Ian Stevenson

Name	Ian Stevenson
Birth date	October 31, 1918
Birth place	Montreal, Canada
Death date	February 08, 2007
Death place	Charlottesville, Virginia
Field	Biochemistry, psychiatry, parapsychology
Work institutions	University of Virginia
Alma mater	St. Andrews University, McGill University
Known for	Reincarnation research
Influences	Psychosomatic medicine
Influenced	Bruce Greyson, Jim B. Tucker, Satwant Pasricha, Carol Bowman

Ian Pretyman Stevenson, MD, (October 31, 1918–February 8, 2007) was a Canadian biochemist and professor of psychiatry. Until his retirement in 2002, he was head of the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia, which investigates the paranormal.

Stevenson considered that the concept of reincarnation might supplement those of heredity and environment in helping modern medicine to understand aspects of human behavior and development. He traveled extensively over a period of 40 years to investigate 3,000 childhood cases that suggested to him the possibility of past lives. Stevenson's research was the subject of Tom Shroder's Old Souls: The Scientific Evidence for Past Lives (1999)

He studied medicine at St. Andrews University in Scotland, and at McGill University in Montreal, receiving a BSc in 1942 and a degree in medicine in 1943, graduating top of his class.

Early career

Following graduation, Stevenson took a series of jobs in hospitals as an intern or resident, before embarking on research at Tulane University focusing on biochemical tissue oxidation. He became interested in finding explanations for psychosomatic illnesses and in the late 1940s he worked at New York Hospital as part of a team exploring psychosomatic medicine, a theme that persisted throughout his later research. This work persuaded him that the reductionism of biochemistry rendered it inadequate as an explanatory tool, and he chose to pursue psychiatry over internal medicine.

In 1957, he was appointed head of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia. His early scientific research included psychosomatic illnesses, as well as writing textbooks on interviewing patients and psychiatric examinations.

Research interests

Criticism of psychoanalysis

Early in his career Stevenson became a controversial figure amongst psychoanalysts. He opposed what he saw as the determinism of Sigmund Freud, arguing that there was little room for free will if a person's character was formed almost entirely by their experiences as an infant. His 1957 paper questioning whether personality was more plastic in childhood than adulthood provoked strong reactions from psychoanalysts. He said later that the rejection of his views in these cases helped prepare him for the rejection he experienced with his work on paranormal phenomena. It remains one of several academic departments in the world dedicated to the study of paranormal phenomena. It was later renamed The Division of Perceptual Studies (DOPS) with Stevenson appointed as Director.

Stevenson believed the strongest cases he had collected in support of this model involved both testimony and physical evidence. In over 40 of these cases Stevenson gathered physical evidence relating to the often rare and unusual birthmarks and birth defects of children which he claimed matched wounds recorded in the medical or post-mortem records for the individual Stevenson identified as the past-life personality.

The children in Stevenson's studies often behaved in ways he felt suggestive of a link to the previous life. These children would display emotions toward members of the previous family consistent with their claimed past life, e.g., deferring to a husband or bossing around a former younger brother or sister who by that time was actually much older than the child in question. Many of these children also displayed phillias and phobias associated to the manner of their death, with over half who described a violent death being fearful of associated devices. Many of the children also incorporated elements of their claimed previous occupation into their play, while others would act out their claimed death repeatedly.

Tom Shroder said Stevenson's fieldwork technique was that of a detective or investigative reporter, searching for alternative explanations of the material he was offered. One boy in Beirut described being a 25-year-old mechanic who died after being hit by a speeding car on a beach road. Witnesses said the boy gave the name of the driver, as well as the names of his sisters, parents, and cousins, and the location of the crash. The details matched the life of a man who had died years before the child was born, and who was apparently unconnected to the child's family. In such cases, Stevenson sought alternative explanations—that the child had discovered the information in a normal way, that the witnesses were lying to him or to themselves, or that the case boiled down to coincidence. Shroder writes that, in scores of cases, no alternative explanation seemed to suffice.

Reception

Stevenson’s conclusions gained little support from within the scientific community, although Eugene Brody has suggested many of them simply dismiss ideas like reincarnation.

Stevenson's work has drawn criticism from skeptical groups and individuals such as The Skeptics Society and Robert Todd Carroll, while philosopher Paul Edwards included a lengthy criticism of Stevenson's work in his book Reincarnation: A Critical Examination. In each of these critiques, the authors question both the methods used and the evidence gathered by Stevenson, and offer alternative, more mainstream, explanations for the types of cases Stevenson argued were suggestive of reincarnation. Philosopher Paul Kurtz, founder of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, has gone further and suggested Stevenson's reincarnation research is pseudoscience. By contrast, in his books Death and Personal Survival and Beyond Death: The Evidence for Life After Death, philosopher Robert Almeder endorsed Stevenson's research, rebutted most of Kurtz's objections, and concluded that the evidence he assembled argues strongly in favor of reincarnation, to the point of it being irrational to disbelieve that some people reincarnate.

Arthur C. Clarke observed that Stevenson had produced a number of studies that were "hard to explain" conventionally, then noted that accepting reincarnation raised the question of the means for personality transfer. Skeptic Sam Harris said of Stevenson "either he is a victim of truly elaborate fraud, or something interesting is going on."

Retirement

After the 1984 death of his wife Octavia, Stevenson married Margaret Pertzoff in 1985. He retired in 2002, although the Department of Perceptual Studies continues his work. and exploring possible mechanisms for personality transfer.

Tucker said that toward the end of his life, Stevenson felt his long-stated goal of getting science to consider reincarnation as a possibility was not going to be realized in this lifetime. New York Times, and the Washington Post.

Early medical books

Medical History-Taking, New York: Paul B. Hoeber, 1960.

The Psychiatric Examination, Boston: Little, Brown, 1969.

The Diagnostic Interview (2nd revised edition of Medical History-Taking), New York: Harper & Row, 1971.

Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation

Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation, University of Virginia Press, ISBN 0813908728, 1966.

Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation, (second revised and enlarged edition), University of Virginia Press, ISBN 9780813908724, 1974.

This book includes detailed reports of 20 cases of children (from five different countries) who claimed to remember previous lives.

Cases of the Reincarnation Type

Cases of the Reincarnation Type Vol. I: Ten Cases in India, University of Virginia Press, 1975.

Cases of the Reincarnation Type Vol. II: Ten Cases in Sri Lanka, University of Virginia Press, 1978.

Cases of the Reincarnation Type Vol. III: Twelve Cases in Lebanon and Turkey, University of Virginia Press, 1980.

Cases of the Reincarnation Type Vol. IV: Twelve Cases in Thailand and Burma, University of Virginia Press, 1983.

Birthmarks and birth defects

Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects Volume 1: Birthmarks and Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects Volume 2: Birth Defects and Other Anomalies. (2 volumes), Praeger Publishers, ISBN 0-275-95282-7, 1997.

Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect. Praeger Publishers, ISBN 0-275-95282-7, 1997. (A short and non-technical version of Reincarnation and Biology, for the general reader)

Other books

Children Who Remember Previous Lives: A Question of Reincarnation, (revised edition) ISBN 0-7864-0913-4, 2000, (A general non-technical introduction into Reincarnation research).

European Cases of the Reincarnation Type. McFarland & Company, ISBN 0786414588, 2003.

Telepathic Impressions: A Review and Report of 35 New Cases, University Press of Virginia, 1970.

. University of Virginia Press, ISBN 0813909945, 1984.

Xenoglossy: A Review and Report of A Case, University of Virginia Press, 1974.

A World in a Grain of Sand: The Clairvoyance of Stefan Ossowiecki, ISBN 978-0-7864-2112-1, (with Mary Rose Barrington and Zofia Weaver), McFarland Press, 2005.

Selected articles

See also

Afterlife

C. T. K. Chari

Satwant Pasricha

Richard Wiseman

Xenoglossy

References

Category:1918 births Category:2007 deaths Category:Canadian psychiatrists Category:Reincarnation Category:Reincarnation research Category:Canadian expatriate academics in the United States Category:Alumni of the University of St Andrews Category:McGill University alumni Category:University of Virginia faculty Category:Canadian scientists Category:Parapsychologists Category:Deaths from pneumonia