Six feet over: Out-of-body experiences and their relevance to the folk psychology of souls

2006 ◽  
Vol 29 (5) ◽  
pp. 478-479 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Kemmerer ◽  
Rupa Gupta
Keyword(s):  
Multisensory Integration ◽  
Folk Psychology ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Experience ◽  
Out Of Body Experience ◽  
Body Experiences ◽  
The World

During an out-of-body experience (OBE), one sees the world and one's own body from an extracorporeal visuospatial perspective. OBEs reflect disturbances in brain systems dedicated to multisensory integration and self-processing. However, they have traditionally been interpreted as providing evidence for a soul that can depart the body after death. This mystical view is consistent with Bering's proposal that psychological immortality is the cognitive default.

The “tedious yammering of selves”: The End of Intimacy in Spike Jonze’s Her

2019 ◽  
pp. 176-192
Author(s):  
Richard Smith
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Body ◽  
Career Trajectory ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Sound Image ◽  
Body Experiences ◽  
Aesthetic Form ◽  
The World

Spike Jonze’s unusual career trajectory, from the outer edges of popular culture to the center of indiewood, has resulted in a distinctive body of work that spans several genres and forms. This chapter traces Jonze’s career to ground a stylistic reading of his fourth feature film, Her (2013). Presented in three parts—Jonze’s short works, Gilles Deleuze’s “implied dream” and the “sound-image,” the lonely social world of Her—the chapter argues that Jonze’s cinematic style is an elaboration of a very simple image of a body in motion. As his style develops the relation of body and world becomes more central and more uncertain. In Her, the world is replaced by media affect and the body experiences itself as an aesthetic form. Smith explores a terrain of loneliness that sits at the center of much of Jonze’s work.

Out-of-Body Experience Status as a Moderator of Effects of Narcissism on Paranormal Beliefs

1987 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 440-442 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerome J. Tobacyk ◽  
Thomas E. Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Significant Relationship ◽  
Body Experience ◽  
Paranormal Belief ◽  
Out Of Body Experience ◽  
Narcissistic Personality ◽  
Body Experiences ◽  
Paranormal Beliefs ◽  
Narcissistic Personality Inventory ◽  
Belief Scale

The Narcissistic Personality Inventory and the Paranormal Belief Scale were given to 383 college students. As hypothesized, significant but small direct correlations were obtained between narcissism and belief in Psi and in Precognition. When the sample was divided into those 56 who reported out-of-body experiences and 327 nonreporters, an interaction emerged. Among the former, narcissism showed significant moderate correlations with belief in Psi, Precognition, Witchcraft, and Superstition. Among the latter only one small significant relationship was found between narcissism and Precognition. These differential relationships between narcissism and paranormal beliefs for reporters and nonreporters of out-of-body experiences were interpreted in terms of schemata theory.

Out-of-Body Experience and Personality Functioning

1998 ◽  
Vol 82 (2) ◽  
pp. 481-482 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerome J. Tobacyk ◽  
Donald H. Wells ◽  
Mark M. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Self Efficacy ◽  
Purpose In Life ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
Control Scale ◽  
Body Experience ◽  
Personality Functioning ◽  
Out Of Body Experience ◽  
Body Experiences ◽  
Life Scale

Reporters of out-of-body experiences ( n = 21) and nonreporters ( n = 159) showed no significant differences on the Spheres of Control Scale, Self-efficacy Scale, and Purpose in Life Scale. However, reporters of out-of-body experiences showed significantly greater belief in Psi, Spiritualism, and Extraordinary Life Forms than nonreporters.

The Neuropsychology of Self-Objectification

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Riva ◽  
Santino Gaudio ◽  
Antonios Dakanalis
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
Objectification Theory ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Experience ◽  
Negative Image ◽  
Bodily Appearance ◽  
Self Image ◽  
Out Of Body Experience ◽  
Self Objectification ◽  
Health And Well Being

According to the objectification theory ( Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997 ) girls and women are thought to adopt a self-objectified view of themselves as objects to be evaluated on the basis of their appearance. More, this experience is proposed to have a direct link with the health and well being of female subjects. The paper analyzes and discusses the objectification theory within the context of recent research on memory and spatial cognition. On one side, it describes self-objectification as a specific cognitive process: a woman internalizes an objectified self image, when she uses an allocentric frame of reference (observer mode) to remember events in which she evaluates herself based upon bodily appearance. On the other side it directly connects the objectification theory with the Allocentric Lock Hypothesis ( Riva, 2012 ), suggesting that eating disorders have as antecedent an allocentric (objective, from outside) negative image schema of the body that is no more updated by egocentric sensory inputs from perception. Both the similarities between the allocentric lock and the out-of-body experience and a review of the recent studies supporting this claim are also presented and discussed.

The Advent of Parapsychology and the Figuration of “Out-of-the-Body Experiences” (1880–1930)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Schlieter
Keyword(s):  
Significant Contribution ◽  
William James ◽  
Life Review ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Experience ◽  
Filter Theory ◽  
Body Experiences ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
Near Death Experiences ◽  
The Brain

This chapter outlines how the term “out-of-the-body experience” emerged in spiritualist and parapsychological literature. As is shown, “psychical researchers” such as Frederic W. Myers and William James made a significant contribution. The chapter also deals with the “filter” theory or “transmission” theory, i.e., the idea of the brain as a means for the inhibition of consciousness. This theory, as is shown, has been developed in close interaction with phenomena “near death”—in particular, the “panoramic life review.” The filter theory, discussed in subsequent chapters 2.6. and 2.7, too, is still favored by many recent protagonists of near-death experiences (e.g., Moody). Finally, the chapter turns to the increase of autoscopic out-of-body experiences, discussed as a phenomenon attesting a changing relationship of the disembodied consciousness toward its own body.

She Climbs Toward the Light: Karen Armstrong’s The Spiral Staircase in a World of Displaced Women

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 126-140
Author(s):  
Maxine Walker
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Structure ◽  
The Body ◽  
Religious Community ◽  
Academic Life ◽  
Body Experiences ◽  
Faith Practices ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
External Forces ◽  
Spiral Staircase

The Spiral Staircase, Karen Armstrong’s self-narrative, shows the limitations of theological or religious reflections within a specific religious community. Leaving the Sisters of Charity for a tumultuous academic life, historian of religion Karen Armstrong lives a wrenching ontological dislocation that originates in her undiagnosed epilepsy and negative body experiences. Using semiotician Algirdas Greimas’s ‘Semiotic Square’ as an interpretive strategy, the unresolved tensions and contradictions exposed in the deep narrative structure of this non-traditional conversion memoir are resolved by ‘compassion’ at the manifest level. Armstrong’s experiences, both in and out of the convent, will inform her academic study and lead her to compassionate solidarity with the marginalized. Armstrong’s memoir reveals various internal and external forces that shape an individual woman’s way of being in the world, and that inform her investigation of multiple faith practices and beliefs. In a time of mass refugee migration and ‘homelessness’, the one woman, the one ‘other’, matters in how one thinks about the body and about God.

When is an Out-of-Body Experience (Not) an Out-of-Body Experience? Reflections about Out-of-Body Phenomena in Neuroscientific Research

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 13-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pieter F. Craffert
Keyword(s):  
Historical Record ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Implicit Assumption ◽  
Body Experience ◽  
Out Of Body Experience ◽  
Body Experiences ◽  
Conceptual Problems ◽  
Real Progress

In recent years there has been an increased interest in the study of out-of-body experiences (obes) by cognitive and neuro-scientists. Nowadays, far-reaching claims regarding the uncovering of the neural mechanisms and pathways, as well as the mystery ofobes in the anthropological and historical record are on offer. In this article the implicit assumption thatobes are much better understood and that real progress has been made are questioned on the basis of the definitional and conceptual problems that still haunt this area of research. It is suggested that progress will only be registered once the spectrum of out-of-body phenomena (obp) is recognized and attention is paid to the neurocultural complexity of distinct instances ofobes.

scholarly journals Autoscopic Space

IDEA JOURNAL ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 76-87
Author(s):  
George Themistokleous
Keyword(s):  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Visual Media ◽  
The Body ◽  
Installation Space ◽  
Multiple Perspectives ◽  
Multiple Points ◽  
Body Experience ◽  
Projected Image ◽  
Out Of Body Experience ◽  
The One

  An experimental installation project of my own making, the diplorasis, aims to re-think the human sensorium by considering the bodily perceptual boundaries that are induced by visual media processes. Within the installation space the participant will, unexpectedly, encounter stereoscopic projections of himself/herself from previous instances and multiple perspectives. The photographic cameras within the device that are attached to sensors have been programmed to capture different views of the moving participant, and then to digitally split (and in some cases manipulate) the images before sending them to screens that project the image for the participant’s view. These stereoscopic images induce an illusionistic three-dimensional projection of the subject.   The reduplicated, projected, and three-dimensionally simulated self in the diplorasis begins to trigger a questioning of how the body is understood within visual media. During the visual experience one has a solipsistic perception of oneself. The participant views himself both from outside and inside his body. The out-of-body experience of observing oneself from the multiple points of view of another (as a simulated object) is somehow countered to the embodied operation of the physical binocular eyes. The uncanny closeness of a neutral image “out there” (e.g. of a house) evoked by the original stereoscopes is now subverted, as the digitization of the stereoscope allows for unexpected self projections of the viewer. The diplorasis brings to the fore a particular reading of a sensory body that veers between, on the one hand, a projected image generated by electronic information, and on the other, the embodied response to this projected spectral other. As electronic processes are changing the perceptual and cognitive limits of the body, how do these shift our understanding of inside/outside?

scholarly journals Cyberpsychological Approach to the Analysis of Multisensory Integration

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 9-21
Author(s):  
A.E. Voiskounsky
Keyword(s):  
Risk Factors ◽  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Multisensory Integration ◽  
Specific Area ◽  
Visual Signals ◽  
Sensory Conflict ◽  
Body Experience ◽  
Out Of Body Experience ◽  
Transport Vehicle ◽  
The Brain

The paper relates to the branch of cyberpsychology associated with risk factors during immersion in a virtual environment. Specialists in the development and operation of virtual reality systems know that immersion into this environment may be accompanied by symptoms similar to the “motion sickness” of transport vehicle passengers (ships, aircraft, cars). In the paper, these conditions are referred to as a cybersickness (or, cyberdisease). The three leading theories, proposed as an explanation of the causes of cybersickness, are discussed: the theory of sensory conflict, the theory of postural instability (the inability to maintain equilibrium), and the evolutionary (aka toxin) theory. A frequent occurrence of symptoms of cybersickness is a conflict between visual signals and signals from the vestibular system. It is shown that such conflicts can be stimulated in the framework of a specially organized experiment (e.g., the illusion of out-of-body experience) using virtual reality systems. When competing signals (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, tactile, etc.) reach the brain, the data gained with the use of virtual reality systems give a chance to hypothetically determine the localization of the specific area in the brain that ensures the integration of multisensory stimuli.

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