The purpose of this study was to develop an instrument to measure healthcare professionals’ knowledge and attitudes about near-death experiences (NDEs) that would demonstrate acceptable psychometric properties. In consultation with a focus group of six NDE experts, I developed the 50-item Knowledge and Attitudes toward Near-Death Experiences Scale (KANDES), including the 24-item KANDES–Attitude subscale (KANDES-A) and the 26-item KANDES–Knowledge subscale (KANDES-K). Including a pilot administration in which feedback indicated no need for revision, a total of 256 professional and student counselors completed the KANDES. Separate reliability and validity analyses were conducted for each subscale. For the KANDES–A, Cronbach’s alpha was .909, and Pearson’s r for test-retest was .748, both indicating acceptable reliability. An exploratory factor analysis indicated four factors to retain and yielded a factor solution that explained 54.87% of the variance, an acceptable amount of variance to substantiate construct validity. For the KANDES–K, Cronbach’s alpha was .816, indicating acceptable reliability. For each of the scale’s three domains, Cronbach’s alpha was .816 for Domain 1: NDE Content, .817 for Domain 2: NDE Aftereffects, and .631 for Domain 3: Experiencer Characteristics, indicating acceptable reliability. Pearson’s r for test-retest on the total KANDES–K was .812, further demonstrating acceptable reliability.

What certainty is there for personal survival after death? Five key authors, critically analysed in this thesis, think that OB/ND experiences offer such assurances. Most OB/ND events follow severe clinical crises profoundly embarrassing cerebral function. At the nadir of brain function, invariably resulting in unconsciousness, authors aver that the escape of soul (Sabom), mind, or free consciousness (Moody, Ring, Grey, Fenwick), in providing glimpses of heaven, offers proof of immortality. I disagree. The semantic content of early-phase ND experiences reveals dream-like bizarreness and illogicality, consistent with de-activation of critical cortical controls. Conversely, late-phase experiences, tinged with 'moral' compulsions about earthly responsibilities, herald the progressive intrusion of conscious-awareness into that subconscious mentation. These experiences, abruptly terminating as conscious-awareness erupts, are transient - as demonstrated by narrative word counts - indicating origins from reawakening, not moribund, brains. My argument is underpinned by these latter crucial observations. Pain, intruding into ND phenomenology, is another occurrence hardly consistent with an escape of mind or 'free consciousness' into the hereafter. "Tunnel" phenomenology, a rapid movement from darkness into heavenly brightness, involves a retrospective synthesis of vestibular-generated rotation/accelerations, and a progressively enlarging and engulfing light, signalling re-establishment of an effective circulation to associative visual centres. The content of ND experiences, as with dreams, involves the temporo-parietal cortex. OB experiences derive from central vestibular activity (superior and inferior parietal lobules) in dormant, recumbent patients. Allied aberrations of allocentric space create bodily reduplications and sensed invisible presences. Thus, OB do not warrant "mystical" interpretations. The spiritual overtones accorded OB/ND experiences by authors are inconsistent with classical (Judaeo-Christian) accounts of divine disclosure. The eschatology adumbrated in published texts implies immortality, and seriously fails to embrace a preferred resurrectional eschatology as professed credally. I therefore conclude that OB/ND phenomenology, rather than offering alleged glimpses of eternity, reflects living, not dead, brains re-awakening to full conscious-awareness from antecedent metabolic insults.

This mixed-methods study’s purpose was a systematic comparison of contents and aftereffects of near-death experiences (NDEs) occurring in a variety of circumstances with those occurring in combat. They completed an online survey: a demographic questionnaire, the Near-Death Experience Scale, the Life Changes Inventory-Revised (LCI-R), and four narrative response items. Survey completers were 68 participants: 20 combat near-death experiencers (cNDErs) and 48 non-NDErs (nNDErs). The 29% of participants who met NDE Scale criterion for an NDE was comparable to NDE incidence findings from previous retrospective studies. For statistical analyses, significance was set at p < .05, and effect size (Cohen’s d) was calculated. Mean total NDE Scale scores were significantly lower for cNDErs than variety-of-circumstance NDErs from one of two comparable studies (t = 5.083, p < .0001, d = -1.26), possibly suggesting cNDEs may have “less depth” than other-variety NDEs. Regarding cNDE aftereffects, absence of previous LCI-R data made comparison impossible. Cronbach’s alpha analysis yielded acceptable reliability on the total scale and seven of nine subscales, a finding that matched Schneeberger’s (2010); however, factor analytic results did not support the hypothesized subscale structure of the LCI-R. Although cNDErs did not score significantly higher than nNDErs on the total scale or subscales after Bonferroni correction, results indicated a possible trend toward greater absolute changes (p = 0.02, d = 0.74) and spirituality (p = 0.02, d = 0.67) with the latter finding substantiated by narrative responses. Informal analysis of narrative responses yielded several themes.

In this thesis I argue that the category Near-Death Experience (NDE) emerged in the late-twentieth century, and is structured by the discourses of 'Medicine' and 'Science', and the wider discursive factors of the 'Spiritual Marketplace'. Within NDE literature, the experiences of people coming out of their bodies in Operating Theatres, and then travelling to other realms, are considered to have parallels in the accounts of mystics, shamans, and religious visionaries of other cultures and other times. Against this, I argue that the category of the NDE does not "articulate the same field of discourse" (Foucault, 1969:24-25) as these other religious accounts. NDE researchers sift through these accounts in search of a common thread, but miss the wider social fabric of the religious narratives they seek to excavate, as well as the discursive location that structures their own research. In order to reposition this debate within its own history of ideas, I argue that the category "NDE" is itself dependent on the Operating Theatre for its emergence and initial appeal, and it is the Operating Theatre that makes the discourse of NDEs possible. Within the last 120 years, there have been many attempts to intersect science with anomalous experiences on the fringes of human consciousness: Psychical Research categorised deathbed visions in a wider schemata that was interested in how the fringes of the subconscious mind might yield evidence of another reality; contemporary Parapsychology looked at third-person accounts of deathbed visions recounted to Nurses and Doctors across the globe. Neither of these iscourses had the crossover into the wider 'public sphere' that Raymond Moody's book Life After Life (1975) did, a book that recounts first-person accounts of normal people, caught in extreme medical emergencies, who come out of their bodies, witness the medical teams' attempt to resuscitate them, visit a heavenly realm, and return to tell people about it. What is unique about the NDE is not the vision of a world after death, but the context in which this vision occurs. In Chapter 2 I explore that context by arguing that Psychical Researchers' investigation of mediums, apparitions, and deathbed visions sought to prove that posthumous existence of the Other (that is, one's relatives or friends who had passed on to the other side), and indirectly the Self. (Conversely, NDE research, seeks to prove the existence of the Self, and indirectly, the Other.) In Chapter 3 I examine how Medicine and the Modern Hospice Movement shaped the conditions of emergence of the category 'NDE'. The removal of 'death' from the public sphere into the private sphere of the West meant that death became something exotic. The idea that death was a defeat for modern medicine lead to the emergence of the modern Hospice movement, which opened up a space for the visions of those close to death to be recounted in the public sphere. The recounting of such experiences encapsulates a narrative that includes the Surgeon's intervention, the technology used in the Operating Theatre, and of the everyday man or woman talking about their visions, all of which gives these experiences a cultural currency that sets them apart from other religious and/or New Age accounts. In chapter 4 I recognise that, for these experiences to have an appeal, they must have a market to appeal to. Thus, I examine the 'Spiritual Marketplace', and argue that the NDE researchers fundamentally misread the appeal of their life after death accounts. NDE researchers felt that they had uncovered publicly verifiable evidence for life after death, which they expected to shake the foundations of Western society. Instead, these accounts were read as a curio in the privacy of the spiritual consumer's home, an interesting account that suggested death might not be the end of existence, but little else. When their vision of a spiritual revolution failed to materialise, the founders of the NDE movement fell into a bitter war about the precise signification of the category NDE, thus giving an indication of the fundamental indeterminacy of the category. In chapter 5 I explore how NDE research intersects with the discourse of "Science". I therefore examine the construction of science, the function of science, and the limits of science in NDE literature. I begin by examining how the narratives of science permeate NDE literature, and how all sides implicitly reinforce a binary of Science/Religion that emphasises the former as objective and neutral, and the latter as irrational belief. I then argue that, ultimately, NDEs happen at the very limits of human experience in a realm far outside of what can be answered by direct scientific observation; the debate tells us more about the different metaphysical presumptions present than it does about whether or not science can answer the question 'is there life after death?" In chapter 6 I argue that, in the discourse surrounding NDEs, death and mysticism become entwined as the 'exotic other'. I therefore examine how the categories 'death' and 'mysticism' are themselves both bound up in a particular web of signification. The NDE secures its own identity against an understanding of death born in clinical medicine and, latterly, Freudian psychoanalysis: death becomes a point, after which there is an unknown. Similarly, the NDE inherits an understanding of Mysticism that can be traced back to William James. Nevertheless, the understanding of 'death' throughout history is not fixed but fluid, depending on a myriad of cultural and social discourses. Similarly, the modern psychological definition of 'mysticism' as an ineffable, subjective experience is extremely narrow in comparison to the accounts of mystics in the Middle Ages. When the understanding of these two categories changes, the emphasis upon securing 'evidence' for life after death evaporates. This point is missed in contemporary NDE research that assumes that its own desire to find evidence of life after death is reflective of a universal need for humans to believe in religion: whilst NDE researchers believe that they have finally uncovered a window on to another world, I have argued that this is, in fact, a mirror of their own particular predilections and desires.

The purpose of this quantitative and qualitative study was to determine retrospectively marital satisfaction and stability following the near-death experience (NDE) of one of the marital partners, focusing on the role of Gottman's Sound Marital House (1999) in the couple's relationship before and after the NDE. The researcher used the Locke-Wallace Marital Adjustment Test (1959), the Weiss-Ceretto Marital Status Inventory (1980), and a modification of Gottman's Shared Meanings Questionnaire (1999). The first group of participants included 26 NDErs. To create as comparable a group as possible, the researcher designed a life-changing event (LCE) group of 26 people who used as their referent the non-NDE-related experience they considered their most life-changing one during their marriage. Sixty-five percent of the marriages in which the NDErs were involved at the time of their NDEs ended in divorce. This number is in contrast to the 19 percent of LCE participants whose marriages ended in divorce. Marital adjustment, marital stability, and meanings in marriage between retrospectively based pre-event and post-event composite scores were statistically significantly different between the NDErs and LCErs. Low effect sizes were identified for each of the instruments except the Weiss-Ceretto Marital Status Inventory, which had a moderate effect size. Strong correlations among the scores were identified. Further analysis of the results indicated strongly that the NDErs were less satisfied in their marriages, their marriages were less stable, and they did not have a strong level of shared meaning in the marriage after the NDE occurred as compared to the LCE participants. This study has serious implications for counselors who may work with NDErs. Findings from this study show that NDErs who were married at the time of their experiences have a strong possibility of experiencing marital problems. Encouraging these couples to seek professional help as soon as possible can provide a forum for them to address the potential numerous changes in their relationship. By having more information about the effects of an NDE on a marriage, counselors will be better prepared to assist those couples who are not well prepared to navigate their way through the aftereffects of the event. Through psychoeducation and the application of counseling approaches, counselors can help their clients address specific issues related to their NDEs.

No description available.

The researcher examined the effectiveness of a near-death experience (NDE) learning module on reducing distressing aspects and enhancing a growth aspect of grief among bereaved adults. Participants were 22 females and 2 males; 2 identified as African American, 3 as Asian, 2 as Latina/o, and 17 as White; aged 20 to 71 years with mean age 35.3 years. In this experimental design, the researcher randomly assigned 12 participants to the experimental group and 12 participants to the waitlist no treatment control group. Participants in the experimental group received the NDE learning module intervention, which consisted of 3 sessions over consecutive weeks. Six research questions were explored. A two-factor repeated measures analysis of variance was performed on five dependent variables to determine if the two groups performed differently across time according to the pretest and posttest results of the Despair, Panic Behavior, Personal Growth, Detachment, and Disorganization subscales of the Hogan Grief Reaction Checklist (HGRC). A one-way analysis of covariance was performed on one dependent variable to determine if the groups were statistically different according to the posttest results of the Blame and Anger subscale of the HGRC. Additionally, univariate eta squared was hand calculated to determine practical significance. Findings indicated that bereaved adults who participated in the NDE learning module showed small effect size for interaction on Panic Behavior (&#951;2 = .05) and Personal Growth (&#951;2 = .05), large effect size for interaction on Detachment (&#951;2 = .15), large effect size for treatment type on Blame and Anger (&#951;2 = .15), and negligible effect size for interaction on Despair (&#951;2 < .01) and Disorganization (&#951;2 < .01). Although no statistically significant results were found for any of the dependent variables (p > .05), effect size findings indicated modest to substantial benefits of the NDE learning module intervention for bereaved adults in the form of decreased panic behavior, blame and anger, and detachment, and increased personal growth. Implications for further research beyond this initial investigation are discussed.

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Na presente Tese, vinculada aos Estudos Foucaultianos, proponho pensarmos sobre a Educação e a Pedagogia tentando nos colocarmos externamente a esses campos. Nela, defendo que as referências que advogam pela natureza espiritual das experiências de quase-morte (EQMs) permitem caracterizar esses fenômenos como intervenções psicagógicas que, ao promoverem a ressignificação da vida, objetivam transformar o modo de ser das pessoas para que elas vivam orientadas pelo amor. A noção de psicagogia é o elemento teórico mais importante da presente pesquisa. Concebo psicagogia como o processo de transmissão de uma verdade por meio do qual um sujeito busca modificar a maneira de ser daquele a quem se dirige. A concepção de poder pastoral, entendido como técnica de direção que se volta para aquele que deve conduzir o povo e cada indivíduo para a salvação, constitui-se como outro componente teórico relevante para o desenvolvimento deste trabalho. A partir das análises que realizei, entendo que o amor sobre o qual as relações psicagógicas se sustentam identifica-se com aquele peculiar à doutrina socrático-platônica. Para a realização da pesquisa, analisei textos (livros, artigos e revistas eletrônicas), de autores brasileiros e estrangeiros, que concebem as EQMs como fenômenos espirituais e outras obras que permitem descrever algumas das condições de possibilidade para a emergência do campo da Espiritualidade e Saúde (ES) e dos discursos sobre as EQMs. No primeiro capítulo, ao efetuar um estudo de inspiração genealógica, sugiro que o campo da ES e os discursos sobre as EQMs encontram no “imperativo biológico” próprio do nosso tempo uma importante condição de emergência. Dedico o segundo capítulo para descrever os elementos discursivos que caracterizam as EQMs como fenômenos espirituais e para apresentar o campo do saber no qual aqueles elementos estão inseridos. Para finalizar, no terceiro capítulo, exponho os motivos que me conduziram a caracterizar as EQMs como intervenções psicagógicas que assumem a forma de relações pastorais. / In the present thesis, linked to the Foucaultian Studies, I propose to think about Education and Pedagogy trying to put ourselves externally in these fields. In it, I argue that the references that advocate the spiritual nature of near-death experiences (NDEs) allow us to characterize these phenomena as psychagogical interventions that, in promoting the re-signification of life, aim to transform people's way of being so that they live oriented by love. The notion of psychagogy is the most important theoretical element of the present research. I conceive psychagogy as the process of transmitting a truth whereby a subject seeks to change the way of being of he or she is addressed. The conception of pastoral power, understood as a technique of direction that turns to the one that must lead the people and each individual to salvation, is constituted as another relevant theoretical component for the development of this work. From my analyzes, I understand that the love on which the psychagogical relations are sustained is identified with that peculiar to the Socratic-Platonic doctrine. In order to carry out the research, I have analyzed texts (books, articles and electronic journals) by Brazilian and foreign authors that conceive NDEs as spiritual phenomena and other works that allow us to describe some of the conditions of possibility for the emergence of the field of Spirituality and Health (SH) and discourses on NDEs. In the first chapter, in carrying out a study of genealogical inspiration, I suggest that the field of SH and discourses on NDEs find in the "biological imperative" proper of our time an important emergency condition. I dedicate the second chapter to describe the discursive elements that characterize the NDEs as spiritual phenomena and to present the field of knowledge in which those elements are inserted. Finally, in the third chapter, I explain the reasons that led me to characterize NDEs as psychagogical interventions that take the form of pastoral relationships.

In studies on Near Death Experiences (NDE) data has been collected by using the recently developed scaling methods, the scale developed by Ring and the Greyson NDE Scale. In order to illustrate the problems in the empirical study of NDEs, my intention is to compare the Greyson NDE-scale with the most common theories on NDEs.  After series of modifications the final scale consisted of a questionnaire consisting of sixteen different questions, that yielded into four different areas, Cognitive components, Emotional components, Paranormal components, and Transcendental components. In the end the theory that has the most likely possibility to explain NDEs in the future must be the Dying Brain theory, but one should not disclose the different features of the Afterlife theory (but without the origin explanation).