Psychiatry
February 1, 1992
Bruce Greyson, Nancy Evans Bush
226 citations
Most near-death experiences involve peace and joy, but some are partially or entirely frightening or hellish. Three distinct types of distressing near-death experiences exist: one that resembles peaceful experiences but is interpreted negatively, one involving a sense of nonexistence or eternal void, and one with graphic hellish landscapes and entities. The first type may eventually become peaceful. The psychological impact of these distressing experiences can be profound and long-lasting, but their antecedents and aftereffects remain poorly understood.
Psychiatry
August 1, 1980
Russell Noyes
172 citations
People who have near-death experiences often undergo lasting attitude changes, including reduced fear of death, a greater appreciation for life, and increased openness to paranormal or spiritual beliefs. The article reviews case reports and interview data suggesting that these shifts are common and can persist for years. The authors note that the changes appear to be positive and transformative for most individuals, though the evidence is based on self-reports and retrospective accounts, limiting causal conclusions.
Psychiatry
May 1, 1963
Sanford M. Unger
60 citations
A review of research from the 1950s and early 1960s examines how mescaline, LSD, and psilocybin affect personality. The evidence suggests that these substances can produce temporary changes in attitudes, mood, and behavior, but lasting personality change is not reliably demonstrated. Studies show that the drug's effects are strongly influenced by the user's expectations, personality, and the setting in which the drug is taken. The review concludes that while these substances may facilitate psychological insight in some individuals, claims of permanent personality transformation remain unsupported by the available data.
Psychiatry
November 1, 1993
Bruce Greyson
52 citations
Near-death experiences are profound subjective events reported by about 30%-40% of individuals who come close to death, or roughly 5% of the adult American population. These experiences are important for mental health professionals because they often happen to patients and can produce widespread, long-lasting changes in values, beliefs, and behavior, dramatically affecting attitudes toward living and dying.
Psychiatry
November 1, 1981
M G Kenny
34 citations
Multiple personality disorder is often seen as rare and occult, but it closely resembles widely reported spirit-possession phenomena. From an anthropological perspective, the interesting question is why multiple personality occurs so seldom rather than why it occurs at all. This essay traces the intellectual history of the perceived relation between multiple personality, possession, and similar states. It examines how Western psychological theorists once allowed for the real existence of possession, then reviews cases where possession played a literal role. As belief in possession declined, so did interest in multiple personality and the frequency of reported cases. The essay argues that psychological curing is creative, theory influences the phenomena it explains, and social and cultural factors shape self-perception and ego boundaries.
Psychiatry
February 1, 1975
J S Neki
17 citations
Sahaja, an Indian ideal of mental and spiritual health, is emphasized in the Sikh scriptures, particularly the Adi Granth. Although long associated with mystical thought and described in esoteric terms, this article aims to strip sahaja of those connotations and redefine it as a mental health ideal relevant to contemporary conditions.
Psychiatry
December 1, 2005
Jon A. Shaw
13 citations
Mystical experiences appear across all eras and religions, with traditions sharing a sense of union with the absolute as the ultimate spiritual goal. The pathway to both theistic and secular spirituality evolves from human attempts to cope with life's limitations: separation, loss, biological fragility, transience, and non-existence. Spirituality can serve as the affective component of a belief system or myth, lived as true despite lacking scientific evidence. It may act as a reparative process, creating in the external world a symbolic facet of an internalized mental representation that has become lost, or it may represent continuity of the self-representation after death through self-object merger.
Psychiatry
July 6, 2026
Rehana K Naik Olson, Lawrence Wichlinski
The adult visual cortex, once thought to be rigid and unchangeable, retains some capacity for neuroplastic change, which can be influenced by environmental factors such as visual deprivation. The Defensive Activation Theory (DAT) proposes that dreaming during rapid eye movement sleep helps prevent loss of visual function during the visual deprivation that occurs nightly. This review examines evidence for visual cortical plasticity across the human lifespan and the roles of sleep and dreaming in mediating that plasticity, concluding that adult neuroplasticity contributes to functional outcomes and that sleep plays a mediating role.
Psychiatry
January 1, 2010
Nirit Soffer-Dudek, Golan Shahar
In the week after a military operation in Israel, 91 people reported their sleep experiences, psychological distress, and exposure to terror. General sleep-related experiences—such as vivid dreams, nightmares, and hallucinations when falling asleep—were more common among those who followed the events through media, and this link was explained by psychological distress. Unexpectedly, people who were physically closer to the attacks reported fewer such sleep experiences. The authors propose that sleep disturbances may reflect a tendency to ruminate, or difficulty letting go of thoughts both during the day and at night.
Psychiatry
January 1, 1998
R Levin
Frequent nightmares may be linked to schizophrenia-spectrum traits. Female college students who had nightmares at least once per week scored higher on schizotypy questionnaires and reported more schizotypal symptoms in a clinical interview than did low-nightmare controls. Their electrodermal habituation to sounds also resembled patterns seen in schizophrenia-spectrum disorders. The results suggest that frequent nightmares could serve as a behavioral marker for early detection of such psychopathology.
Psychiatry
May 1, 1986
L S Benjamin
Psychoanalysts consider the sequence of thoughts in a patient's stream of consciousness during free association to be important for successful therapy, but rigorous methods to study these sequences have been lacking. This paper proposes that Structural Analysis of Social Behavior (SASB) can operationally define and study such dynamics. The method is demonstrated on a woman who became suicidal after seemingly "nice" phone calls from her mother. Nonclinicians applied SASB codes to her verbalizations, and computer analysis revealed underlying dynamics. The authors contend that SASB offers a way to objectively identify different dynamics across cases and link them to therapeutic interventions and outcomes.
Psychiatry
November 1, 1982
G O Gabbard, S W Twemlow, F C Jones
The psychiatric literature often confuses different altered mind/body perception states, such as out-of-body experience (OBE), depersonalization, autoscopic phenomena, and schizophrenic body distortions like boundary loss. This paper aims to clarify these distinct syndromes, noting that some studies focus on patients, others on nonpatients, and some on both. The fact that some individuals with these experiences do not define themselves as patients or seek treatment underscores the need for precise definitions. After explaining each syndrome's characteristics, treatment implications are briefly considered.