of life in small closely knit communities.... [There is a
suggestion] that the audience luxuriated in community sorrow,
"surrendering itself" to lamentation and taking part in the
mourning along with actors and chorus.
The image of the audience "luxuriating" in sorrow is
important for our purposes, since it suggests that the crying was
not underdistanced, but occurred at esthetic distance. The idea
of mourning occurring through a type of weeping that is not
unpleasant is suggested by the language of some of the surviving
ritual laments, such as those of the Trojan women (Alexiou
1974:125):
How good are tears, how sweet are dirges,
I would rather sing dirges than eat or drink.
How sweet are tears to those of evil fortune,
and the weeping of dirges, and the sorrowful Muse.
These materials suggest that traditional societies have mourning
rituals which give rise to cathartic weeping at esthetic distance.
A similar case for the catharsis of fear can be made in the
case of curing rituals. Shaking and sweating, as well as explicit
references to subjective feelings of fear, characterize many of
the descriptions of curing ritual. An example is provided by
Katz's (1973) description of curing in the !Kung Bushman
tribe:
then you start to shiver.... N/um [the energy or spirit evoked by
the curing ritual] makes you tremble.... Emotions are aroused to
an extraordinary level, whether they be fear or exhilaration....
[p. 140]
[Along with feelings of release and liberation, !kia [curing ritual]
also brings profound feelings of pain and fear. [p. 143]
You start shivering . . . and you will be trembling like leaves in the
winds.... [pp. 147-48]
Shaking is also described in the curing rituals of other cultures,
as in descriptions of the Zar cult in Iran (Modaressi 1968:154)
and Umbanda in Brazil (Figge 1975:248-49). Shaking is
documented for the curing ceremonies of several cultures by
Sargant (1974:126-27, 135, 145, 169). These descriptions must
be interpreted cautiously, since it is not possible to determine
from them whether the shaking is the involuntary autonomic
response required by my theory or voluntary movements
Vol. 18 N No. 3 *
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Scheff: THE DISTANCING OF EMOTION IN RITUAL
standing in relation to involuntary shivering and sweating as
wailing (a voluntary expressive action) stands to sobbing with
tears (an involuntary response). The sweating that accompanies
the curing ritual is emphasized in another paper on the !Kung:
"Sweat (cho) is the most important of the trance symbols, for
it is the palpable and visible expression of medicine on the
surface of the body.... The production and transmission of
sweat is the key element in the curing ritual" (Lee 1968:44).
Since the Kung ritual involves energetic dancing, it is unclear
to what extent the sweating is due to the heat of the dance
rather than to an autonomic fear discharge. This ambiguity is
removed in the case of the curing ritual of the Balahis in India,
since the sweating occurs in participants who are not dancing,
but only swaying gently on their heels: "His whole body begins
to shake and tremble, and sweat pours out of his pores" (Fuchs
1964:132). In this case, at least, the curing ritual is clearly and
unambiguously marked by the indicators of fear discharge at
esthetic distance that are proposed by this theory.
These fragments from ethnographic materials in no way
demonstrate my thesis; they merely serve to illustrate it. They
show that the theory predicts features of the data, such as the
profuse sweating of the participants in the Balahis curing rites
and the association of weeping and pleasure in the Greek
lamentations, which would otherwise be surprising. I would
welcome reports from readers about further instances which
support or oppose the argument presented here.
CONCLUSION
This paper has presented a theory of ritual as the distanced
reenactment of situations which evoke collectively held emo-
tional distress. Since the theory distinguishes between under-,
over-, and esthetically distanced ritual, it integrates the posi-
tive and negative orientations toward ritual in social science.
Effective ritual is the solution to a seemingly insoluble problem,
the management of collectively held, otherwise unmanageable
distress. Ritual is unique in that it meets individual and collec-
tive needs simultaneously, allowing individuals to discharge
accumulated distress and creating social solidarity in the
process.
Although effective rituals are rare in modern societies, they
are not completely absent. One notable instance is the success
of the Chinese Communists in creating social forms which
allow cathartic release. One such form is guerrilla theater
(Hinton 1966:314-15):
As the tragedy of [a] poor peasant's family unfolded, the women
around me wept openly and unashamedly. On every side as I
turned to look tears were coursing down their faces. No one sobbed,
no one cried out but all wept together in silence. The agony on the
stage seemed to have unlocked a thousand painful memories, a
bottomless reservoir of suffering that no one could control.... the
women, huddled one against the other in their dark padded
jackets, shuddered as if stirred by a gust of wind. . . . abruptly the
music stopped, the silence on the stage was broken only by the
chirping of a cricket. At that moment I became aware of a new
quality in the reaction of the audience. Men were weeping, and I
along with them.
Another form was the "Speak Bitterness" meeting (Belden
1949:487-88):
People confessed, not their sins, but their sorrows. This had the
effect of creating emotional solidarity. For when people poured
out their sorrows to each other, they realized they were all together
on the same sad voyage through life, and from recognition of this
they drew closer to one another, achieved common sentiments,
took sustenance and hope.
It could be argued that these contemporary ritual forms were
a necessary part of the Chinese Communist revolution in that
September 1977 489
they met individual and collective needs at the same time. saying that most rituals have an emotional dimension. Just as
Mass catharsis may have been necessary to remove the apathy symbols commonly have multiple meanings (Turner 1967,
and paralysis of the peasants, on the one hand. On the other, Barth 1975), so too, I would suggest, do most rituals have
the group catharsis created the conditions for solidarity and multiple effects (cognitive and emotional) on their participants.
trust which were needed to insure the Communist victory. Scheff also provides no clear guidelines for (an independent)
In the modern world, even among the devout, religious measuring of the quality of the "release" he claims rituals
observances, marriage ceremonies, funeral rites, and the other achieve. He talks of sweating, shaking, weeping, etc., but the
surviving rituals do not usually occasion this kind of restorative treatment is circular in that these phenomena are the verv ones
catharsis. I would like to speculate on the reasons that modern whose presence determines a ritual's "usefulness" in the first
ritual has lost its effectiveness. place. Rituals which do not produce such "release" are either
The phenomenon of distancing, which is the key feature of not distancing emotion sufficiently or "overdistancing" it. In
the theory proposed here, points to an important problem with both cases the activity is judged ineffectual or nonfunctional.
ritual in the modern context. Most surviving ritual increases If and only if rituals achieve "release" (in Scheff's view) are
distance from distress: in prayer, one assumes one is conversing they worth undertaking. The obvious fact that some rituals
with a supernatural benefactor; the belief in an afterlife assures persist in their popularity despite the fact that they entail none
one that the dead are not lost forever; in the ritual of parting, of these overt signs of "release" is not a problem addressed by
one uses a language which intimates that the separation is Scheff's essay.
temporary. These ritual forms, it seems to me, are remainders A second and related issue is the fact that Scheff employs a
from historical eras in which ritual was needed as a protection grab-bag of "ritual examples" for illustrative purposes without
from underdistancing. Daily life involved a succession of ever clearly defining the boundaries of his topic. Thus he
distressful encounters: the danger of attack from predators, includes the "ritual" of saying "goodbye" to a friend, but
whether animal or human, the risk of disease, fire, or famine, seems to exclude the common rite of communion. The latter,
the frustration or embarrassment of rank injustice or insult. one might think, could serve as a key contemporary example
In modern societies, however, the occasions for distress are of ritual. Similarly, where Scheff does refer to what would
fewer: civil order usually guarantees freedom from flagrant commonly be called "religious" rites, his examples are drawn
attack or abuse. Rampant danger from disease, fire, or famine from either life-cycle ceremonial or curing procedures. No
has been brought under control, at least in Western societies. mention is made of the concepts of celebration, revelation,
The occasions for distress that exist are more hidden and subtle. renewal, or revitalization that accompany most modern
Even in a funeral, where one is presumably brought in contact devotional activity. Examples drawn from this latter domain
with death, modern practice often hides, rather than reveals, are entirely absent from the survey. Scheff's mistakes, then, are
the fact of death. (1) to try to speak of a single outcome for all rituals and (2) not
In this context, the kind of ritual that is needed may be one to define in advance a clearly delimited universe of observations
which evokes less, rather than more, distance from distress. for generalization.
The Chinese Communist guerrilla theater again provides an A more measured approach to Scheff's problem would start
instance. The centuries of suffering of the peasants, at first with a definition of ritual that could be more widely accepted.
taken for granted and unacknowledged by the new regime For example, we might agree to refer to that set of formalized
were evoked in the theater by reenactments of the suffering of a behaviors which takes into account a mystical power or force
typical family under the old regime. These realistic dramas of (Turner 1967). Furthermore, a multiplicity of "functional"
oppression elicited mass weeping, as indicated in the quotation meanings or outcomes for ritual is likely, since such activity
above. It is possible that the current fascination of a large appears to increase emotional tensions for some while serving
segment of the mass media audience in the United States with as a release for others. Most rituals very likely involve a com-
violence, horror, and disaster drama is an unconscious search bination of these two results. Furthermore, ritual activity
for experiences which decrease distance so that catharsis might should not be confused with social mechanics. Rituals either
occur. Perhaps the key to the effectiveness of ritual is that there assume or attempt to establish an ethical relationship with
are two different types of distancing devices-those that in- some mystical power, but since such forces can always act
crease distance, and those that decrease it. For occasions in capriciously a ritual can never have a mechanically assured
which the members of a community are overdistanced from outcome. Failures are always "explainable" by reference either
emotion, which is the predominating case in modern societies, to divine wisdom or to divine dissatisfaction. Thus it is com-
a ritual which decreases distance by evoking past scenes of monly said that beliefs underpinning a given ritual can never
collective distress is required. be falsified within their own terms of reference (Evans-Pritchard
In any case, the theory I have outlined here affords a new 1937).
perspective on the psychological functions of ritual and myth We can agree with Scheff, however, that ritual entails a
and suggests a set of categories which can be used to study theircertain distancing (formalizing) of emotion. Since it is, by
empirical manifestations. definition, fixed or codified in advance, it enables one to
experience behavior and (at the same time) to observe oneself
experiencing it. Such actions link in one framework, by their
very formality, active and passive, doing and being done to.
The concept of reciprocity is equally important, however, for
we would define ritual activity as based on the premise that
Comments some reciprocal relationship can be established with otherwise
mystical forces. Ritual actors become givers (active) and also
by BRENDA E. F. BECK
receivers (passive) in relation to external powers. This core
Department of Anthropology and Sociology, University' of British
metaphor, the possibility of reciprocity between man and
Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6T 1 W5. 3 iII 77 divine being, is important in distinguishing genuine ritual
Scheff's paper grows out of the tradition of depth psychology. behavior from more mundane (yet similarly formalized) social
Rituals are seen to help man to release or "discharge" stressful behavior. The latter would include Scheff's "goodbye" cere-
emotion. Their function is seen as cathartic. Convulsive, mony and the seating of guests at a formal dinner, but not the
involuntary bodily processes must be activated to make them "true ritual" of saying grace.
successful. Scheff's assertion that all rituals have only this one To conclude, one cannot rest content with defining effective
purpose appears exaggerated, though I believe he is correct in rituals merely as mechanical (if subtle) ways of discharging

490 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY

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pent-up distressful emotions. Ritual also appears to have Scheff: THE DISTANCING OF EMOTION IN RITUAL

creative functions. It seems that rituals also reorient and

refocus man's emotions by turning our attention outwards. If by ARLENE KAPLAN DANIELS
so, they can help one to perceive the self (in the metaphors of Department of Sociology, Northwestern University, Evanston, 111.
exchange) as a distanced "other" and hence to achieve a 60201, U.S.A. 31 I 77
partial "self-transcendence." The negative attitudes towards Scheff has presented an interesting and provocative argumen
ritual that concern Scheff are still part of such a picture, sinceabout the significance of ritual. It is easy to agree with his
ritual behavior clearly does not have the same range of functions view that the positive importance of ritual to the expression of
(or outcomes) for all who try it. social values and the acceptance of transitions in human life
should not be ignored. But, while the outlines of his argument
seem praiseworthy, and a serious examination of the importance
by MICHAEL P. CARROLL
of feelings and emotions is long overdue in social science
theorizing, we are required to make a few "leaps of faith" in
Department of Sociology, McGill University, 855 Sherbrooke St. W.,
accepting some of his assumptions that make me uneasy. We
Montreal, P.Q., Canada H3A 2T7. 31 I 77
are given no good reasons for the new definition of catharsis and
Central to Scheff's theory is his typology of "distancing." the method for discerning it in the discharge of the four dis-
While this typology is built up from several different distinc- tressful emotions: grief, fear, embarrassment, and anger. Even
tions, the author's use of it suggests that the crucial distinction if we do accept it for the purposes of the argument, we have no
is that between a purely cognitive involvement with a situation way of knowing how much discharge reaction (or how many
and a purely affective (or emotional) involvement with the reactions) will be enough to wash away painful past experiences.
same situation. The cognitive/affective distinction is of course We can, for the sake of practical experiment, say that when
an extremely useful one, and that is presumably why it has persons feel sufficient relief, they have discharged enough. If
been so much a part of the social-psychological literature for at this works, we will not worry about the inherent circularity of
least the past half-century. But it is precisely because this the argument and of the distancing phenomenon (too hot and
much-used distinction underlies Scheff's typology that there is the reliving of an emotional experience is too much like the
really nothing very original about that typology. initial experience to integrate it properly; too cold and the
The claim to originality rests instead upon the application reliving doesn't prepare us sufficiently to recreate the past
of his theory to ritual, and there are two key propositions which emotions). Yet the problem will still be with us of how to
underlie that application: (1) Ritual is an institutionalized construct some test that will permit us to disprove the theory.
procedure for the release of tension or distress that must be I don't mean to cavil because a full-fledged, testable theory
repressed during the course of everyday life, and (2) Those has not been presented for our inspection, and the notion that
rituals which strike a balance between eliciting a purely we can learn from something like Wordsworth's "emotions
cognitive involvement and eliciting a purely affective involve- reflected in tranquility" (or in a relatively safe place) is one
ment are the rituals which will be most effective with regard that has a pragmatic, commonsense appeal to it, whatever
to such tension release. Unfortunately, Scheff does not provide psychological theory one accepts. I think the implications of
empirical evidence in support of either of these propositions. this position deserve elaboration in future systematic observa-
While he does present some ethnographic data towards the tions. The greatest importance of this line of thought, however,
end of his article, he himself admits that these data do not may not be for the study of psychological problems associated
"demonstrate" his theory, but rather only "illustrate" it. In with expression (and retention) of emotion. Rather, Scheff may
fact, the data presented do not even fulfil this second, more be providing us with an important line of thought for the study
modest, function. To "illustrate" his theory, the data would of social organization. The opportunities for ritual expression
have to show that those rituals which were overdistanced or are both cultural and structural in design. One needs a place
underdistanced were less effective in releasing repressed tension for participation and some others to participate with. If ritual
than those that were esthetically distanced. To do this, how- expression is provided through art, drama, or music, one needs
ever, would in turn require some independent measure of "the education in the appropriate forms of appreciation. If one
effective release of repressed tension," and nothing even believes in the importance of the activity, the rest will follow
resembling such a measure is presented in connection with any more easily. The opportunity to experience or relive past
of his ethnographic examples. At best, his examples "illustrate" experiences fruitfully, then, will always depend upon how
that rituals can be sorted into the categories of his typology- successfully such events are engineered by the society or social
but, as mentioned, the typology itself is the least novel part of group within it. Without a safe, legitimated place for the
the theory. expression of emotion, members of modern Western society
In his concluding section, Scheff applies his theory to modern continue to need a "stiff upper lip," whatever the cost.
societies by assuming that daily life in the modern era is less
distressful than life in some unspecified past characterized by
"the danger of attack from predators . . . the risk of disease,
fire, or famine, the frustration . .. of rank injustice or insult." by RICHARD DAY
Department of Anthropologv, Southern Methodist University, Dallas,
Here again he provides no evidence that the subjective experi-
Tex. 75275, U.S.A. 28 III 77
ence of stress in modern societies is less intense than in past
societies. Instead, he implicitly assumes that an increase in Although Scheff's article deserves theoretical comment from
both an anthropological and a psychoanalytic perspective, I
material well-being (as represented by fewer predatory attacks,
will confine my remarks to the former point of view and avoid
less disease, etc.) automatically gives rise to a less stressful
confronting the author's highly suspect revisions to Freudian
daily life-an assumption strongly reminiscent of the "tech-
theory (e.g., the clinical efficacy of emotional catharsis). In
nological-advance-leads-to-human-happiness" ideology that
the following, I shall consider the value of Scheff's approach to
permeated 19th-century thought.
ritual with respect to some of the key analytic problems that
In any case, while Scheff's ideas might initially appear currently interest anthropologists. For the most part, this com-
interesting, it quickly becomes apparent that his work is an mentary is stimulated by the author's criticism of previous
example of "armchair" theorizing, an approach to social research and by what I perceive to be his lack of clarity con-
phenomena that supposedly went out of fashion quite some cerning the types of questions that contemporary anthropolo-
time ago. gists tend to ask.

Vol. 18 N No. 3 * September 1977 491

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 In the introductory section of his paper, Scheff argues that
not only his "symbolic" consociates (i.e., Douglas, Firth,
Geertz, Levi-Strauss, Turner), but also his "psychological"
predecessors (i.e., Freud, Malinowski) evidence a "rationalistic
bias which gives undue emphasis to the cognitive elements of
culture and ignores or glosses over the emotional elements. Such
a perspective is ethnocentric, since it derogates that aspect of
ritual . . . which our culture handles poorly if at all." Even
ignoring Scheff's loose identification of a "cognitive emphasis"
with a "rationalistic bias," I would still suggest that it is
misleading to argue that anthropologists have not given
profound attention to the emotional component found in
ritual. Here one need only refer to the classic exchange between
Malinowski (1948) and Evans-Pritchard (1965) concerning
the relationship between individual anxiety and collective
magical practices. Moreover, I doubt that many anthropolo-
gists would deny the cathartic element in ritual or the func-
tional importance of providing socially appropriate occasions
for the discharge of accumulated emotional tension. Again,
one need only recall Turner's (1967c) analysis of "A Ndembu
Doctor In Practice" or Levi-Strauss's (1963) description of the
shaman as a "professional abreactor." On this level, the con-
tribution of emotional processes to ritual action would seem to
be a settled issue.
With time, however, increasingly complex and more subtle
questions have evolved-questions, for example, concerning
the mechanics of the ritual process and how a given performance
may operate to evoke a sense of solidarity in the audience.
Consider for a moment Turner's problem: How can the
discharge of affect on an individual level serve to reanimate a
commitment to the group's norms and values? How can the
''raw energies of conflict [both instinctual and social] be
domesticated into the service of social order?" (Turner
1967b:39). This type of question has led to a growing interest
in the composition and dynamics of ritual symbolism. At this
level of inquiry, analytic refinement has proceeded beyond the
point at which a simple reference to an observed effusion of
affective tension can serve as an adequate explanation for the
sense of solidarity emerging from ritual occasions. Indeed, we
must explain how an individual's "subjective" emotional
states may become symbolically "objectivized"-in other words,
how diffuse states of bodily tension may be cognitively trans-
formed into intellectually comprehensible events through
incorporation into one of the group's preexisting cultural
patterns (Levi-Strauss 1963). Given this problem, the study of
symbolism has provided anthropologists with a conceptual port
of entry which allows them to investigate the crucial resonance
between the individual/sensory and the collective/ideological
aspects of ritual.
Although Scheff's work is fundamentally concerned with the
energic component of ritual (i.e., sensory-affective states),
there is little in his theory that allows us to explain the symbolic
content of specific practices. Moreover, I would suggest that
it is the symbolic structure of these events which permits ritual
participants to achieve what Scheff terms an "esthetic distance"
from their emotions, in his words, a balanced state of feeling
and thinking which allows a deep emotional resonance within
the context of cognitive control. From this perspective, the
"cognitive emphasis" of contemporary anthropologists, rather
than indicating an ethnocentric alienation from emotion and
ritual, reflects an emergent concern for the intellectual frame-
work that ties cathartic forms of affective discharge to the
structure of social order. Without this type of symbolic regula-
tion, the ritual discharge of tension would remain "undis-
tanced"-"a chaos of spasmodic impulses" (Geertz 1966:13)
lacking connection to the group's norms and values and, as a
consequence, making little contribution to the society's
cohesion.
In this sense, it might be said that anthropologists have
become vitally concerned with the symbolic structure of esthetic
492 CURRENT
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distance in ritual. To the extent that Scheff ignores or glosses
over the central importance of this problem, he has failed to
comprehend the full complexity of the approach to ritual
currently utilized by many anthropologists.
by STEPHEN FUCHS
Gyan Ashram., Mahakali Rd., Andheri East, Bombay 400093,
India. 1 II 77
First of all I would like to voice my disagreement with the
Editor, who wants to have the "sciences of man" defined in the
broadest possible way so that he can open CURRENT ANTHRO-
POLOGY to all types of articles. I cannot see how he can recon-
cile this with his policy not "to compete with journals which
have a sharp specialization." The paper under review certainly
falls in this category. It seems to me that it would fit much better
into a journal of psychology or psychiatry.
While it is welcome that the author stresses the emotional
aspect in the social function of ritual-in contrast to the too
intellectual one of Durkheim-he has restricted himself, unduly,
to a consideration of only negative elements (grief, fear,
embarrassment, and/or anger) and does not even mention in
passing that ritual may have positive effects as well (joy, a
feeling of mental uplift, encouragement, solidarity with fellow
men, etc.). Clearly, ritual plays a positive role also and not
always a negative one, as the author seems to imply.
This negative attitude must have misled the author to a
wrong interpretation of, for instance, the sweating of Balahi
media when being possessed by spirits. He says, "The curing
ritual is clearly and unambiguously marked by the indicators
of fear discharge at esthetic distance. . . ." This is a misinter-
pretation: In India sweating is a sign of the accumulation of
inner energy (tapas), not of fear. It would be just a sign that a
superhuman agency has taken possession of the medium.
The concepts of overdistancing, underdistancing, and es-
thetic distance, though a bit clumsy, are certainly helpful in
rituals which express distress, but are they applicable to all
rituals? In Indian spirit possession, these concepts do not seem
to be relevant, because the media generally lose consciousness
completely. Catharsis takes place only in the patient for whom
the rite is performed and from whom the spirit of disease is
removed with the help of the medium.
It appears to me that the author unduly generalises certain
psychic phenomena and processes which occur in particular
cases.
by JEFFREY H. GOLDSTEIN
Department of Psychology, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pa.
19122, U.S.A. 7 II 77
Scheff integrates in a single framework a variety of heretofore
separate areas from psychology, psychiatry, sociology, and
anthropology. His paper therefore deserves the widest dis-
semination in the social and behavioral sciences. As an experi-
mental social psychologist, I can comment only on Scheff's
psychology and on some of the implications of his formulation
for research.
Since the major focus of Scheff's formulation is on the
distancing of emotion, it is best to begin with some remarks on
the psychology and physiology of emotion. It is worth noting
that only four emotions are included in Scheff's discussion of
distancing. It would prove immensely beneficial to researchers
if these four emotions were unambiguously defined; instead we
are told only that they are responses to stress which consist of
increases in tension. Distancing becomes a mechanism by which
these tension states can be reduced. But why only grief, fear,
embarrassment, and anger? Why not other emotional responses
to stress, such as anxiety, depression, or dread? A related
question concerns the physiology and psychology of stress-
induced tension. While one might expect changes in physiologi-
ANTHROPOLOGY
cal activation to accompany any emotional state (Schachter
and Singer 1962), it is unclear whether Scheff means to imply
that grief, fear, etc., share some common physiology which
distinguishes them from other emotions or whether these four
emotions serve merely as exemplars. The reduction of tension
accomplished by esthetic distancing is also problematic from a
methodological point of view. Is tension reduction to be viewed
in physiological or in psychological (or other) terms? What
is discharged by proper distancing is unclear: would the
interested researcher measure changes in physiological tension
states or changes in psychological feelings of well-being?
With respect to the concept of distancing, which seems to be
a parsimonious way of dealing with a variety of phenomena,
criteria must be developed for determining a priori whether a
particular situation will be under- or overdistanced. A curvi-
linear relationship is predicted between distancing and emo-
tional discharge, with moderate (esthetic) distancing optimum
for catharsis-like tension reduction. No method is provided,
however, for determining how a situation will be experienced
by a person at a particular time. In all fairness, this has proven
to be problematic for other (nonlinear) theories in psychology
(e.g., Berlyne 1972), since an absolute measurement scale
seems called for if predictions are to be made. Nevertheless,
Scheff's criticisms of psychological research on aggression
catharsis in terms of under- or overdistancing seem accurate.
He is quite right in stating that psychologists have missed the
point of Freud and Breuer's conception of catharsis. It should
be noted that there are a number of studies on aggression
catharsis which, in terms of Scheff's theory, come close to an
esthetic distancing, and these concern an angered subject who
views a third-party retaliation against the target. In such cases,
the usual finding is reversed and a discharge seems to occur
(e.g., Bramel, Taub, and Blum 1968, Fromkin, Goldstein, and
Brock 1977).
Theoretical syntheses are rare enough in the social sciences,
and the remarks above are intended not as criticisms of Scheff's
formulation, but as issues with which researchers must contend
in putting the theory to test. I trust that that is a task which
researchers will not fail to pursue.
by DON HANDELMAN
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Hebrew University of events are structured through preliminal, liminal, and post-
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel. 6 ii 77
Scheff is correct: with some notable exceptions (cf. Briggs 1970, ments of "communitas" as features of the liminal phase. I
Kapferer 1975), anthropologists have shied from the tricky
emanations of "emotion." Generally, we accept that phe-
nomenal behavior indexes existential states. For sociological
explanation, there are ample reasons for this (cf. Blum and
McHugh 1971), but transitions to any of the nonordinary
states which compose the broad domain of expressive action
emphasize the articulation between the emotions of the
individuals and the mood-states of sociocultural events. This
Scheff has illuminated in an intriguing way.
My major cavils are the following: (1) Scheff's ideas about
"distancing" and catharsis should be applicable to a wider
range of expressive activities than ritual; and (2) his formula-
tions about ritual are overly homogeneous.
One implication of Bateson's (1972) thoughts on society as a
self-correcting system is that such a system is viable when it can
communicate certain kinds of information to itself in ways which
bypass human conscious "purpose." Within the individual, as
Scheff notes, such channels of communication are often "un-
conscious" or, more precisely, "unselfconscious." Within
society, such channels of communication are often located
within the nonordinary expressive domains of "ritual" and
"play." Here, the state of consciousness of the individual is
altered, and is articulated with nonordinary realities. This
communicational matrix permits both catharsis and social
solidarity to issue from the same expressive process.
Scheff: THE DISTANCING OF EMOTION IN RITUAL
Ritual and, for example, play, however, do not communicate
the same messages to the routine societal order (Handelman
1976). Ritual, in its overall organization, phasing, and out-
come, emphasizes the ideal character of society. As Scheff
argues, everyday life results in an accumulation of repressed
sentiments, which the individual is restrained from discharging.
In ritual, the individual is constrained to discharge repressed
emotions, but through expressive modes which reinterpret his
behavior in ways which are compatible with culturally valued
ideas and social boundaries. The catharsis of ritual is a dis-
charge from the involutions of the self as it encounters everyday
life. Ritual, then, is a reformulation of the consonance between
ideal cultural constraints and interpersonal adaptations, which
is accomplished through the "antirepression" of everyday life.
Play is also a domain of nonordinary reality. In contrast to
ritual, however, play communicates the possibility of plasticity
and flux: to change the social order, to be free of the involuted
and restrictive social self, and to be creative as an individual
among peers. Thus play stresses the irrelevancy of both the
routine constraint of everyday life and the ideal constraint of
ritual. Therefore, the catharsis of play is a discharge from the
nature of constraint itself, and this it accomplishes through
"arepression": the negation of the necessity of valued and
lived-in order.
Ritual, through antirepression, purges individuals of their
secular repression, for the benefit of a reintegrated social order.
Play, through arepression, purges the individual of the weighty
constraints of both the secular and ritual orders. Elsewhere
(Handelman 1976), I have suggested why play cannot be
accorded the same degree of cultural regard as ritual.
Scheff's conceptual scheme can be extended fruitfully to
include ritual and play, in their affinities and contrasts, in
order to link more fully the psychological being to the social
one within the manifold complementary, and contradictory,
social contexts which constitute "society." His use of the
distancing of the peekaboo game and of drama is a step in
this direction.
Secondly, the idea of appropriate distancing in ritual could
be honed through analysis of the phases of ritual. Turner
(1969, 1974) has shown how many rituals and other expressive
liminal phases and has identified "antistructure" and senti-
would suggest, as a working supposition, that underdistancing
is a feature of the spatiotemporal boundary between the pre-
liminal and liminal phases, as protagonists are introduced to,
and involved with, the impact of "distress." Esthetic distancing
is located primarily in the liminal phase, where protagonists
are clothed in symbolic types (Grathoff 1970) and are brought
to discharge and catharsis in their split roles as individual
participants and as cultural observers. Finally. overdistancing
is featured at the spatiotemporal boundary between liminal and
postliminal phases, as protagonists are eased back into everyday
life, while retaining a subdued glow of communitas and cathar-
sis more compatible with their routine tasks.
My supposition suggests that Scheff's use of distancing would
bring out the subtle ways in which mood-states and ritual
phases are attuned to one another, in necessarily interdependent
ways. The structural phasing of distancing, in the evocation of
appropriate mood-states, might clarify, for example, the place
of comedy within certain rituals (cf. Kapferer 1976).
A minor objection: neither Goffman nor Geertz represents
accurately the "negative tradition." Goffman's prime concern
is with the esthetics of form. Geertz's position appears to be
enjoined by the oft-reported rigorous esthetics of Indonesian
life. His analysis of the Balinese cockfight (Geertz 1973) would
support Scheff's thesis.

Vol. 18 N No. 3 * September 1977 493

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by ARLIE RUSSELL HOCHSCHILD
Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley, Calif.
94720, U.S.A. 4 III 77
Scheff offers us a daring and original theory of the relation
between ritual, distancing, and tension discharge. He manages
to pull together hitherto separate theories and materials from
drama, psychoanalysis, and anthropology. We do not have
many such creative efforts around, either within fields or, as
here, between thern. His is a very important contribution. I
have some trouble, though, with his conceptualization of both
emotion and distancing. Since the latter, especially, makes the
theory hard to test, I will focus on two analytic problems before
suggesting how the theory might be extended. Only with a
theory as promising as this is it worthwhile to work out the
wrinkles.
Scheff has incorporated more of Freud than he has thrown
out, and while most of the result is enriching, some is mislead-
ing. In particular, there are the same problems with the new
theory of catharsis as there were with the old one. Much of
Scheff's model of emotion seems to be based on the "hydraulic
model" of affects, a model fallen into disuse in modern ego
psychology (Schafer 1976). In this essay we often find referencesappraisal ("how bad is this really?") and secondary appraisal
to the "discharge" of emotion. Schafer notes, this usage carries
the implication of "some fixed amount of energy 'there' to be
discharged, and some mental channels 'there' for the psychic
energies to flow through . .. (p. 299). Scheff rightly notes
that emotions are not states but processes. In his theory,
however, emotions sometimes seem more like states awaiting a
process. Emotions are said to be "stored as muscular tension,"
"blocked," or "accumulated." Such terms imply that emotion
is (a) an entity quantifiable and durable enough to be "stored,"
(b) constant and unchanged for periods, as in "accumulated,"
(c) located somewhere, e.g., in the muscles, and (d) cut off
from a controlling person or agent, as in "discharged." Emo-
tion, however, has no history independent of the self. It is not
an entity which one "has," or "stores," or "discharges,"
because it is not an entity at all. There are objectively measur-
able physiological states, and we may imagine that these states
"get discharged," but this is one of a number of ways of
imagining bodily processes. Imaginative constructions are
(Schachter and Singer 1962, Hamburg, Hamburg, and De
Goza 1953).
Recent research clearly suggests that the relations of bodily
happenings, imaginative constructions, and perception are
problematic and variable, and if we are to talk about emotions,
as opposed to tension, we must see these relations as such.
Scheff's theory could still stand, and more firmly, were the
irreducible complexity of emotion to be fully acknowledged at
the start.
Some of the problem might be solved by adding Lazarus's
(1966) concept of "appraisal," which he distinguishes from
"cold perception" (see also Wallace 1956, Fritz and Mathew-
son 1957, Grinker and Spiegel 1945). A death is not auto-
matically a loss, nor is a harsh word automatically a threat.
As Lazarus notes (p. 44), "For threat to occur, an evaluation
must be made of the situation, to the effect that a harm is
signified. The individual's knowledge and beliefs contribute to
this. The appraisal of threat is not a simple perception of the
elements of the situation, but a judgement, an inference in
which the data are assimilated to a constellation of ideas and
expectations." Lazarus goes on to distinguish between primary
("what are my resources for coping with this?") as two analyti-
cally separate but nonsequential processes intervening between
a threat and a reaction (pp. 44, 52, 160). Cultural as well as
psychological factors influence each type of appraisal.
Lazarus's own research, in which he experimentally ma-
nipulated something like distancing devices, led him to the
need for this concept. Lazarus studied student reaction to a
film on crude surgical operations on the male genitals of native
Australian tribesmen. He developed three different sound
tracks for this film. One, which he called "trauma," emphasized
the mutilation of the body, the danger of disease in the opera-
tion. A second, called "denial," stressed the harmlessness of the
operation and characterized the adolescent boys as "looking
forward happily to the whole procedure, which established
them as accepted members of the tribe." A third, called
"intellectualization," offered the perspective of the "detached
attitude of the anthropologist who looks with interest at
strange customs and describes these without emotional involve-

part of the data from which we infer emotion, but they should ment" (p. 47). Students hearing the various sound tracks
be studied as imaginative constructions. The images and showed very different skin conductance curves during the
showing of the film. Lazarus reasoned that between the
metaphors of the hydraulic model once lent a certain scientific
dignity to the study of affects, but they impede our "secondary- stimulus and the physiological reaction there must be an
intervening process covered by the concept of appraisal.
process" thinking about "primary-process" phenomena.
Implied here, and elaborated elsewhere in Lazarus's work, is
I think Scheff confuses emotion with tension. He says that
the notion that distancing devices are not always "outside."
grief, fear, embarrassment, and anger are "physical states of
We often devise and apply to ourselves something like running
tension in the body which are produced by stress." As Schachter
sound tracks in our daily life.
and Singer (1962), Lazarus (1966), and others point out,
The concept of distancing strikes me as the most imaginative
however, the issue of emotion is not nearly so simple. Schafer
(1976:285) defines "to fear," for example, as contribution in Scheff's theory. It offers us a way of seeing and
naming those factors which have as their effect (a) some
among other things, to engage in fantasies of harm coming to one emotional experience (b) evaluated as rewarding. Without
from some source of danger; to develop ideas of fleeing from that optimal distancing devices we may, during and after the fact,
danger or else attacking its source; to make incipient movements
say, "I didn't feel a thing" or "Sure, I felt emotion, and it was
of attack or escape, both of which involve setting off physiological
awful." This important twofold concept needs further clarifica-
and muscular changes that enable the anticipated exertions to be
tion, however. As it stands, "distancing" refers both to the
performed; to be restless; and either to be hypervigilant and jumpy
stimulus and to the response, and the proposed relationship
or to avoid representing the danger consciously (denial, repression,
counterphobic activity). between them is thus tautological. In one section Scheff speaks
of overdistanced and underdistanced dramas ("in dramas with
This differs from the substantive language, by which we sayesthetic distance, repressed emotion is restimulated," and
we are "flooded" or "filled" with fear. People often experience "overdistanced drama does not involve the feelings of the
shallow breathing and trembling, but whether these signs, audience at all"). In another section, "underdistancing is the
together or separately, are interpreted as fear or anger depends return of repressed emotion in a situation in which it is not
on the individual's perception of self-in-the-situation. A shiver appropriate" (emphasis added). Somewhere in between these
when we are cold will be interpreted differently from a shiver two conceptualizations we find "overdistancing corresponds to
when we are faced with a gun; we know the diference by repression" (emphasis added). We need a clarification as to
checking our perception of the self-in-the-situation. Further- whether distancing refers to properties of the stimulus or to
more, these interpretations are subject to cultural influence properties of the response. The variables to be related in a

C CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY

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theory must be analytically independent, and these are not.
Perhaps the problem could be solved by choosing another
term to denote the nondistancing character of the stimulus.
Scheff's notion of ritual is a novel addition to the literature
and should not be taken, as I doubt it was meant, as a substitute
for other conceptualizations of ritual. Apart from the debate
as to whether or not ritual is good, there is the debate on
whether ritual (or the need for it) has disappeared. We might
ask: What new social forms fulfill the function that older ritual
forms used to perform? Scheff's paper suggests that we might
look in modern society for two coexisting characteristics of new
social forms: (a) distancing devices and (b) social roles. He
notes that many primitive cultures designate a special place
and period for mourning. These suggest a temporary role
legitimating extreme behavior and experience. Such roles offer
what Goffman (1974) calls "freakout privileges"-privileges in
the sense that the freakout is allowed to occur without penalty
of a "trait demerit" or general defamation of character in the
eyes of others. Different types of encounter groups, sensitivity
groups, and consciousness-raising groups probably offer differ-
ent types of distancing device and legitimating role for safe
dealings with past traumas. It might be an equally important
task, however, to turn the thesis around and search in a
systematic way for the differential absence of these two elements
in the lives of various social groups and classes. Then the ques-
tion becomes how people deal with trauma without the aid of
facilitating social forms.
by BRUCE KAPFERER
Department of Anthropology, University of Adelaide, Adelaide,
South Australia 5001, Australia. 4 iii 77
I find Scheff's essay most instructive and stimulating. He
points accurately to the neglect of emotion or the glossing of it
in the study of ritual activity and makes important suggestions
as to how a greater concentration upon it can be valuably
incorporated into the description of the ritual process. Par-
ticularly useful are his critical evaluation of Freud's approach
to catharsis and his own distinction between emotional distress
and emotional discharge. This is so because students of ritual
action have often confused ritual occasions which exhibit
heightened states of emotion with the discharge of emotional
tension and for this reason may have falsely located or inade-
quately accounted for the therapeutic efficacy of certain ritual
actions. There is a strong sense in which Scheff's orientation
hearkens back (correctly, I think) to the Aristotelian notion of
katharsis, as a separation from an overwhelming subordination
to emotions of anger, fear, horror, etc. (see Entralgo 1970:196-
204).
For his purpose, Scheff defines ritual as the "distanced re-
enactment of situations of emotional distress." He draws on the
field of dramatic criticism and isolates three degrees of dis-
tancing: underdistancing, overdistancing, and esthetic distanc-
ing. It is in the situation of esthetic distancing that, if I read
Scheff correctly, catharsis can achieve its potential of both
building up emotional tension and discharging emotion,
whereby ritual participants can both experience their emotions
and separate-distance-themselves from them so that they
are not overwhelmed.
My own data on demon exorcism in the south of Sri Lanka
would broadly support Scheff's argument that the therapeutic
effectiveness of ritual occurs at esthetic distance. However, I
do have certain reservations concerning Scheff's approach as
it stands and some suggestions for its possible development.
1. I am uncertain as to how Scheff determines situations of
underdistancing, overdistancing, and esthetic distancing. He
appears to rely considerably on the subjective feelings of the
participants and his interpretation of the meaning of their
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Scheff: THE DISTANCING OF EMOTION IN RITUAL
bodily actions. Thus, the Balahis of India are judged to be at
esthetic distance because they sway gently on their heels and
do not dance. In the Sinhalese case of possession, Alice Nona
is at esthetic distance when she simultaneously believes and
disbelieves that she is possessed.
I would suggest that the type of distancing which charac-
terizes participation in ritual not be determined in these ways.
Whether the activity of a particular participant is overdistanced,
underdistanced, or esthetically distanced is a property of the
total performance situation. Thus, these descriptive labels
should be applied to behaviour by reference to the way the
organization of performance integrates participants into the
ritual action and by reference to the cognitive ideas which
underlie ritual participation and which provide the interpreta-
tional logic for the attribution of meaning to such participation.
It is quite possible, given this orientation, that a gentle swaying
on the heels, for example, viewed in relation to the total
performance context, might be indicative of underdistancing
rather than esthetic distancing.
Major Sinhalese demon exorcisms (yak tovil) are performed
from dusk to dawn and are organized into three periods-an
evening watch, a midnight watch, and a morning watch (see
Obeyesekere 1969; Kapferer 1974, 1977). In the first period,
the patient will often tremble, shake, and enter a quasi-trance
state. In the midnight period, patients often enter a total state
of entrancement and dance violently in the performance arena,
eventually to collapse exhausted. In accordance with Scheff's
approach, we might identify the patient's behaviour in the first
period as occurring at esthetic distance and in the second as
occurring in a situation of underdistancing. Closer attention to
the organization of the ritual performance as a whole and the
cognitive understandings held in general as to the meaning of
various actions at these times would suggest a different inter-
pretation. The patient's behaviour in the first period is indica-
tive of the building up of emotional distress in a ritual situation
of underdistancing. During the, evening watch, the exorcism
specialists focus the ritual activity on the patient and seal off,
exclude, other members of the audience (which might number
over 200) from the action. The audience, organizationally, is
overdistanced and expresses this by drinking, gossiping, and
playing cards. The objective of the exorcists is to create the
malicious, bloodthirsty world of demons, and to achieve this
they must exclude other "normal" everyday interpretations
held by the audience concerning the nature of demons and their
relationship to other supernaturals and human beings. The
organization of the ritual at this stage, as it relates to the patient,
is to create a situation of underdistancing. The patient's
behaviour to Sinhalese observers is indicative of distress at total
immersion in a demonic hell. In the midnight period, when the
patient is possessed in the midst of sequences of elaborate
drumming and dancing, a situation tending towards esthetic
distance prevails. The magnificence of the dance, for example,
is directed inward to the patient and outward to the audience.
The members of the audience, who are not immersed in the
supposed diabolical reality of the patient, are nonetheless
brought to the margin as observers of the terrifying world
constructed around the patient. The possession of the patient
can be viewed as emotional discharge, and this is cognitively
alluded to in the ideas of Sinhalese concerning this period.
When the patient collapses, it is understood that the main
illness-causing demon has relinquished his grip, has left the
patient and been ritually chased away by the exorcists. (De-
mons, incidentally, are thought of by Sinhalese as characteris-
tic of certain well-defined emotions.) Given my analysis, the
patient's behaviour cannot be conceived as representative of
esthetic distancing, although it does occur in an overall per-
September 1977 495
formance context which could be viewed as one of esthetic
distance.
2. I would stress, more than Scheff does, the importance of
taking a cognitive orientation, despite the fact that, as Scheff
argues, the cognitive approaches of such ethnographers as
Geertz and Malinowski have led to a neglect of the role of
emotion in ritual. Sinhalese, for example, have complex theories
concerning emotion and the behavioural indications of various
types of emotion. It is critical for analysis that these be grasped
for an adequate interpretation and understanding of the mean-
ing of activity in ritual to be achieved. This aside, however, the
separation of individuals from their fears and terrors, an
important element of catharsis on which its therapeutic
effectiveness to some extent rests, is dependent on the manipu-
lation of cognitive frames of reference. Possession might produce
emotional discharge but not necessarily separation, although
it might be a useful device preparatory to separation. Sinhalese
consider major exorcisms to be potentially the most therapeuti-
cally effective, and it is only in such rituals that extended
sequences of drama occur.
I would suggest that the dramatic sequences enacted in the
closing period (morning watch) of major exorcisms constitute
a further elaboration of a situation of esthetic distancing, which
to some extent is introduced in the midnight watch period.
Understanding how this esthetic distancing is achieved requires
attention to the cognitive content of the drama, which, in turn,
develops a situation in which the patient can further express a
discharge of emotion and, moreover, signify a separation from
an overwhelming concern with personal terrors.
There is insufficient space available to describe the later
dramatic sequences, save to state that they are highly comic
and that the comedy in them serves to link the everyday world
of the audience, where individuals are not obsessed with
demons and where demons are subordinated to the control of
human beings, with the highly distressful, obsessive, demon-
controlled world of the patient. During the drama, the patient
is expected to laugh. This laughter can be interpreted in the
logic of Sinhalese as purifying and representative of further
emotional discharge. It also signifies the separation of the
patient from a terrifying reality and defines the patient,
together with the audience, as observer. The enactment of the
drama involves a complex manipulation of ideas which creates
a situation for the patient to step outside the role of one who is
afflicted by demons.
Scheff's essay is, I think, very suggestive for the analysis of
ritual. More than most current approaches, it directs attention
to the dynamics of performance, which along with emotion has
been greatly neglected.
by IVAN KARP
Department of Anthropology, Indiana University, Bloomington, Ind.ritual. I do not think that we have evidence that traditional
47401, U.S.A. 15 iII 77 societies lack alienated ritual.
Scheff's interest in the therapeutic value of ritual arises out of
his dissatisfaction with his earlier work on the relationship of
labelling theory to mental illness (1966). In a recent book
(1975) he has argued that the symbolic interactionism
that he has advocated cannot account for changes either in
attitudes or in the inability of actors to cope with their everyday
circumstances-the inability that leads in some circumstances
to the application of a mental-illness label. As a result, Scheff
has turned to a theory of personal breakdown in which the
primary causal factor is the repression of emotion, particularly
during the formative years. Through this he hopes to integrate
cultural and individual factors in an approach to what is
called mental illness. (As a labelling theorist, he does not accept
"mental illness" as an accurate designation for what happens
to persons no longer able to cope with their circumstances. I
agree.) Thus he seems to see advanced industrialized societies as
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both in error in their child-rearing practices and deficient in
mechanisms for adjusting to the results of the repression of
emotion. His paper may be viewed as part of a continuing
effort to elaborate a general theory of personal collapse.
The difficulty with Scheff's approach lies in its overly simple
description of the relationships among emotions and ritual.
There can be no doubt that rituals can be associated with very
strong emotional responses, but the association is both complex
and contingent upon other factors. Scheff is entirely correct
when he identifies a positive and a negative attitude towards
ritual in modern scholarship. The negative attitude is much
rarer than he is willing to concede, however. The problem is
not so much that there are two different perspectives as that
the meaning ritual has for actors varies both within a society
and between different societies. We are here confronted with
the problem of symbolic consensus. A number of studies have
shown that standardized meanings for actors may not be
assumed (see, for example, Fernandez 1965). If meanings may
show such variability, then surely emotional response will vary
for much the same reasons. Many approaches, particularly
that of Turner (1967), assume that symbols have innate
capacities to arouse emotions within actors. Scheff would seem
to accept this view. He argues that ritual provides proper
distancing from emotion for actors because it arouses the
proper, esthetic, emotional attitude.
This argument fails to distinguish between sensations and
emotions. Symbols may very well arouse sensations. These are
only experienced as emotions when they are defined and shared
as such with other actors. For example, Skulkans (1975) has
shown that in a Welsh spirtualist cult sensations associated with
pain become emotions when shared in healing rites; in these
circumstances, pain becomes suffering, and suffering is some-
thing that can be controlled and shared. Scheff's account
assumes that private experience is mediated by ritual without
public sharing. This leads to his conclusion that modern
society is without meaningful rituals, because in modern society
there is a paucity of healing rites. This rather romantic view
idealizes the quality of life in traditional societies and neglects
to seek to discover whether there are situations which function
as ritual in modern society.
I have tried to analyze one such situation in an account of a
Marx Brothers movie as ritual (Karp 1976). I have shown that
actors' private assessment of public occasions is given expression
in this movie, thereby both validating and objectifying the
discrepancy between the actor's experience of the social
structure and the acknowledgment of claims to status that
persons are sometimes forced to make. Hence we may find the
equivalent of rituals in the expressive forms provided by
advanced industrial societies. Some other ritual occasions may
be devoid of meaning, largely because they are not relevant to
ihe experience of the actors. Here we may speak of alienated
This perspective assumes that for rituals to have therapeutic
value they must be relevant to the social experience of the
actors. It does not assume that ritual automatically arouses
emotions. It also does not assume that there is a particular set
approach
of emotions naturally associated with given situations and that,
as in Scheff's account, certain types of experiences will arouse
universally held emotions. Here his paper is reminiscent of
Malinowski's (1948) account of the emotion of fear universally
associated with death. When Scheff tells us that "ritual is
unique in that it meets individual and collective needs simul-
taneously, allowing individuals to discharge accumulated
distress and creating social solidarity in the process," he
virtually reinvents Malinowski, errors and all. As Radcliffe-
Brown (1952) has pointed out, it is as reasonable to assume that
rituals create distressing emotions as it is to assume that they
alleviate them.
ANTHROPOLOGY
 by AARON LAZARE
Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston,
Mass. 02114, U.S.A. 7 III 77
Scheff reopens an issue that has been prematurely closed in
psychoanalysis and psychiatry-that catharsis itself is not
ultimately therapeutic and that cures using catharsis are
temporary. In clinical practice, helping patients deal with
delayed grief, primarily by catharsis, is widely recognized as
being therapeutic, even though this notion has not yet been
incorporated into the psychiatric literature.
The concept of distancing is quite useful in understanding
not only the effectiveness of myths, but also the therapeutic
aspects of psychotherapy and the role of the therapist. Therapies
that are ineffective are those that are overintellectualized and
permit no affective interchange or those that flood the patient
in an underdistanced manner. This flooding is often dangerous
in that it can cause a precipitous regression leading to psychosis.
The most effective therapy allows the patient to return to the
painful feelings and memories while remaining apart from them.
The effective therapist is one who facilitates a situation of
appropriate distancing by encouraging the patient to be both a
participant in and an observer of his distress. Ideally, the
patient realizes that the powerful feelings he may experience
towards the therapist in the transference belong to other people
from other times of his life. In the psychotic transference, the
patient has lost the ability to distance himself.
Finally, the effective clinician needs to take into account the
patient's character and ego functioning in understanding
therapeutic distancing. Many obsessional patients, for instance,
require therapeutic activity to overcome the natural tendency
to overdistance, while the sicker, borderline patients require
considerable therapeutic caution to diminish the tendency
towards underdistancing.
In sum, Scheff questions some old assumptions of psycho-
analysis and offers new concepts which can make useful
contributions to the psychotherapeutic process. His paper will
be appreciated by mental health professionals.
by PHILIPPE MITRANI
Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 6, rue de Tournon,
75006 Paris, France. 1 III 77
For Scheff, the "vital function" performed by ritual is "the
appropriate distancing of emotion," and the theory he proposes
considers ritual and myth as dramatic forms for coping with
universal emotional distress. I feel that this is an oversimplifi-
cation and that there is some sort of confusion in this way of
looking at ritual. If the term is to include, as Scheff, citing
Chapple (1970), suggests, rituals of the life cycle (birth,
initiation, marriage, death) as well as social manifestations
associated with religious beliefs and myths, then it is quite in-
appropriate to consider them as isolated phenomena from which
generalizations can be drawn without reference to the specific
sociocultural contexts in which they acquire their meaning. In
this connection, Scheff confuses the function performed by
certain institutions with their value, that is, with the intellectual
or moral judgment that can be made of them. In other words,
he assimilates what social scientists think of ritual and what the
people performing it think and do about it. Although it may
be relevant to know how social scientists think in order to
understand their interpretations of facts, it is nevertheless
mainly the consideration of how people who have certain
institutions think and act that is the concern of social science.
At any rate, the examples given by Scheff to illustrate the two
positions towards ritual exhibit some discrepancy; part belong
to the ethnography of traditional societies and part are either
value judgments or opinions concerning contemporary Ameni-
involves other persons in feedback. Adult emotions are thus
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Scheff: THE DISTANCING OF EMOTION IN RITUAL
can society or general views on social life, such as Freud's,
derived by analogy from individual psychology.
Aside from these points, as I see it, Scheff's very purpose
raises two major controversial issues. He seems to imply that
since our civilisation disregards emotions-an assumption I
would not take for granted in any case-those other societies in
which ritual is usually performed will be so completely im-
bedded in emotion that the main function of ritual will be to
cope with it. This implication seems to be associated with the
somewhat obsolete view that traditional societies are frozen,
so to speak, in affectivity. What Scheff seems to overlook is
that these societies, like our own, though in a different way,
mix elements that are rational with elements that are felt
and lived.
The main mistake of Scheff's approach is one frequently
noted in social science: trying to interpret social institutions in
terms of individual behaviour when, in fact, as more and more
studies on the matter tend to show, it is the former that accounts
for or shapes the latter. To say that there are sets of universal
human behaviour such as emotions and that any social mani-
festation is likely to interfere with them is a triviality. To say,
on the other hand, that this is precisely the main function of
these manifestations and consequently of the institutions that
frame them is nonsense.
This criticism applies, I think, to Scheff's interpretation of
catharsis in the theater and its "distancing emotional effect."
Differential attitudes towards the theatrical performance were
known to the ancient Greeks, who recognized two positions:
the pathogonic attitude, feeling the drama, and the theorogonic
attitude, observing the drama. This mechanism, however, is
not by the same token transferable to and at the same time
explanatory of ritual and myth. Here again, such an interpre-
tation ignores the results of many investigations in the field of
social and religious anthropology showing the multiplicity of
meaning in ritual and myth when examined in a given social
context. That among others there could be some cathartic
effect involved in them does not reduce their role to that
through a somewhat simplistic stimulus-response model to
which all human behaviour would conform.
The danger of ethnocentrism, initially raised by Scheff, seems
finally far greater when appealing to psychology for the inter-
pretation of social structure or of systems of beliefs. In this
connection, no matter how comprehensive the analysis, it
never provides a shortcut to the deep meaning of social be-
haviour, bypassing, so to speak, sociological or ethnological
investigations.
by KURT 0. SCHLESINGER
Department of Psychiatry, Mt. Zion Hospital, San Francisco,
Calif. 94115, U.S.A. 5 III 77
Scheff's stimulating paper raises certain questions about affect,
catharsis, and the function of ritual.
Freud evolved most of his theory out of the method of free
association, not from the cathartic method as Scheff states.
Persistent in this paper is an underlying, as well as explicit,
motif which minimizes the cognitive and interpersonal aspects
of a theory of affect and ritual. Elsewhere (Schlesinger 1976) I
have discussed the affective-cognitive balance in ritual.
I consider affects as having both built-in stereotyped and
experientially developed patterns of expression. The integration
of earlier innate patterns and later symbolizing and concep-
tualization make the human emotional response fairly complex
(Basch 1976). The pattern of affective expression from its
inception acts as a signalling and communicating device which
September 1977 497
from their infantile origins involved in an emotional network
that includes others. This is at some variance with Scheff's
emphasis on emotions as a cumulative entity to be blocked,
discharged, and distanced. The peekaboo game, cited as a
paradigm by Scheff, I would see as an interpersonal ritual with
achievement of congruence after temporary distress over the
stressful incongruence of the perceived maternal absence. The
incongruence-congruence alternation so quickly resolved is
experienced as joy by the infant and the mother. The infant's
messages are: "Your absence causes me distress, your returning
joy. My awareness that I have contact with you enables me to
handle my distress and enhances my joy." Reciprocal emotions
about leaving and returning are engendered in the mother.
"I perceive your distress and it engenders caring emotions in
me. I vicariously participate in your joy and I also feel joy
at our reunion." There is also the fact the mother was once
herself an infant and has emotionally loaded memories of that
which enhance the ritual of separation and reunion, whether in
ritual play or in actuality. This comparison of our respective
handling of the peekaboo ritual illustrates my critique of
Scheff's approach. I feel that he does not place enough empha-
sis on the subjective perception of affective situations and thus
undervalues reinterpretation rather than catharsis as being
therapeutic. For example, human rage results from the percep-
tion of a situation as threatening and the need for a fighting
response. Because of human memory and the effect of uncon-
scious and subjective interpretation and symbolization, many
such threats are threatening subjectively, and the rage vanishes
if and when the situation is otherwise perceived. The solution
thus is not in catharsis, but in reinterpretation, which alters
perceived meanings.
To be sure, there are in emotional interactions significant
concomitant physiologic changes and discharge phenomena.
These are relatable to stereotyped subcortical patterns which
are present in the neonate and upon which experiential and
symbolizing neocortical patterns are superimposed (Tomkins
1962). These primitive patterns are a necessary but not a
sufficient condition for adult emotions. It is reductionist to
emphasize discharge and blockage and fail to emphasize the
communicative, affective-cognitive aspects of adult emotions.
To be fair, Scheff's concept of distancing is potentially a
concept of affective-cognitive integration. The participant-
observer duality is an excellent conceptual tool for understand-
ing emotions and ritual. I would extend this concept to spell
out more clearly that distancing involves reinterpretation of an
interpersonal communication which has previously been
perceived as incongruent. Such an emphasis facilitates the
transition from a theory of emotions to a theory of ritual which
focuses on its shared communal aspects and grounds it in the
infant-maternal emotional network.
by JOHN D. STOECKLE
Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston,
Mass. 02114, U.S.A. 20 iII 77
I find Scheff's paper highly original and provocative. He not
only analyzes the elements of catharsis and the dynamics that
distancing has in its effectiveness, but further explains the
emotional significance of ritual itself, whether as theater or
cure. In doing so he stimulates our thinking about catharsis in
everyday life.
Because catharsis is part of the "social functions" of medical
practice, the distancing described here is a useful idea. In
medical practice the patient often comes to the doctor not only
because of specific complaints, but because there are no rituals,
or not enough of them, in ordinary life to do the work of grief.
Unlike the practice of the Greek doctor, who treated his
patient before an audience in the public square, modern doc-
toring is not organized as a ritual, except in those infrequent
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encounters with families at home or in special therapeutic
groups. The doctor's curing encounter is dyadic, confined to
the office with the doors closed. In this situation, helping the
patient get the appropriate distance can define the clinical task.
Scheff's distinction between distress and discharge of emotion
is perhaps the hardest to follow. The usual psychophysiologic
studies do not make this distinction, though it is conceivable
that they might. Most studies deal simply with before (e.g.,
distress that is open or suppressed) and after (e.g., relief),
neither of which measures the discharging.
I especially like his analysis because of the importance
attached to catharsis. His view, indirectly of course, gives added
importance to the nontechnical acts of doctoring that facilitate
catharsis, an aspect of medical work that has been neglected
(Stoeckle, Zola, and Davidson 1964).
by JAN VAN BAAL
Postbus 57, Doorn, The Netherlands. 20 I 77
Scheff's theory has the charm of simplicity, but the simplicity
raises a number of fairly serious objections when it comes to
generalizing the basic principles into an encompassing theory
of ritual. Three of them should be forwarded as briefly as
possible.
1. The continuum suggested between feeling and cognition
in terms of distancing ignores the fact that these two different
functions always appear in conjunction. Cognition is concerned
with the observation of an object, an observation that can be
described in rational terms. Feeling is the awareness of an
inner state, an experience strongly refractory to expression in
descriptive terms. As there is always an inner state, every
human act is accompanied by feelings, though not necessarily
feelings belonging to any of the four categories admitted by
Scheff. In the act of cognition feelings are usually vague, but
they are not absent. Solving a puzzle is often experienced as
pleasurable, but occasionally it arouses feelings of irritation or
even anger. An intellectual analysis of the human condition, a
cognitive activity, can arouse strong coterminous feelings of
alienation and despondency. Although I agree that distancing
is maximal in cognition and minimal in feeling, this does not
imply that in the expression of affect distancing is always
minimal. The artist expressing his feelings in poetry and the
composer giving them shape in a musical composition are
maximal distancers. Music by Bach is a case in point. It also
is a good illustration of the fact that the forms of expression are
culturally determined, another complication which has more
consequences than can be summarized in a few lines. I must
confine myself to the statement that it is all more complicated
than Scheff's theory can explain.
2. Scheff explains neurosis and the beneficent effect of ritual
as the consequence of, and the answer to, frustrated expression
of feelings, primarily those of grief, fear, embarrassment, and
anger. This again is an oversimplification, certainly insofar as
neurosis is concerned. It has its ultimate cause not in a frustra-
tion of expression but in an inner refusal of the frustrated
individual to accept his universe and his own position in it.
This is why so often the sufferer from neurosis, once he has
been cured of an annoying symptom, tends to develop a new
one. It is not the frustration of the expression of the wish, but
the wish itself, that is the cause of his problem. The problem
persists as long as he fails to find his proper place in his universe
by changing his basic attitudes.
3. The emphasis on the cathartic effect of esthetic distance
in ritual and on the concomitant mixture of belief and disbelief
fails to explain the frequent occurrence of curing rituals in
which the patient's belief in the efficacy of the rite is the
decisive element. Just as a patient dies from sorcery because he
believes that sorcery is effective, so he is cured of illness by his
belief in the power of the curing ritual. A small number of
ANTHROPOLOGY
 persuasive cases are recounted by Levi-Strauss in the chapters Scheff: THE DISTANCING OF EMOTION IN RITUAL
"Le Sorcier et sa Magie" and "L'Efficacite symbolique" of his
Anthropologie Structurale (1958). rather, other kinds of emotions are dominant: people are glad
Another category of rituals which the theory fails to explain to have come through the year and stayed alive, married a wife,
is that of initiation rites such as the Australian ones. They do and reaped a harvest. Even many rites of passage-initiation,
not aim at curing the novices of distress or anxiety, but at circumcision, etc. -may be emotionally charged more in the
instilling fear and awe into them. The real aim of the rite (of Durkheimian way, by the we-feeling of the group, than by
any rite) is not to take away fear and frustration, but to put the individual distress. Scheff's choices, curing and burial rituals,
participant in his proper place in his universe (his society are among the few kinds in which distress is apparent. He has
included). For a better understanding of the great variety of made his task too easy. He should have been trying to falsify his
rituals, Platvoet's distinction between low-intensity and high- theory by pointing out how it holds for those many instances
intensity communication is of interest (cf. Van Baal 1976:168). of ritual in which individual distress is not apparent at all.
Low-intensity communication is the ideal form for man's In order to do so, he would have had to consider more emo-
relations with the supernatural. When things run smoothly tions and more ways of reenactment. Furthermore, in the
and anxiety is absent, low-intensity rites suffice to keep up proposed theory the distancing stems from the possibility of
the individual's communication with his universe. A good case switching from the participant's role to that of the observer and
is that of saying grace before meals, which rarely has the crisis- back. In ritual this would imply a mixture of believing and
like character stressed by Chapple in the passage quoted by nonbelieving at the same time. I think this is wrong. The
Scheff. It is a routine rite reminding participants of their distancing comes from the setting itself: the staging, timing,
proper positions and attitudes vis-a-vis their universe. Con- and structuring of the reenacting events. In ritual, as in drama,
trariwise, when misfortune or anxiety prevail, rites of the high-the various emotionally charged experiences all have their
intensity type are called for. They can be of any kind, but they proper time, place, and internal relations of reenactment, and
all aim at restoring proper communication between the this very ordering is a sufficient condition for distance. There
individual and his universe, a communication which-and is no need to call for an ambivalent attitude in the participant.
here I share Scheff's appreciation of the importance of the If the impact of the total setting were taken into account, the
affective life-has strongly affective components and is of a distancing theory, with its emphasis on the individual, could
far more comprehensive nature than communication by the be joined with the approaches of ritual structure and symbolism
exchange of messages (cf. Van Baal 1971: chaps. 10 and 11). in a forceful and productive set of theoretical notions for
If in various rituals moderate distancing tends to be conducive understanding ritual.
to that end, it is not because this moderation causes the effect
of the ritual, but because the ritual symbols, as symbols of
man's universe, are themselves a mixture of cognitive and by THOMAS RHYS WILLIAMS
affective elements that, together, are provocative of moderate Department of Anthropology, Ohio State University, Columbus,
distancing. Ohio 43210, U.S.A. 1 III 77
This discussion provides some new perspectives concerning the
psychological functions of ritual. Any effort to bring the concept
by W. E. A. VAN BEEK of emotion into effective consideration in the study of ritual is
Department of Cultural Anthropology, State University of Utrecht,
worthwhile. Scheff has a fundamental theoretical problem,
Utrecht, The Netherlands. 3 i 77 however, in his uses of the concepts of emotion and ritual. In
Scheff has presented an elegant theory about a much neglected
contemporary psychology, emotion is considered to be the
subject, affect in ritual. I think his article is a worthwhile physiological form in which humans experience their estimates
attempt to cover this subject. Scheff notes two distinct orienta-of the harmful and beneficial effects of stimuli in their social
tions toward ritual, a positive and a negative. In his introduc- and cultural environments. Thus fear, shame, grief, and anger
tion, the former emerges much more clearly than the latter; the are specific physiological events presumed by an observer to be
negative orientation is presented as an undertone of writings directly related to other events characteristic of a group of
otherwise positively oriented toward ritual. The distinction individuals or a society. Therefore, a crucial theoretical
between these two orientations, however, is due to the level of problem in analysis of emotion and ritual is one of being
abstraction from empirical data. On the whole, the positive empirically certain that what goes on in an individual's viscera
view of ritual is related to its social function (marking of the in the way of physiological changes in the autonomic and
transition from one phase of group activities to another, rein- endocrine systems is related to events in the world external to
forcement of the social order, group coherence, etc.), while the the individual. Scheff seeks to employ a set of mediating con-
negative evaluation of ritual is based on the observation of the cepts (e.g., catharsis, distancing) to bridge the very wide
individual in his group, an individual grappling with different theoretical gap between the largely nonobservable and highly
perspectives on life, with ephemeral moods and anxieties-in transitory physiological events occurring within one individual
short, bearing the brunt of the unity of the social group. Thusand the directly observable social events in which a number of
the different orientations only seemingly contradict, and in individuals act in culturally structured ways. He seeks to deal
fact supplement, each other. By showing how seemingly painful with this problem by focussing his attention on ritual as essen-
emotional processes can be advantageous for the emotional tially the concern of one individual, or on an idiographic
equilibrium of the individual and through that for his group, conceptual level. In the shift of theoretical focus to ritual as a
Scheff could have integrated the two approaches in a clearer property of behavior characteristic of one individual, internal
way. physiological events are moved closer to the external and
My main comment concerns ritual. Scheff's definition of observable; one has only to observe clinically the behavior of
ritual is too narrow; he limits ritual to "those situations of the individual to describe the physiological events that are
emotional distress that are virtually universal in a given cul- assumed to be directly related to the external events occurring
ture." Many kinds of ritual, however, fall outside the scope of in a ritual form.
this definition, viz., most communal rites, such as the rites of Ritual and myth have most often been considered by anthro-
the yearly cycle. Stress may be present in them, e.g., in rain- pologists to be nomothetic phenomena, that is, behavior charac-
making rites, but on the whole these are not dependent upon teristic of a group or society that is stereotyped, highly pat-
distress. This does not mean that emotional content is absent; terned in form, and widely shared. As Goody (1961) has noted,

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ritual and myth do not depend solely upon the preference or
the acts of one individual. Rather, they are collective phe-
nomena, engaged in at a specified place and at a particular
time. As an anthropologist who considers one of his research
interests to be in the area of "psychological anthropology," I
can only laud a search for the psychological meaning of ritual
and myth. That search must begin, however, with a clear
statement of the conceptual domains and problems involved in
trying to relate social and cultural behavior forms causally to
events taking place in the physiology of one individual. I think
Scheff's mediating concepts cannot adequately bear the burden
he has placed upon them.
Reply
by THOMAS J. SCHEFF
Santa Barbara, Calif., U.S.A. 14 iv 77
I will divide the issues raised by the reviewers into two groups:
those that refer to the theory of distancing and those that refer
to the application of this theory to ritual. I will begin by
responding to the first.
The concern that appears most frequently in the comments
involves the testability of the theory and, particularly, whether
the central concept of distancing has been defined in such a
way as to allow testing. Goldstein, Hochschild, Kapferer, and
Williams suggest that distancing is not clearly enough defined.
Beck, Daniels, and Carroll make the same point and go on to
suggest that distancing may not be defirxable apart from its
purported results, which would make the theory circular.
I will argue that distancing can be defined a priori and that
the theory is not circular. Given some of the comments,
however, I can see how my terminology might have been
difficult to understand. Hochschild asks whether distancing
refers to the stimulus or to the response. My answer is that I
have used the concept to refer to both: to two presumably
parallel but quite different phenomena. I have applied the
concept, in a uniform way, to two sets of phenomena that are
usually treated separately: the arrangements of stimuli that
create emotional effects, on the one hand, and, with reference
to the response, as a description of the relationship of a response
to repressed emotion, on the other.
I have defined the degree of distance of the response as the
extent to which one is reacting to the present situation, as
against some past trauma. A totally underdistanced response to
distressful stimuli, according to the theory, involves the return
of repressed emotion: one is reliving the emotional components
of a distressful scene from the past and is completely oblivious
to the present scene. At the other extreme, a totally overdis-
tanced response involves complete attention to nondistressful
events of the present; one is completely oblivious to the emo-
tional tension that a distressful stimulus has produced. I equate
total overdistancing with complete repression. At optimal
distance, one experiences the co-presence of past distress and
present safety. The degree of distancing concerns the disposition
of involvement between a present scene and a past one.
In a parallel way, I have applied the concept of distancing
to the arrangement of the stimuli. Koestler (1964:80) speaks of
tickling as a "mock attack." He means that for tickling to be
successful, i.e., to produce laughter, it must consist of virtually
equal parts of distress-provoking stimuli-the "attack" (the
tickler reaches for the baby and says, "I'm going to get you")-
and stimuli which reassure the baby that the situation is
"mock,' free of danger. The tickler's tone of voice and smile,
and other expressions of safety, must exactly counterbalance
the threatening stimuli, so that the baby's involvement will
be divided between participation in and observation of its
own distress. In a way that anticipates my conceptualization
of distancing, Koestler notes that tickling may fail either by
containing too much of the attack element (strangers are less
successful in tickling a baby than its mother) or too much of
the mock element (one cannot tickle oneself). That is, the
tickling of a stranger can be expected to be an underdistanced
stimulus for most babies, and the baby's tickling of itself is an
overdistanced stimulus. Older children's delight in shrieking
and laughing on a roller coaster can be understood in a similar
way. The roller coaster is a material manifestation of the
engineering of two contradictory sets of stimuli, one set de-
signed to produce the effect of imminent danger and the other
that of complete safety.
The elements of those rituals which produce catharsis can be
considered in the same way. Any social form (whether ritual,
drama, game, or psychotherapy) composed of a more or less
exact balance between distressful and reassuring stimuli may
produce in at least some of its participants an optimally dis-
tanced emotional response, which in turn may lead to catharsis.
In this way the concept of distancing can be applied to the
stimulus in the same way it is applied to the response.
In answer to Goldstein's question, the tension reduction
predicted by the theory as a result of catharsis at optimal
distance is both psychological and physiological: participants
who experience catharsis should feel subjectively less tense and
appear less tense to observers, and their vital signs should
change in a way indicating decrease in tension.
The theory predicates four analytically separable steps in a
cathartic sequence: (1) exposure to an arrangement of stimuli
which is optimally distanced (i.e., contains an exact balance of
distressful and reassuring stimuli); (2) the participant's response,
in which there is an exact balance between involvement in
present safety and past distress; (3) catharsis, as signaled by
crying with tears for grief, laughing for embarrassment, etc.;
and (4) decrease in tension. Since these four steps occur in a
temporal sequence, it should be possible to obtain operational
measures of their occurrence. I have already done so for three
of them in forthcoming studies of audience response to drama.
In one of these studies, I tested the hypothesis that the amount
of laughter (Step 3) for individuals viewing two film comedies
will be correlated with the reduction of tension (Step 4) as
measured subjectively (mood adjective check list) and physio-
logically (heart rate) (Scheff 1977a). In the two audiences,
all of the correlations were in the predicted direction, and all
but one of them were statistically significant. A second study,
of audience response to comedy tapes, gave similar results
(Scheff and Scheele 1977).
In a third study (Scheff 1976), I examined the association
between the structure of the script in a play (Step 1) and
collective laughter in the audience (Step 3). As an index of
optimal distancing in the stimulus, I used Evans's (1960)
concept of "discrepant awareness." Evans argues that comedy
effects are dependent on the audience's knowing something
that one or more of the characters are unaware of; e.g.,
members of the audience laugh at Charley's Aunt because they
are aware that Charley's aunt is not a woman but a man.
Without this knowledge the audience would be just as confused
as the naive characters, and there would be no laughter. I
reasoned that each time the members of the audience are
reminded that they know something that a character doesn't
know, their involvement may be nicely balanced between
emotional participation with that character, on the one hand,
and (since they know something the character doesn't know)
separation of self from the character, as observers, on the other.
In the production of Twelfth Night which I studied, there were
280 events of collective laughter; these events correlated
moderately strongly (the percentage difference was .45, which
is significant at the .01 level of probability) with the precoded
occurrence of discrepant awareness in the script.
Step 2 in the sequence, the degree to which the individual is

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involved with present safety, on the one hand, and past distress,
on the other, has not been operationally defined. Sullivan
(1953:28-29) referred frequently to what he called the para-
taxic mode of experience, which I take to be equivalent to what
I am describing here as the underdistanced response. Inferences
as to the disposition of an individual's attention between a
present situation and repressed emotions have been made on
the basis of two kinds of evidence: introspective data and
external appearance.
When an individual says, "I was scared out of my wits" or
"I was so angry I went berserk," such experiences should be
classified as totally underdistanced responses. Testimony that
a person is experiencing no feeling at all or feeling empty,
hollow, blank, or numb is an indication of overdistancing.
Similarly, comments about feeling both happy and sad at the
same time, for example, can be taken to indicate optimal
distance.
Evidence for the existence of the state I have defined as
esthetic distance is also available in the findings of the neuro-
surgeon Wilder Penfield. In the course of mapping the regions
of the brain through electrical stimulation, he found a region
in which the responses seem to fit exactly the model described
here (Penfield and Roberts 1959:50): "A young man, J. T.,
who had recently come from . . . South Africa, cried out when
the superior surface of his right temporal lobe was being
stimulated: 'Yes, Doctor! . . . Now I hear people laughing-
my friends in South Africa....' It seemed to him that he was
with his cousins at their home where he and the two young
ladies were laughing together." In the case of another patient,
A. B. (p. 52), "[She] heard the singing of a Christmas song in
her church at home in Holland. She seemed to be there in the
church and was moved again by the beauty of the occasion,
just as she had been on that Christmas Eve some years before."
Penfield makes a point which is important for my theory.
Returning to the case of J. T., he says (pp. 50-51):
After stimulation was over, he could discuss his double awareness
and express his astonishment, for it had seemed to him that he
was with his cousins at their home where he and the two young
ladies were laughing together....
It is significant, however, that during the re-creation of that past
experience he was not impelled to speak to his cousins. Instead, he
spoke to the "Doctor" in the operating room. Herein may lie an
important distinction between this form of hallucination and
the hallucination of a patient during . .. a psychotic state.
The distinction that Penfield makes between the flashbacks
of his patients and psychotic hallucinations corresponds to the
difference between what I call experience at esthetic distance,
an exact balance between past and present experience, and
completely underdistanced experience, the total return of an
overwhelming emotional state from the past. Penfield was able
to produce these flashbacks in all of his patients, without fail,
by stimulating the proper area of the brain, which he refers to
as the interpretive cortex. Furthermore, in virtually every case,
the flashbacks appeared to be made up of the equal co-presence
of past and present (p. 51). Finally, he notes, in passing, that
the flashbacks were sometimes accompanied by feelings or
expressions of emotion, e.g., fear (p. 50).
One example of an inference about distancing from appear-
ance and behavior is the identification of the hallucinating
individual, speaking and gesticulating to the air and yet not
responsive to the clinician's words, as a case of completely un-
der-distanced response. The psychoanalyst making a judgment
of the depth of transference is trying, in terms of the concepts
used here, to discern the relative amount of present and past
time orientation. Most psychotherapists routinely attempt to
make this kind of judgment, as is suggested by the comments of
Lazare and Stoeckle. They probably use external indices of the
kind reflected in my table 1.
These remarks should clarify the meaning of the concept of
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Scheff: THE DISTANCING OF EMOTION IN RITUAL
distancing and suggest that the theory presented here is
amenable to empirical testing.
With reference to Hochschild's discussion of the process of
appraisal, there need not be any contradiction with the theory
I am proposing. Except at the extreme ends of the distancing
continuum, distancing of the response implies an appraisal of
the degree of threat or safety of the stimuli. The Lazarus study
employing three different sound tracks can be readily inter-
preted in terms of the distancing paradigm. The sound track
and the film together constitute an arrangement of stimuli. The
trauma sound track should result in an underdistanced response,
since it adds distressing verbal stimuli to distressing visual
material. The other two sound tracks should increase the
distance, since they counterbalance the distressful events in the
film with a reassuring verbal interpretation. Since Lazarus
does not try to distinguish between distress and discharge in
the subjects' responses, his data have little bearing on my
theory.
Implicit in Hochschild's evocation of the process of appraisal,
as well as in the remarks of several of the other commentators,
is the assumption that all emotional responses are learned and
therefore relative to a particular cultural scheme of emotions.
In a given culture, the members learn to appraise particular
stimuli in a way which conforms to the cultural scheme. This
is the familiar ideological stance of cultural relativism, applied
to the issue of emotional response. According to this point of
view, crying or not crying, for example, is mostly a matter of
conformity to the norms of a culture.
I think that it is plausible to assume that most emotional
responses are learned, but surely there are important excep-
tions. When a newborn baby is slapped on the buttocks, it
cries-an unlearned, unmeditated, unappraised reflex. Existing
evidence suggests that the infant's reactions to loss (grief),
danger, as in the case of the sensation of falling (fear), and
frustration (anger) also have the same instinctive character.
The status of the evidence with respect to shaming and laughter
is not clear, but it is possible that the laughing response to
embarrassment may also be a reflex.
As is suggested by the concept of appraisal, during the course
of maturation, children learn to modify their perceptions of
threat and to control their emotional responses. The theory of
unconscious processes postulates, however, that some of the
pristine emotional reflexes of infants are carried into adult life,
since both the perceptual and response processes occur, for the
most part, outside of awareness. Tomkins (1963:80-81), for
example, has suggested a "snowball" model of the accumulation
of distress. A certain kind of distressful event, usually one that
has its roots in infancy, serves as a core around which a neurotic
symptom develops. An unassimilated distressful event gives rise
to rigid behavior, which gives rise to more distress, and so on,
in a progressively larger spiral. To the extent that such uncon-
scious processes occur, we should expect to find some types of
repressed emotions to be pancultural because of the similarity
of the period of infancy in all cultures.
I would agree with Hochschild, however, that distancing
devices are not always outside. There is probably considerable
individual variation in the distancing of response, given the
same stimulus. What Shapiro (1965) calls the hysterical style
corresponds, in my usage, to a pattern of consistently under-
distanced response to distressful stimuli, and what he calls the
obsessive-compulsive style to a pattern of consistently over-
distanced response. Since the paper dealt with ritual, and
therefore collective responses, I was concerned with modal
responses in groups, not with individual variation.
Hochschild also introduces that bete noire, the hydraulic
model. She is critical of the idea that emotions involve energy,
that they can be seen as bodily states and can be accumulated
September 1977 501
and discharged, on two grounds: first, that these ideas have
fallen into disuse in psychoanalysis and ego psychology, and
second, that the verbal imagery of emotional accumulation,
storage, and discharge should be made the subject of investiga-
tion, instead of being used as scientific concepts. I have already
indicated in the article why, in my opinion, the concept of
catharsis has fallen into disuse: not because it has been shown
to be without value, but because of ideological developments
in psychoanalysis and in experimental social psychology. Most
psychoanalysts uncritically followed Freud's lead in abandon-
ing catharsis. As I have suggested, Freud's decision may have
been due to a deficiency in his methods, rather than a failure
of the theory of catharsis. Similarly, I have pointed out that the
rejection of catharsis theory in experimental social psychology
has been based on a misreading of that theory. In regard to
Hochschild's advocacy of studies of the vernacular for emotions,
granting that such studies are potentially valuable, I fail to see
how they could invalidate catharsis theory.
Hochschild also suggests that emotions should not be con-
fused with physiological tension, since there must be a process
of appraisal. If, however, one accepts the possibility of uncon-
scious emotions, as I and others (see, for example, Pulver 1971)
do, assuming that a process of appraisal always occurs is
unnecessarily limiting. The definition of emotion suggested in
my article concerns characteristic patterns of tension which are
unmistakable, whatever subjective interpretation is made. For
example, the facial pallor, chill in the extremities, and rapid
shallow breathing which are the signs of the distress of fear,
and shivering and cold sweat, the indicators of the discharge of
fear, are distinct from chill and shivering caused by cold. To be
sure, the process of appraisal probably often plays an important
role, one at least in part independent of the physiology of
emotions. The point of my article is that the reverse is also true:
there is a physiological trajectory to emotion which is, at least
in part, independent of appraisal. Sobbing with tears at optimal
distance is an unmistakable sign of the virtually instantaneous
resolution of some of the tension of grief, in a way that is
analogous to the resolution of sexual arousal by orgasm. As is
the case with sexual tension and release, emotional tension and
release can occur with or without awareness or conscious
understanding.
Goldstein asks why I deal with these four particular emo-
tions-grief, fear, embarrassment, and anger-and not others,
such as anxiety, depression, or dread. The issue here is partly
a matter of categorization. I would consider anxiety and dread
to be subsumed by the category of fear: anxiety can be inter-
preted to be underdistanced fear. Depression, on the other
hand, can be seen as a mixture of the fundamental emotions,
perhaps varying degrees of underdistanced grief and over-
distanced anger. The issue is also partly an empirical one.
Grief, fear, anger, and embarrassment are recurring themes in
ritual, drama, and children's games in diverse cultures and
historical eras. In this sense they seem to be more basic than
other emotions, such as disgust, contempt, guilt, or jealousy.
I must disagree with Schlesinger's point that Freud devel-
oped most of his theory out of the method of free association.
Except for the Oedipus complex, all of the important concepts,
such as resistance, transference, the unconscious, etc., can be
found in Studies on Hysteria.
Daniels asks a further question about the theory and practice
of catharsis: when is catharsis complete? A full answer to this
question involves both short-term and long-term issues. The
answer which Daniels herself provides may suffice for the short
term: enough catharsis has occurred on a given occasion when
the participant feels relieved. Since repeated occasions of
catharsis are usually required in areas of severe emotional
distress, the long-term answer to the question is more complex.
There are two main criteria for the completeness of catharsis.
The first is that the perception of the originating traumas be
transformed, so that they become objective and therefore no
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longer appear in underdistanced forms (e.g., as nightmares) or
in overdistanced forms (repressed to the point of being for-
gotten). The second is that the patterns of rigid behavior
generated by the distressful emotion cease. For example, in the
case of therapy for pathological mourning, which involves the
restimulation of buried grief and extended periods of crying,
therapy is judged to be complete when the death of the loved
one is acknowledged, rather than denied (transformation of
perceptions), and when apathy, depression, and self-destructive
behavior stop (Volkan 1975). It is true, as Handelman suggests,
that at times changes in perception can begin the process of
integration. In cases of severe distress, however, it would seem
that catharsis must come first. The same criteria of complete-
ness would apply to rituals of mourning. The sense of liberation
and transformation when catharsis is complete is beautifully
evoked in partly fictionalized form in the novel Lovers and
Tyrants, by Francine Gray, in the scene she describes of her
visit to her father's grave (Gray 1976:194-96).
I will now turn to the questions concerning the application
of the theory of distancing to ritual. I agree with Beck, Mitrani,
Van Baal, and Van Beek that rituals may serve many different
functions. My definition of ritual as "the distanced reenactment
of situations of emotional distress" is too narrow, since it implies
that all rituals have, or at least in their origin once had, the
function of catharsis. I would prefer to say that some rituals,
like some types of drama (e.g., classical tragedy and comedy)
and some children's games (Handelman makes this point also),
seem to be distanced reenactments of situations of emotional
distress.
Except for the offending definition, my whole discussion of
distancing requires that rituals have a wide variety of functions,
because I argue that rituals result in catharsis only if they are
optimally distanced. Over- or underdistanced rituals do not
lead to catharsis; since many such rituals survive, they must be
fulfilling functions other than catharsis.
In response to Beck's request for a statement of the boundaries
of my topic, I am suggesting the hypothesis that rituals and
other social forms, such as drama and children's games, should
be cathartic if they meet two criteria: they concern repressed
emotions which are common among the participants, and they
are optimally,distanced. As I suggested in the article, funerals
in our society usually meet the first criterion, but not the second;
they are probably extremely overdistanced. Mass entertain-
ment in the form of dramas of suspense, violence, horror, terror,
and disaster probably fails to be cathartic in the opposite way;
it is usually quite underdistanced. Many surviving religious
rituals, on the other hand, may be properly distanced, but no
longer evoke collectively held repressed emotion. The Protestant
litany, with its concern for sin, damnation, and eternal salva-
tion, may have touched on collective distress in earlier eras,
but no longer does so. The idiom of collective emotion can be
found most easily in popular music, drama, and other forms of
mass entertainment. The distancing paradigm suggests a
theoretical framework for the systematic investigation of these
phenomena.
The hypothesis that the degree of distancing determines
whether catharsis takes place, which in turn determines the
psychological effectiveness of the ritual, is the central point of
my article. This hypothesis suggests the answers to several of
the issues raised by the commentators. Karp, quoting my
statement that "ritual is unique in that it meets individual and
collective needs simultaneously, allowing individuals to dis-
charge accumulated distress and creating social solidarity in
process," complains that I am reinventing Malinowski, errors
and all. He refers to Radcliffe-Brown's statement that it is as
reasonable to assume that rituals create distressing emotions as
it is to assume that they alleviate them. Karp is restating the
problem my paper addresses, but ignoring the solution I
propose. The statement he quotes occurs in a context in which
I am suggesting that ritual is often ineffective, because it is
ANTHROPOLOGY
either over- or underdistanced. (The next sentence begins by
saying that effective ritual is rare in modern societies.) Malinow-
ski represents the positive orientation toward ritual, taking the
stance that all ritual is cathartic; Radcliffe-Brown represents
the negative tradition, skeptical about the effectiveness of all
ritual. The distancing paradigm subsumes both of these orien-
tations. It provides for the kinds of situations Radcliffe-Brown
invokes, in which ritual appears to create distress; under-
distanced ritual restimulates repressed emotion without cathar-
sis, leaving participants more tense and upset than when they
began.
In the distancing paradigm, the psychological effectiveness
of ritual can become a variable, the dependent variable, in a
research design. The hypothesis is that the degree of distancing
determines whether or not catharsis will take place, which, in
turn, determines effectiveness. In a forthcoming paper (1 977b),
I discuss various techniques used in contemporary mass enter-
tainment to control distance: Hall (physical) distance, emo-
tional contagion, stylization, musical cueing, mixing positive
and negative emotions (as in comic relief in tragedy), and
discrepant awareness. Since all of these techniques may also
be used in ritual, this paradigm suggests concepts for the
investigation of what makes some rituals effective and others
ineffective or makes the same ritual effective on one occasion
and ineffective on another. The distancing paradigm offers an
avenue of research for progressing beyond theoretical debates
on the functions of ritual.
My response to Day is also based on the link between the
distancing and effectiveness of ritual. First, however, I must
object to Day's comment that he finds my revisions of Freudian
theory highly suspect, since he gives no grounds whatever for
this peremptory evaluation. I don't find his comment highly
suspect, but simply unfair.
In that part of his critique in which he cites the grounds for
his argument, Day first refers me to the exchange between
Malinowski and Evans-Pritchard, to demonstrate that pro-
found attention has been given to the emotional component in
ritual. To this assertion, it should suffice to reiterate my answer
to Karp, above: the Malinowski/Evans-Pritchard exchange
poses the problem my article addresses. My solution is that
ritual is neither inherently effective, as Malinowski implies,
nor inherently ineffective, as is suggested by Evans-Pritchard.
The question is: Under what conditions, i.e., at what degree of
distancing, does ritual lead to catharsis, and what effects does
catharsis have on the participants?
Similarly, the studies of ritual and catharsis by Turner and
Levi-Strauss which Day cites represent, from my point of view,
the positive orientation toward ritual at its most elementary
level. Without systematic evidence, these writers assume that
ritual is cathartic, and they gloss the emotional components of
the rituals they have observed, not making minimal distinctions
between different types of emotions and especially, as Kapferer
notes in a general context, not making the crucial distinction
between emotional distress and discharge, between signs of
emotional arousal that are expressions of tension and signs that
show resolution of tension.
I am not arguing that the cognitive, verbal, and symbolic
elements should be ignored. My definition of esthetic distance
implies a balance between cognition and feeling, as implied by
Schlesinger. My point is that one should investigate the emo-
tional components as fully and in as great detail as the cognitive
components; otherwise, one is attending to the words of a song
but not the music. It is ironic that, in The Raw and the Cooked,
Levi-Strauss draws upon this very analogy in his charming
introductory remarks but, once he begins his analysis, drops all
reference to emotions. He considers the verbal structure of the
Indian myths in almost limitless detail. Where is the comparable
analysis of the emotional components? My identification
between a cognitive emphasis and rationalistic bias in social
science and psychology is not loose, to use Day's term, but
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Scheff: THE DISTANCING OF EMOTION IN RITUAL
exact. The treatment of cognitive, verbal data in modern social
science is precise, systematic, and comprehensive, the treatment
of emotional data vague, casual, and perfunctory.
In response to Van Beek's comments about the balance
between belief and disbelief at esthetic distance, I don't intend
to suggest that the attitude toward effective rituals need be
consistently and exactly ambivalent in everyday life. Rather I
would suspect that in most cases there would be a predominat-
ing attitude, say disbelief, that would prevail in all circum-
stances except during the actual ritual occasion. During the
ritual, if catharsis is to occur, belief is embraced as strongly as
disbelief. The same process seems to occur in the theater: we
don't ordinarily believe in the reality of the dramatic action,
but, caught up in the mood of the theater, we suspend disbelief
-not completely, but to the point that belief and disbelief are
equally strong.
I would interpret occurrences of death through sorcery
differently than Van Baal does and the losing of consciousness
in possession differently than Fuchs. Both of these phenomena
can be interpreted within the distancing paradigm as growing
out of underdistanced states. Underdistanced fear, for example,
can create more fear, which can create more fear, in a reflexive
way, intensifying distress to the point of loss of consciousness
or death.
Similarly, I would question Van Baal's assumption that
complete belief in the cure is necessary for the cure to occur.
It is true, of course, that there may be components other than
catharsis which lead to cure. To the extent that transformation
of perceptions or goals, for example, leads to cure, then total
belief might be necessary, as Van Baal suggests. If catharsis is
the central element in a cure, however, then the exact balance
of participation and observation which I describe is necessary,
according to the theory. To be moved by a dramatic per-
formance, one need not be totally convinced that the drama is
a real event. Why shouldn't the same be true in curing rituals?
Both Fuchs and Kapferer appear to miss my point about the
Balahis curing ritual. To repeat what I say in the article: The
signs of the catharsis of fear are shivering or shaking with cold
sweat. Although shivering or shaking and sweating are reported
in many curing rituals, e.g., those of the !Kung, it is not clear
from the reports whether the sweating is the result of the frantic
dancing that is part of the ritual or a sign of fear discharge. In
the case of the Balahis, the sweating is unambiguous; since the
participants in their curing ritual do not dance, but sway
gently on their heels, their profuse sweating must be a sign that
fear discharge is taking place.
Carroll misunderstands my point about the amount of
distress in modern societies compared to preliterate societies.
I don't say that there is any less, but only that it is more hidden
and subtle, and for that reason, perhaps, more difficult to
work through.
In response to Fuchs's observation about the generation of
positive emotions in ritual, I certainly agree. My paper is
concerned, however, with repressed emotion; most authorities
agree that since repression is a response to overwhelming
emotions, only negative emotions are repressed.
I am unable to assess Kapferer's analysis of the distancing of
the Sinhalese demon exorcisms, since his article, which he
cites, is not available to me. I note, however, that he suggests
that laughter on ritual occasions may be cathartic, which is in
accord with my argument. In the last analysis, the questions
Kapferer asks about the distancing and effectiveness of the
exorcism ceremonies he observed can only be answered em-
pirically: Do the rituals provide a balanced mixture of threat
and safety stimuli? What is the proportion of observation and
participation in the responses of the participants? Is there
catharsis? If so, of what types, duration, and intensity? Finally,
what is the effect of the rites on the subjective and physiological
September 1977 503
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Serials

* The South African Archaeological Society announces the

inauguration of a monograph series to be published at irregular
intervals. The first volume is Where Hunters Gathered, by H. J.
Deacon, a study of the Holocene Stone Age people of the
eastern Cape. It summarizes the results of excavations at two
sites-Melkhoutboom Cave and Highlands Rock Shelter-
situated in two contrasting environments, the Cape Folded
Mountains and the Karoo-Cape Midlands. The preservation
of plant and animal remains at both sites has led to a deeper
understanding of the adaptations of Stone Age people in the
region over the last 15,000 years. The volume can be ordered
for R7,50 per copy (plus 10 cents postage in South Africa, 50
cents overseas) from The Secretary, South African Archaeologi-
cal Society, P.O. Box 31, Claremont 7735, Cape, South Africa.

Vol. 18 N No. 3 * September 1977 505

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