Psychological Theories

Many people who have had a close encounter with death such as those who have been involved in accidents have sometimes described experiencing many of the features of a NDE, such as peaceful feelings, having vivid thoughts, experiencing a sense of detachment and having a sense of harmony. In many cases these have been reported as occurring just prior to the near fatal accident. The first of such cases was described by Albert Heim, a 19th century geologist who collected over 30 cases of mountaineers who had been involved in near fatal accidents and found that they had experienced similar features, some of which have now been described as NDEs. Two medical researchers in the 1970s, Noyes and Kletti collected the experiences of 104 people who had come close to death through extreme danger such as mountaineering falls and car accidents. They too found that many of the experiences had occurred just prior to the accident. Such descriptions have led to suggestions that NDEs may be a psychological stress reaction to the anticipation of death. In other words because somebody thinks they are about to die they may imagine a series of often pleasant events to comfort themselves through this process. Support for this view has also come from a scientific study carried out by Dr Owens and colleagues, that was published in the medical journal The Lancet in 1990. In this study the researchers collected the medical records of some people who had described a NDE and found that not all those with a NDE had been critically ill during their hospital stay. In a commentary made on the results of a recent study carried out in cardiac arrest survivors in Holland, Dr Christopher French, a psychologist at the University of London pointed out that a very small percentage of people (less than 1%) who had not initially reported having had a NDE, reported having had one 2 years later. Although this may simply indicate that these people had initially been reluctant or unable to report their NDEs, (as it is very common for people to be reluctant to report NDEs in fear of what others may think of them), it may also indicate that at least in a very small proportion of people the NDEs may be imagined afterwards by the individuals. Psychologists believe that simply imagining that one has had certain experiences, that had in fact never been encountered will lead to the development of what are called 'false memories', in other words experiences that had never occurred for those experiences.