Dissociation is a lack of the normal integration of thoughts, feelings, and experiences into the stream of consciousness and memory. Dissociation occurs to some degree in normal individuals and is thought to be more prevalent in persons with major mental illnesses. The Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES) has been developed to offer a means of reliably measuring dissociation in normal and...
Questionnaires on perceptual distortions, symptoms of schizophrenia, and out-of-body experiences (OBEs) were completed by 71 volunteers with a history of schizophrenia and 40 control subjects (patients in a hospital accident ward). Significantly more of the schizophrenics (42%) than of the control group (13%) answered "yes" to a question about OBEs. However, a follow-up questionnaire showed...
This report is a phenomenological study of 20 cases of temporal lobe disorders manifested as complex partial seizures. The major behavioral symptoms observed were episodic affective disturbances, episodic cognitive disturbances, and "spells," with normal functioning between episodes. The remarkable similarity of this phenomenology to what has been described as atypical or episodic psychosis...
The authors report some features of 16 cases of near-death experiences that they investigated in India. After presenting brief accounts of four such experiences, the authors describe and discuss features in which the Indian cases differ from a larger sample of American cases. They note that some of these features seem to be culture-bound, but they caution against accepting this observation as...
The use of naturally occurring and synthetically derived compounds for their "psychedelic" effects has been a part of human culture for thousands of years. The basic pharmacology of the major synthetic psychedelic compounds (primarily lysergic acid diethylamide [LSD]-25) is described and reference is made to their potentially beneficial psychological effects. Adverse reactions, defined as...
Alarcon, Dickinson, and Dohn (J. Nerv. Ment. Dis., 170: 217-223, 1982) recently reviewed the phenomenon of memory flashback following use of hallucinogenic drugs. They point out that while there are a considerable number of explanations concerning the flashback mechanism, little is known about the real causes. This paper examines flashback following drug ingestion in the light of other memory...
Near-death experiences (NDEs) have been described consistently since antiquity and more rigorously in recent years. Investigation into their mechanisms and effects has been impeded by the lack of quantitative measures of the NDE and its components. From an initial pool of 80 manifestations characteristic of NDEs, a 33-item scaled-response preliminary questionnaire was developed, which was...
Near-death experiences (NDEs), profound transcendental events experienced on the threshold of death, may be interpreted on several levels from the neurophysiological to the eschatological. Independent of other levels of interpretation, a psychological analysis of NDEs produces meaningful and researchable psychodynamic precipitants and sequelae. A number of psychological mechanisms are...
Ten college-educated young adults (four sighted, four congenitally blind, and two adventitiously blind) were studied in a sleep laboratory one night a week for 8 weeks. Dream reports were collected from electroencephalogram-defined sleep onset, rapid eye movement sleep, and non-rapid eye movement sleep, following a standard awakening schedule and interview format. Dream reports were analyzed in...
Near deaths experiences are being reported with increasing frequency, but whether the constellation of factors comprising these experiences is unique to near death situations is unknown. This investigation compared near death experiences to other out-of-body experiences to determine if there are unique features associated with near death experiences. Our results indicate that there are no...
What psychological needs are served by the out-of-body experience (OBE)? On the basis of a review of the literature in rather diverse areas several hypotheses on this issue are formulated in terms of Murray's conceptual system of manifest needs. A simple survey of the need profiles of students reporting OBEs provides support for only one of the hypotheses, namely, that such individuals are...
Ten women subjects exhibited no evidence of waking mood change or differential dream recall as a function of their menstrual cycles. These findings indicate that, with the use of simple screening procedures, women as well as men can and should be used as subjects in research on sleep and dreams.
Members of a religious sect, the Divine Light Mission, were evaluated for psychological effects of their experience in the group, in order to study systematically the psychotherapeutic effect of evangelical religious experience. Responses given by 119 members to a multiple choice questionnaire reflected a significant decline in the incidence of neurotic symptoms and of alcohol and drug use,...
The belief that one can read others' minds has long been considered a symptom of psychosis, despite reports in the parapsychological literature of veridical telepathy. All patients admitted to an inpatient psychiatric unit were screened for paranormal beliefs, and those claiming telepathic abilities were tested in a free-response ESP task. Eighteen per cent of the inpatient population claimed...
Ten neurotic patients (five males and five females) were treated over a period of 2 to 6 months (mean, 4.1) as outpatients. The study allowed for a maximum of 75 hours of psychotherapy (mean, 51.55 hours). During the course of treatment, two to four (mean, 3.5) administrations of MDA (3,4-methylenedioxyamphetamine) were employed as adjunctive aids in an effort to enhance the psychotherapeutic...
Data collected on women students at Edinburgh University allowed a comparison to be made between those who were taking a contraceptive pill and those who were not. The evidence suggests that women taking a contraceptive pill are more likely to recall dreaming, and that it is the progestagenic component that is the more active one. However, the data collected do not exclude the possibility that...
This paper presents the case of a 39-year-old woman who, several weeks following initiation into transcendental meditation (TM), experienced altered reality testing and behavior. We discuss the course of this episode, present evidence for a causal relationship between her practive of TM and altered behavior, and discuss the appropriate treatment of such phenomena.
Gellhorn and Kiely's attempt to generate a neurophysiological theory which accounts for the psychophysiological states produced during Zen and Yoga meditation is criticized because it: a) ignores fundamental differences within and between the various meditations; b) fails to consider certain important published evidence on Yoga meditation; and c) provides an ambiguous interpretation of...
Numerous investigators have reported impressive improvement rates when LSD has been used as an aid to ongoing psychotherapy, but absence of controls makes these findings difficult to evaluate. In the present study, 21 psychosomatic inpatients and 7 nonpsychotic psychiatric inpatients were randomly assigned to two psychotherapy groups, one of which received five LSD sessions and a second which...
Systematic desensitization in conjunction with other behavior techniques was utilized to treat a client who for 5 months was experiencing spontaneous recurrences of LSD effects. Besides the elimination of the target symptoms (flashback effects), additional desired changes occurred on both cognitive-affective and behavioral levels. A theoretical explanation of LSD flashback effects based on the...
The relationship of the trophotropic and ergotropic systems of autonomic-somatic integration and their relevance to a variety of emotional states and levels of consciousness is reviewed. The importance of proprioceptive afferent feedback to the reticular formation and hypothalamus for the maintenance of ergotropic responsivity is indicated together with the beneficial clinical effects of...
The results on the Halstead-Reitan neuropsychological battery were compared for a group of 20 LSD users and a normal control group matched for age, sex, education, and intelligence. Only one of 20 variables was significantly different at the 5 per cent level and this was thought to be due to chance. Thus, it was concluded that there was no difference between the two groups. A further comparison...
This paper reports the findings of four exploratory studies in which the effects of lysergic acid diethylamide tartrate (LSD-25) on social behaviors were measured using the Bales Interaction Process Analysis technique. The interaction of four four-person continuing groups, including a group of reformatory inmates, two groups of alcoholics, and a group of chronic schizophrenics, was examined in...
Rapid eye movement frequency (REM density) and REM time in the first 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep were studied in relation to various measures of home dream recall in 41 normal young adult male Ss. The incidence of detailed dream reports was significantly positively related to REM density. On the other hand, vague and no-content dream reports were negligibly related to REM density. Similar...
The use of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) in the treatment of alcoholism has led to many claims as to the drug's efficacy, but without a controlled study of both in-hospital application and posthospital adjustment of patients. The present paper is concerned with the use of LSD in placebo and maximum dosages as a concomitant of a Human Relations Training Laboratory treatment program. Patients...