As a result of serious accidents and illnesses many persons undergo death-rebirth experiences. The changes in attitudes, personality, and beliefs that sometimes follow these experiences reflect rebirth and reveal a fundamental human strategy for coping with the threat of death. Many persons report that this threat is replaced by a sense of aliveness and a belief in life after death. These...
A factor analysis of questionnaire responses from 189 victims of life-threatening accidents yielded three factors of subjective effects. These factors, which included depersonalization, hyperalertness and mystical consciousness, appeared meaningful in terms of the endangered personality's effort to cope with a threat to life. Perception of a serious threat, loss of consciousness, and rescue...
Depersonalization is a frequent reaction to life-threatening danger. As an adaptive pattern of the nervous system it alerts the organism to its threatening environment while holding potentially disorganizing emotion in check. As a psychological mechanism it defends the endangered personality against the threat of death and, at the same time, initiates an integration of that reality. And, as a...