Aiming to explore application possibilities of the psychoanalytical method farther than the clinical practice, this work proposes a Lacanian topological interpretation of the possession phenomenon in Umbanda. The subject is sought beyond the individual psychism in a way that the subjective space continually comprehends the identities transition occurred in the medium's body. This idea is sustained by the conception that the interpretative system (that organizes the relationship between the world of the spirits and the world of the livings) and the subject coexist in the same structure. Therefore, it starts from the concept of significant, as it is capable of creating a net of meanings according to the effect of an unconscious saying. Through a case study, it is shown how the subject, concomitantly supposed agent and effect of the significant combinatory, is presented in the possession as medium and as possessor spirits, which constitute the front side and the verso side of a unilateral structure.
psychoanalysis and culture; possession; Umbanda; alterity