Ian Stevenson facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Ian Stevenson
Born	(1918-10-31)October 31, 1918 Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Died	February 8, 2007(2007-02-08) (aged 88) Charlottesville, Virginia, United States
Citizenship	Canadian by birth; American, naturalized 1949
Education	University of St. Andrews (1937–1939) BSc (McGill University, 1942) MD (McGill University School of Medicine, 1943)
Occupation	Psychiatrist, director of the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia School of Medicine
Known for	Reincarnation research, near death studies, medical history taking
Spouse(s)	Octavia Reynolds (m. 1947) Margaret Pertzoff (m. 1985)

Ian Pretyman Stevenson (October 31, 1918 – February 8, 2007) was a Canadian-born American psychiatrist, the founder and director of the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia School of Medicine.

He was a professor at the University of Virginia School of Medicine for fifty years. He was chair of their department of psychiatry from 1957 to 1967, Carlson Professor of Psychiatry from 1967 to 2001, and Research Professor of Psychiatry from 2002 until his death in 2007.

As founder and director of the University of Virginia School of Medicine's Division of Perceptual Studies (originally named "Division of Personality Studies"), which investigates the paranormal, Stevenson became known for his research into cases he considered suggestive of reincarnation – the idea that emotions, memories, and even physical bodily features can be passed on from one incarnation to another. In the course of his forty years doing international fieldwork, he researched three thousand cases of children who claimed to remember past lives. His position was that certain phobias, philias, unusual abilities and illnesses could not be fully explained by genetics or the environment. He believed that, in addition to genetics and the environment, reincarnation might possibly provide a third, contributing factor.

Stevenson helped to found the Society for Scientific Exploration in 1982, and was the author of around three hundred papers and fourteen books on reincarnation, including Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation (1966), Cases of the Reincarnation Type (four volumes, 1975-1983) and European Cases of the Reincarnation Type (2003). His 1997 work Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects reported two hundred cases in which birthmarks and birth defects seemed to correspond in some way to a wound on the deceased person whose life the child recalled. He wrote a shorter version of the same research for the general reader, Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect (1997).

Reaction to his work was mixed. In an obituary for Stevenson in The New York Times, Margalit Fox wrote that Stevenson's supporters saw him as a misunderstood genius, that his detractors regarded him as earnest but gullible, but that most scientists had simply ignored his research. His life and work became the subject of the supportive books Old Souls: The Scientific Search for Proof of Past Lives (1999) by Tom Shroder (a Washington Post journalist), Life Before Life (2005) by Jim B. Tucker (a psychiatrist and colleague at the University of Virginia who now heads the division Stevenson founded), and Science, the Self, and Survival after Death (2012), by Emily Williams Kelly. Critics, particularly the philosophers C.T.K. Chari (1909–1993) and Paul Edwards (1923–2004), raised a number of issues, including instances where the children or parents interviewed by Stevenson had deceived him, instances of Stevenson asking leading questions in his interviews, and problems with working through translators who credulously believed what the interviewees were saying at face value. Stevenson's critics contend that ultimately his conclusions are undermined by confirmation bias, where cases not supportive of his hypothesis were not presented as counting against it, and motivated reasoning since Stevenson had always maintained a personal belief in reincarnation as a fact of reality rather than also considering the possibility that it may not happen at all.

Background

Personal life and education

Ian Stevenson was born in Montreal and raised in Ottawa, one of three children. His father, John Stevenson, was a Scottish lawyer who was working in Ottawa as the Canadian correspondent for The Times of London or The New York Times. His mother, Ruth, had an interest in theosophy and an extensive library on the subject, to which Stevenson attributed his own early interest in the paranormal. As a child he was often bedridden with bronchitis, a condition that continued into adulthood and engendered in him a lifelong love of books. According to Emily Williams Kelly, a colleague of his at the University of Virginia, he maintained a list of the books he had read, which numbered 3,535 between 1935 and 2003.

He studied medicine at St. Andrews University in Scotland from 1937 to 1939, but had to complete his studies in Canada because of the outbreak of the Second World War. He graduated from McGill University with a B.S.c. in 1942 and an M.D. in 1943. He was married to Octavia Reynolds from 1947 until her death in 1983. In 1985, he married Dr. Margaret Pertzoff (1926–2009), professor of history at Randolph-Macon Woman's College. She did not share his views on the paranormal, but tolerated them with what Stevenson called "benevolent silences."

Early career

After graduating, Stevenson conducted research in biochemistry. His first residency was at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal (1944–1945), but his lung condition continued to bother him, and one of his professors at McGill advised him to move to Arizona for his health. He took up a residency at St. Joseph's Hospital in Phoenix, Arizona (1945–1946). After that, he held a fellowship in internal medicine at the Alton Ochsner Medical Foundation in New Orleans, became a Denis Fellow in Biochemistry at Tulane University School of Medicine (1946–1947), and a Commonwealth Fund Fellow in Medicine at Cornell University Medical College and New York Hospital (1947–1949). He became a U.S. citizen in 1949.

Emily Williams Kelly writes that Stevenson became dissatisfied with the reductionism he encountered in biochemistry, and wanted to study the whole person. He became interested in psychosomatic medicine, psychiatry and psychoanalysis, and in the late 1940s, worked at New York Hospital exploring psychosomatic illness and the effects of stress, and in particular why one person's response to stress might be asthma and another's high blood pressure.

He taught at Louisiana State University School of Medicine from 1949 to 1957 as assistant, then associate, professor of psychiatry.

From 1951, he studied psychoanalysis at the New Orleans Psychoanalytic Institute and the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute, graduating from the latter in 1958, a year after being appointed head of the department of psychiatry at the University of Virginia. He argued against the orthodoxy within psychiatry and psychoanalysis at the time that the personality is more plastic in the early years; his paper on the subject, "Is the human personality more plastic in infancy and childhood?" (American Journal of Psychiatry, 1957), was not received well by his colleagues. He wrote that their response prepared him for the rejection he experienced over his work on the paranormal.

Reincarnation research

Early interest

Stevenson described as the leitmotif of his career his interest in why one person would develop one disease, and another something different. He came to believe that neither environment nor heredity could account for certain fears, illnesses and special abilities, and that some form of personality or memory transfer might provide a third type of explanation. He acknowledged, however, the absence of evidence of a physical process by which a personality could survive death and transfer to another body, and he was careful not to commit himself fully to the position that reincarnation occurs. He argued only that his case studies could not, in his view, be explained by environment or heredity, and that "reincarnation is the best – even though not the only – explanation for the stronger cases we have investigated." In 1958 and 1959, Stevenson contributed several articles and book reviews to Harper's about parapsychology, including psychosomatic illness and extrasensory perception, and in 1958, he submitted the winning entry to a competition organized by the American Society for Psychical Research, in honor of the philosopher William James (1842–1910). The prize was for the best essay on "paranormal mental phenomena and their relationship to the problem of survival of the human personality after bodily death." Stevenson's essay, "The Evidence for Survival from Claimed Memories of Former Incarnations" (1960), reviewed forty-four published cases of people, mostly children, who claimed to remember past lives. It caught the attention of Eileen J. Garrett (1893–1970), the founder of the Parapsychology Foundation, who gave Stevenson a grant to travel to India to interview a child who was claiming to have past-life memories. According to Jim Tucker, Stevenson found twenty-five other cases in just four weeks in India and was able to publish his first book on the subject in 1966, Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation.

Chester Carlson (1906–1968), the inventor of xerography, offered further financial help. Jim Tucker writes that this allowed Stevenson to step down as chair of the psychiatry department and set up a separate division within the department, which he called the Division of Personality Studies, later renamed the Division of Perceptual Studies.

When Carlson died in 1968, he left $1,000,000 to the University of Virginia to continue Stevenson's work. The bequest caused controversy within the university because of the nature of the research, but the donation was accepted, and Stevenson became the first Carlson Professor of Psychiatry.

Case studies

Overview

The bequest from Chester Carlson allowed Stevenson to travel extensively, sometimes as much as 55,000 miles a year, collecting around three thousand case studies based on interviews with children from Africa to Alaska.

In one case of claimed reincarnation, as Stevenson recounted it, a newborn girl in Sri Lanka screamed whenever she was carried near a bus or a bath. When she was old enough to talk, he said, she recounted a previous life as a girl of 8 or 9 who drowned after a bus knocked her into a flooded rice paddy; later investigation found the family of just such a dead girl living four or five kilometers away. The two families, Stevenson said, were believed to have had no contact.

According to journalist Tom Shroder, "In interviewing witnesses and reviewing documents, Stevenson searched for alternate ways to account for the testimony: that the child came upon the information in some normal way, that the witnesses were engaged in fraud or self-delusion, that the correlations were the result of coincidence or misunderstanding. But in scores of cases, Stevenson concluded that no normal explanation sufficed."

In some cases, a child in a "past life" case may have birthmarks or birth defects that in some way correspond to physical features of the "previous person" whose life the child seems to remember. Stevenson's Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects (1997) examined two hundred cases of birth defects or birthmarks on children claiming past-life memories. These included children with malformed or missing fingers who said they recalled the lives of people who had lost fingers; a boy with birthmarks resembling entrance and exit wounds who said he recalled the life of someone who had been shot; and a child with a scar around her skull three centimetres wide who said she recalled the life of a man who had had skull surgery. In many of the cases, in Stevenson's view, the witness testimony or autopsy reports appeared to support the existence of the injuries on the deceased's body.

Xenoglossy

Although Stevenson mainly focused on cases of children who seemed to remember past lives, he also studied two cases in which adults under hypnosis seemed to remember a past life and show rudimentary use of a language they had not learned in the present life. Stevenson called this phenomenon "xenoglossy." The linguist Sarah Thomason, critiquing these cases, wrote that Stevenson is "unsophisticated about language" and that the cases are unconvincing. Thomason concluded, "the linguistic evidence is too weak to provide support for the claims of xenoglossy." William J. Samarin, a linguist from the University of Toronto, wrote that Stevenson corresponded with linguists in a selective and unprofessional manner. He said that Stevenson corresponded with one linguist in a period of six years "without raising any discussion about the kinds of thing that linguists would need to know." Another linguist, William Frawley, wrote, "Stevenson does not consider enough linguistic evidence in these cases to warrant his metaphysics."

Retirement

Child psychiatrist Jim Tucker continues Stevenson's work.

Stevenson stepped down as director of the Division of Perceptual Studies in 2002, although he continued to work as Research Professor of Psychiatry. Bruce Greyson, editor of the Journal of Near-Death Studies, became director of the division. Jim Tucker, the department's associate professor of psychiatry and neurobehavioral sciences, continued Stevenson's research with children, examined in Tucker's book, Life Before Life: A Scientific Investigation of Children's Memories of Previous Lives (2005).

Death and experiment

Stevenson died of pneumonia on February 8, 2007, at his home in Charlottesville, Virginia. In his will he endowed the Stevenson Chair in Philosophy and History of Science including Medicine, at McGill University Department of Social Studies of Medicine.

As one experiment to test for personal survival of bodily death, in the 1960s Stevenson set a combination lock using a secret word or phrase and placed it in a filing cabinet in the department, telling his colleagues he would try to pass the code to them after his death. Emily Williams Kelly told The New York Times: "Presumably, if someone had a vivid dream about him, in which there seemed to be a word or a phrase that kept being repeated—I don't quite know how it would work—if it seemed promising enough, we would try to open it using the combination suggested."

Works

Books

• (1960). Medical History-Taking. Paul B. Hoeber.
• (1966). Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation. University of Virginia Press.
• (1969). The Psychiatric Examination. Little, Brown.
• (1970). Telepathic Impressions: A Review and Report of 35 New Cases. University Press of Virginia.
• (1971). The Diagnostic Interview (2nd revised edition of Medical History-Taking). Harper & Row.
• (1974). Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation (second revised and enlarged edition). University of Virginia Press.
• (1974). Xenoglossy: A Review and Report of A Case. University of Virginia Press.
• (1975). Cases of the Reincarnation Type, Vol. I: Ten Cases in India. University of Virginia Press.
• (1978). Cases of the Reincarnation Type, Vol. II: Ten Cases in Sri Lanka. University of Virginia Press.
• (1980). Cases of the Reincarnation Type, Vol. III: Twelve Cases in Lebanon and Turkey. University of Virginia Press.
• (1983). Cases of the Reincarnation Type, Vol. IV: Twelve Cases in Thailand and Burma. University of Virginia Press.
• (1984). Unlearned Language: New Studies in Xenoglossy. University of Virginia Press.
• (1987). Children Who Remember Previous Lives: A Question of Reincarnation. University of Virginia Press.
• (1997). Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects. Volume 1: Birthmarks. Praeger Publishers.
• (1997). Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects. Volume 2: Birth Defects and Other Anomalies. Praeger Publishers.
• (1997). Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect. Praeger Publishers (a short, non-technical version of Reincarnation and Biology).
• (2000). Children Who Remember Previous Lives: A Question of Reincarnation (revised edition). McFarland Publishing.
• (2003). European Cases of the Reincarnation Type. McFarland & Company.
• (2019). Handbook of Psychiatry volume Five (Co-written with Javad Nurbakhsh and Hamideh Jahangiri). LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing.
• (2020). Psychological Treatment Techniques For Social Anxiety Disorder (Co-written with Aliakbar Shoarinejad and Hamideh Jahangiri). Scholars' Press.

Selected articles

• (1949). "Why medicine is not a science", Harper's, April.
• (1952). "Illness from the inside", Harper's, March.
• (1952). "Why people change", Harper's, December.
• (1954). "Psychosomatic medicine, Part I", Harper's, July.
• (1954). "Psychosomatic medicine, Part II", Harper's, August.
• (1957). "Tranquilizers and the mind", Harper's, July.
• (1957). "Schizophrenia", Harper's, August.
• (1957). "Is the human personality more plastic in infancy and childhood?", American Journal of Psychiatry, 114(2), pp. 152–161.
• (1958). "Scientists with half-closed minds" Harper's, November.
• (1959). "A Proposal for Studying Rapport which Increases Extrasensory Perception," Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 53, pp. 66–68.
• (1959). "The Uncomfortable Facts about Extrasensory Perception", Harper's, July.
• (1960). "The Evidence for Survival from Claimed Memories of Former Incarnations," Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 54, pp. 51–71.
• (1960). "The Evidence for Survival from Claimed Memories of Former Incarnations": Part II. Analysis of the Data and Suggestions for Further Investigations, Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 54, pp. 95–117.
• (1961). "An Example Illustrating the Criteria and Characteristics of Precognitive Dreams," Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 55, pp. 98–103.
• (1964). "The Blue Orchid of Table Mountain," Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 42, pp. 401–409.
• (1968). "The Combination Lock Test for Survival," Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 62, pp. 246–254.
• (1970). "Characteristics of Cases of the Reincarnation Type in Turkey and their Comparison with Cases in Two other Cultures," International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 11, pp. 1–17.
• (1970). "A Communicator Unknown to Medium and Sitters," Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 64, pp. 53–65.
• (1970). "Precognition of Disasters," Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 64, pp. 187–210.
• (1971). "The Substantiability of Spontaneous cases," Proceedings of the Parapsychological Association, No. 5, pp. 91–128.
• (1972). "Are Poltergeists Living or Are They Dead?," Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 66, pp. 233–252.
• (1977). Stevenson, IAN (May 1977). "The Explanatory Value of the Idea of Reincarnation". The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 164 (5): 305–326. doi:10.1097/00005053-197705000-00002. PMID 864444.
• (1983). Stevenson, I. (Dec 1983). "American children who claim to remember previous lives". The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 171 (12): 742–748. doi:10.1097/00005053-198312000-00006. PMID 6644283.
• (1986). Stevenson, I. (1986). "Characteristics of Cases of the Reincarnation Type among the Igbo of Nigeria". Journal of Asian and African Studies 21 (3–4): 204–216. doi:10.1177/002190968602100305. http://jas.sagepub.com/content/21/3-4/204.
• (1993). "Birthmarks and Birth Defects Corresponding to Wounds on Deceased Persons". Journal of Scientific Exploration 7 (4): 403–410. https://www.scientificexploration.org/docs/7/jse_07_4_stevenson.pdf.
• with Emily Williams Cook and Bruce Greyson (1998). "Do Any Near-Death Experiences Provide Evidence for the Survival of Human Personality after Relevant Features and Illustrative Case Reports". Journal of Scientific Exploration 12 (3): 377–406. https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/wp-content/uploads/sites/360/2017/01/STE46_Do-Near-Death-Experiences-Provide-Evidence-for-Survival-of-Human-Personality.pdf.
• (1999). Stevenson, I. (Apr 1999). "Past lives of twins". Lancet 353 (9161): 1359–1360. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(05)74353-1. PMID 10218554.
• (2000). Stevenson, I. (Apr 2000). "The phenomenon of claimed memories of previous lives: possible interpretations and importance". Medical Hypotheses 54 (4): 652–659. doi:10.1054/mehy.1999.0920. PMID 10859660. https://semanticscholar.org/paper/e8d778d20507be2d971858ffeac47ad455c6ad95.
• (2000). Stevenson, I. (1985). "The Belief in Reincarnation Among the Igbo of Nigeria". Journal of Asian and African Studies 20 (1–2): 13–30. doi:10.1177/002190968502000102. http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-72763292.html.
• (2001). Stevenson, I. (August 2001). "Ropelike birthmarks on children who claim to remember past lives". Psychological Reports 89 (1): 142–144. doi:10.2466/pr0.2001.89.1.142. PMID 11729534. https://semanticscholar.org/paper/6ebdd2a6cd6b255a0e3378ed168b32b3521d5df6.
• with Satwant K. Pasricha; Jürgen Keil; and Jim B. Tucker (2005). "Some Bodily Malformations Attributed to Previous Lives". Journal of Scientific Exploration 19 (3): 159–183. https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/wp-content/uploads/sites/360/2016/12/REI34.pdf.
• (2005). Foreword and afterword in Mary Rose Barrington and Zofia Weaver. A World in a Grain of Sand: The Clairvoyance of Stefan Ossowiecki. McFarland Press.

An extended list of Stevenson's works is online here: http://www.pflyceum.org/167.html

See also

In Spanish: Ian Stevenson para niños