Varieties of Anomalous Experience: Examining the Scientific Evidence

Individual chapters of this book are available to purchase online.

What are the long-term effects of near-death experiences? Why do some people see sounds and taste smells? What happens during an out-of-body experience? These extraordinary and unusual phenomena have often been ignored or ridiculed by mainstream psychology. In this fascinating volume, leading scholars explore these areas, as well as experiences of hallucinations, lucid dreams, alien abductions, mysticism, anomalous healings, psi-events and past-lives, in an effort to explain the totality of human experience.

In an accessible style, contributors review and discuss current research about unusual but important events, creating a mesmerizing account of activity at the boundaries of conventional psychology. The chapters examine current research and theories, methodological issues, related psychopathology, individual and cultural differences, aftereffects, and clinical implications of anomalous experiences. A volume in the APA Books^® series on Dissociation, Trauma, Memory, and Hypnosis, this book is essential reading for the scientist-practitioners who treat clients having experienced anomalous events, for researchers/theoreticians wanting an empirically grounded survey of these phenomena, and for non-psychologists interested in the study of these phenomena.