Possession

Possession refers to the state of having, owning, or controlling something. In ordinary use, it denotes physical custody of an object as well as the legal or moral claim to it. Possession often implies control and the intention to maintain it.

In law, possession is a factual relationship to property that may or may not coincide with ownership. Actual possession is physical control; constructive possession is control through another person or location. Possession can be essential for criminal liability or civil claims.

Possession can be transferred by delivery or relinquishment; possession can be lost through surrender, theft, or abandonment. Adverse possession doctrines allow a person who openly holds land for a statutory period to acquire title.

Philosophically, possession concerns the relation between subject and object and questions of ownership and entitlement. In linguistics, possession is a grammatical relation expressed by possessive pronouns, determiners, or suffixes.

In many cultures, possession refers to a spiritual state in which a person is believed to be inhabited by a spirit or deity. Such phenomena are interpreted differently across traditions and may lead to rituals of exclusion or exorcism.

Possession phenomena are reported in psychiatry and anthropology as dissociative or trance states; clinical explanations emphasize cultural context, suggestion, and dissociation rather than literal takeover by an external agent.