Am J Psychiatry 1980; 137:1193-1196
Copyright © 1980 by American Psychiatric Association
The phenomenology of near-death experiences
B Greyson and I Stevenson
The authors studied retrospectively 78 reports of "near-death experiences
using subjects narratives and questionnaires, interviews, and medical
records. Prior experiences suggestive of transcendence of death were more
common among these subjects than among control populations, but prior
experiences suggestive of extrasensory phenomena were less common.
Subsequent changes in attitudes were more common than among subjects in
other studies who had had psychic experiences. The influence of cultural
and psychological factors, sensory deprivation, and reflex adaptive
responses to stress explain some but not all of the features of near-death
experiences. Their potential value to our conceptualization of dying and to
suicide prevention and the care of the terminally ill justifies further
investigation.
