Kenneth Ring (born December 13, 1935) is an American psychologist, born in San Francisco, California. He is the co-founder and past president of the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS) and is the founding editor of the Journal of Near-Death Studies . [1] He currently lives in Kentfield, California. [1]
Among his first publications was the book Methods of Madness: The Mental Hospital as a Last Resort. The book was released in 1969 and was co-authored with Benjamin Braginsky and Dorothea Braginsky. [2] [3] Ring's book Life at Death was published by William Morrow and Company in 1980. [4] [5] [6] In this book Ring presented the Weighted Core Experience Index, a psychometric instrument constructed to measure the depth of a near-death experience. [7] In 1984, the company published Ring's second book, Heading Toward Omega. [8] Both books deal with near-death experiences and how they change people's lives. [4]
In 1992 he published The Omega Project: Human Evolution in an Ecological Age, a book that dealt with near-death experiences and UFO-encounters. [9] 1998 saw the release of Lessons From the Light. What We Can Learn From the Near-Death Experience, co-authored with Evelyn Elaesser. The book discussed a wide range of paranormal phenomena, including out-of-body experiences, children's near-death experiences, near-death experiences in the blind, as well as healing and paranormal abilities in near-death experiencers. [10] Another co-authored release appeared in 1999. This time Ring co-operated with Sharon Cooper for the release of Mindsight: Near-death and out-of-body experiences in the blind. In the book Ring & Cooper discussed the possibility of sight and vision among blind near-death experiencers. [11]
In November 2008, Ring visited Israel as part of a peace delegation and subsequently protested the Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip as completely disproportionate. [12] Kenneth Ring also is a co-author of Letters from Palestine (2011).
Parapsychology is the study of alleged psychic phenomena and other paranormal claims, for example, those related to near-death experiences, synchronicity, apparitional experiences, etc. Criticized as being a pseudoscience, the majority of mainstream scientists reject it. Parapsychology has also been criticized by mainstream critics for claims by many of its practitioners that their studies are plausible despite a lack of convincing evidence after more than a century of research for the existence of any psychic phenomena.
Parapsychology is a field of research that studies a number of ostensible paranormal phenomena, including telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, near-death experiences, reincarnation, and apparitional experiences.
The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct is a 1961 book by the psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, in which the author criticizes psychiatry and argues against the concept of mental illness. It received much publicity, and has become a classic, well known as an argument that "mentally ill" is a label which psychiatrists have used against people "disabled by living" rather than truly having a disease.
Raymond A. Moody Jr. is an American philosopher, psychiatrist, physician and author, most widely known for his books about afterlife and near-death experiences (NDE), a term that he coined in 1975 in his best-selling book Life After Life. His research explores personal accounts of subjective phenomena encountered in near-death experiences, particularly those of people who have apparently died but been resuscitated. He has widely published his views on what he terms near-death-experience psychology.
The Journal of Near-Death Studies is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal devoted to the field of near-death studies. It is published by the International Association for Near-Death Studies.
Near-death studies is a field of psychology and psychiatry that studies the physiology, phenomenology and after-effects of the near-death experience (NDE). The field was originally associated with a distinct group of North American researchers that followed up on the initial work of Raymond Moody, and who later established the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS) and the Journal of Near-Death Studies. Since then the field has expanded, and now includes contributions from a wide range of researchers and commentators worldwide. Research on near-death experiences is mainly limited to the disciplines of medicine, psychology and psychiatry.
Ring is a Japanese mystery horror novel by Koji Suzuki first published in 1991, and set in modern-day Japan. The novel was the first in the Ring novel series, and the first of a trilogy, along with two sequels: Spiral (1995) and Loop (1998). The original Ring novel sold 500,000 copies by January 1998, and 1.5 million copies by July 2000. Ring was the basis for the Ring franchise, including a 1995 television film, a 1998 theatrical film of the same name (Ring), a television series, and two international film remakes of the 1998 film: a South Korean version and an English-language version.
Phyllis Chesler is an American writer, psychotherapist, and professor emerita of psychology and women's studies at the College of Staten Island (CUNY). She is a renowned second-wave feminist psychologist and the author of 18 books, including the best-sellers Women and Madness (1972), With Child: A Diary of Motherhood (1979), and An American Bride in Kabul: A Memoir (2013). Chesler has written extensively about topics such as gender, mental illness, divorce and child custody, surrogacy, second-wave feminism, pornography, prostitution, incest, and violence against women.
For the film, television director and actor, see Howard Storm (director)
Erlendur Haraldsson was a professor emeritus of psychology on the faculty of social science at the University of Iceland. He published in various psychology and psychiatry journals. In addition, he published parapsychology books and authored a number of papers for parapsychology journals.
Satwant Pasricha is the head of Department of Clinical Psychology at NIMHANS, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences at Bangalore. She also worked for a time at the University of Virginia School of Medicine in the USA. Pasricha investigates reincarnation and near-death experiences. Pasricha co-authored the 2011 book Making sense of near-death experiences, which was Highly Commended in the Psychiatry category at the 2012 British Medical Association Book Awards.
A near-death experience (NDE) is a profound personal experience associated with death or impending death, which researchers describe as having similar characteristics. When positive, which the great majority are, such experiences may encompass a variety of sensations including detachment from the body, feelings of levitation, total serenity, security, warmth, joy, the experience of absolute dissolution, review of major life events, the presence of a light, and seeing dead relatives. When negative, such experiences may include sensations of anguish, distress, a void, devastation, and seeing hellish imagery.
Events in the year 2005 in Israel.
Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century is a 2007 psychological book by Edward Francis Kelly, Emily Williams Kelly, Adam Crabtree, Alan Gauld, Michael Grosso, and Bruce Greyson. It attempts to bridge contemporary cognitive psychology and mainstream neuroscience with "rogue phenomena", which the authors argue exist in near-death experiences, psychophysiological influence, automatism, memory, genius, and mystical states.
Pim van Lommel is a Dutch author and researcher in the field of near-death studies.
Melvin L. Morse is an American medical doctor who specializes in pediatrics. He has authored several books and articles on paranormal science and near-death experiences in children, including the 1987 New York Times bestseller Closer to the Light, written jointly with Paul Perry, and with a foreword written by Raymond Moody. Morse has authored many journal articles, and has given media interviews on the subject of near-death experiences.
Charles Arthur Mercier was a British psychiatrist and leading expert on forensic psychiatry and insanity.
Sharon A. Hill is an American science writer and speaker known for her research into the interaction between science and the public, focusing on education and media topics. Hill's research has dealt mainly with paranormal, pseudoscience, and strange natural phenomena and began at the University at Buffalo, where she performed her graduate work in this area. Hill attended Pennsylvania State University, earning her Bachelor of Science degree in geosciences and working as a Pennsylvania geologist.
Caroline Watt is a Scottish psychologist and professor of parapsychology. She is the holder of the Koestler Chair of Parapsychology at the University of Edinburgh. She is a past president of the Parapsychological Association. She is an author of several papers and books on parapsychology and runs an online course that helps educate the public about what parapsychology is and to think critically about paranormal claims.
Rachel Cooper is a British philosopher specialising in the philosophy of medicine and philosophy of science, especially the philosophy of psychiatry. She is currently a professor in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion at Lancaster University. She is the author of Classifying Madness, Psychiatry and the Philosophy of Science and Diagnosing the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
