Tempo:
in the traditional psychiatric literature although periodic case reports appear, for example, a case study of “self-induced depersonalization” by Kennedy.1 It is true that increasing numbers of patients who are involved in movements, such as Transcendental Meditation, report experiences traditionally classified as psychopathological. These movements emphasize that some of these symptom complexes should not be treated in the way that a symptom is usually treated (e.g., interpretation, medication), but that many of these phenomena should be viewed by the unfamiliar treating physician with “benign neglect” and referred back to the meditation teacher for management. This is because a number of them are usual and expected accompaniments of changes in cognition, perception, and affect modulation that are expected to occur and are desirable.2,3 Our two papers summarize a study of one such phenomenon, the out-of-body experience (OBE). The goal of our study is to address the following questions: (1) what is the continuum of phenomenological features which is the “out-of-body” state; (2) how does it compare with certain other states of consciousness such as dreaming, lifethreatening experience, sensory deprivation states, and mystical religious experience; (3) how does it relate to pathological states; for example, depersonalization, autoscopy, and psychosis; (4) what are the short- and long-term effects on the individual and what does the experience mean to him; (5) what, if any, are the implications of this phenomena for the practice of psychiatry?
Definition of the term “out-of-body experience”
For the purposes of our survey we chose to define the experience in a very general way since review of the literature clearly revealed that there is little, if any, agreement about what characterizes the state phenomenologically, physiologically, in terms of personality structure, or in terms of significance to the individual. We chose the following definition “An experience where you felt that your mind or awareness was separated from your physical body.” As with Palmer4 we felt that the only theme in the literature which distinguishes these experiences is a sense of location of the total sense of self at some place other than in the physical body. We did not feel that it was wise to restrict our definition further at this point until the experience had been more thoroughly studied. Such a definition, however, does reflect certain biases on our behalf, explicitly, there are. (1) a belief that with the current state of knowledge, the subject is in a better
Definition of the term “out-of-body experience”
For the purposes of our survey we chose to define the experience in a very general way since review of the literature clearly revealed that there is little, if any, agreement about what characterizes the state phenomenologically, physiologically, in terms of personality structure, or in terms of significance to the individual. We chose the following definition “An experience where you felt that your mind or awareness was separated from your physical body.” As with Palmer4 we felt that the only theme in the literature which distinguishes these experiences is a sense of location of the total sense of self at some place other than in the physical body. We did not feel that it was wise to restrict our definition further at this point until the experience had been more thoroughly studied. Such a definition, however, does reflect certain biases on our behalf, explicitly, there are. (1) a belief that with the current state of knowledge, the subject is in a better
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