Varieties of Anomalous Experience: Examining the Scientific Evidence (Dissociation, Trauma, Memory, and Hypnosis)

For much of the 20th century, unusual perceptions and sensations, radical alternations of consciousness, and other extraordinary subjective experiences were ignored as legitimate topics of study in mainstream psychology. Recent years, however, have witnessed a burgeoning interest in the scientific study of anomalous experiences. In this updated edition, the editors have invited experts to provide definitive reviews and analyses of a wide range of anomalous experiences, from commonly documented sensations and perceptions like synesthesia, lucid dreaming, out-of-body experiences, and auditory and visual hallucinations, to rarer and more seemingly inexplicable experiences, such as anomalous healing, past lives, near-death experiences, mystical experiences, and even alien abductions. The book makes a compelling case for the inclusion of these marginalized and underrecognized experiences as not merely incidental but essential to our understanding of human psychology. Book jacket. "Mainstream psychology has mostly ignored or even derided anomalous experiences after an initial interest at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th. They have been examples of what postmodernists refer to as "the other," phenomena that fall between the cracks of the house built by contemporary mainstream psychology. However, psychology now has the maturity and breadth required to take a serious look at unusual but important experiences. We define an anomalous experience (AE) as an uncommon experience (e.g., synesthesia), or one that, although it may be experienced by a significant number of persons (e.g., psi experiences), is believed to deviate from ordinary experience or from the usually accepted explanations of reality according to Western mainstream science. The focus of this book is on experiences, not on testing the ontological nature of such experiences. Thus, for instance, the possibility of veridical psi occurrences is mentioned in the section of explanatory theories in the psi-related experiences chapter, but its focus is on the experiences people have"--Chapter. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved) Contents Contributors Acknowledgments Part I Conceptual and Methodological Considerations Chapter 1 Introduction: Anomalous Experiences in Perspective Chapter 2 Researching States of Consciousness and Anomalous Experiences Chapter 3 Anomalous Experiences, Peculiarity, and Psychopathology Part II Anomalous Experiences Chapter 4 Synesthesia: A Teeming Multiplicity Chapter 5 Hallucinatory Experiences Chapter 6 Lucid Dreaming: Paradoxes of Dreaming Consciousness Chapter 7 Anomalous Self and Identity Experiences Chapter 8 Alien Abduction Experiences Chapter 9 Psi-Related Experiences Chapter 10 Anomalous Healing Experiences Chapter 11 Past-Life Experiences Chapter 12 Near-Death Experiences Chapter 13 Mystical Experiences Chapter 14 Anomalous Experiences: An Integrative Summary Index About the Editors "In this revised and thoroughly updated edition of their classic text, the editors have invited experts to provide definitive reviews and analyses of a wide range of anomalous experiences, from commonly documented sensations and perceptions like synesthesia, lucid dreaming, out-of-body experiences, and auditory and visual hallucinations, to rarer and more seemingly inexplicable experiences such as anomalous healing, past-lives, near-death, mystical experiences, and even alien abductions ... The book makes a compelling case for the inclusion of these marginalized and under-recognized experiences as not merely incidental, but essential to our understanding of human psychology."--Publisher's description In this revised and updated edition of a classic text, contributors present a wide range of research on anomalous experiences, from commonly documented sensations like synesthesia, lucid dreaming, out-of-body experiences and auditory and visual hallucinations, to rarer and more seemingly inexplicable experiences such as anomalous healing, past-lives, near-death experiences, mystical experiences, and even alien abductions. The book makes a compelling case for the inclusion of these marginalized and under-recognized experiences as not merely incidental, but essential to our understanding of human psychology.