LIBERTY PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION
SHERVAN SHAHHIAN
Most of us simply need a listening ear, someone who will listen without judgment. Someone who will hear our stories of mistakes, pain, and suffering. Someone who will listen as we speak about everything that has gone wrong in our lives, the people we have lost, and the people who have hurt us. Sometimes, being truly heard is the beginning of healing.
Shervan K Shahhian
Postmortem Survival refers to the hypothesis that some aspect of human consciousness, personality, or awareness continues to exist after physical death. Researchers in this field attempt to investigate whether consciousness can survive the death of the mind.
This topic is primarily studied within the field of Parapsychology and by organizations such as Society for Psychical Research and Parapsychological Association.
Major Areas of Research
NDEs occur when people report vivid experiences during life threatening situations or periods of clinical death.
Common features include:
Out of body experiences
Traveling through a tunnel
Encounters with deceased relatives
Feelings of peace and love
Life reviews
Interpretations:
Survivalists see NDEs as evidence that consciousness can exist apart from the mind.
Skeptics suggest neurological: Consult with a Neurologist, psychological, or physiological explanations.
ADCs are experiences in which bereaved individuals report sensing contact from deceased loved ones.
Examples include:
Hearing a loved one’s voice
Feeling their presence
Vivid dreams
Seeing apparitions
Receiving meaningful signs
Researchers often note that ADCs are relatively common and frequently comforting to those who experience them.
Some dying individuals report seeing deceased relatives, spiritual beings, or unfamiliar landscapes shortly before death.
Questions studied include:
Are these hallucinations?
Are they influenced by culture?
Do they represent a genuine transition experience?
Mediums claim to obtain information from deceased persons.
Researchers investigate:
Accuracy of information
Blind and triple blind testing
In some cases, possibility of fraud
Alternative explanations such as cold reading or telepathy
Some report memories of previous lives.
The best known researcher in this area was Ian Stevenson.
Researchers examine:
Verifiable details reported
Birthmarks corresponding to previous life injuries
Behavioral similarities
Apparitions are reported sightings or perceptions of deceased individuals.
Researchers distinguish between:
Crisis apparitions
Bereavement apparitions
Shared apparitions
Place related apparitions
The question is whether such experiences represent:
Psychological processes
Misperceptions
Evidence of survival
The Survival Hypothesis
The Survival Hypothesis proposes that consciousness can continue after bodily death.
Supporters argue that:
Some cases contain information difficult to explain conventionally.
Similar patterns appear across cultures.
Multiple lines of evidence converge on survival.
Alternative Explanations
Researchers also consider non-survival explanations:
Mind-based processes
Hallucinations
Memory errors
Expectation effects
Grief related experiences
Some fraud or information leakage
Psi among living persons (sometimes called the Super-Psi Hypothesis)
The Super-Psi theory suggests that apparent communication with the dead might actually result from extraordinary psychic abilities of living individuals rather than survival after death.
Current Scientific Status
Controversial scientists remain skeptical because:
Evidence is difficult to replicate consistently.
Many findings can be interpreted in multiple ways.
No universally accepted mechanism explains how consciousness could survive bodly death.
However, some researchers argue that the accumulated evidence from NDEs, ADCs, mediumship, reincarnation cases, and deathbed visions deserves continued scientific investigation.
Balanced Conclusion
Research into postmortem survival is one of the most fascinating and controversial areas in consciousness studies. While there is scientific consensus that consciousness survives death, there is an active body of research examining experiences and phenomena that some interpret as supporting survival. The debate continues between survival based explanations, psychological explanations, neurological explanations: Consult with a Neurologist, and psi-based alternatives.
The strongest approach is to examine the evidence critically, remain open to multiple interpretations, and distinguish carefully between personal beliefs and scientific conclusions.
Shervan K Shahhian
Mutual Dreaming refers to the claim that two or more people share the same dream experience, either simultaneously or with remarkably similar details that they later compare.
Mainstream psychology offers several explanations for apparent mutual dreams:
Within parapsychology, mutual dreaming is sometimes viewed as a possible form of:
However, there is currently no widely accepted scientific evidence demonstrating that people can literally enter and share the same dream space. The phenomenon remains controversial and is considered unproven by conventional science.
Suppose two siblings independently report dreaming that:
If the reports were recorded before either person discussed the dream, researchers might consider it a potential case of mutual dreaming worthy of investigation.
From a conventional scientific standpoint, mutual dreaming remains an intriguing anecdotal phenomenon. From a parapsychological standpoint, it is considered a possible area for investigating whether consciousness can interact beyond ordinary sensory communication.
Shervan K Shahhian
A shared apparition is an apparition that is reportedly perceived by two or more people at the same time. In these accounts, multiple witnesses independently report seeing, hearing, or sensing the same figure, presence, or phenomenon.
Key Characteristics
Multiple witnesses experience the event simultaneously.
Witnesses may describe the apparition similarly, though details can vary.
Shared apparitions are often considered especially interesting because they appear to involve more than a single person’s subjective experience.
Reports have occurred in homes, battlefields, hospitals, religious settings, and during emotionally significant events.
Examples
Several family members report seeing the deceased relative standing in a room.
Two friends simultaneously observe a figure that later disappears.
Multiple witnesses claim to see a religious figure, such as an apparition of certain prophets.
Possible Explanations
Different perspectives offer different interpretations:
Psychological Explanations
Suggestion and expectation.
Misinterpretation of ambiguous stimuli.
Emotional contagion within a group.
Shared beliefs influencing perception.
Parapsychological Explanations
Some researchers propose that shared apparitions may represent a genuine anomalous phenomenon.
Others suggest a form of telepathic or psi-mediated experience among witnesses.
Environmental Explanations
Lighting conditions, shadows, reflections, or unusual environmental factors may lead multiple people to interpret a stimulus similarly.
In Psychical Research
Researchers associated with organizations such as the Society for Psychical Research have collected and analyzed reports of shared apparitional experiences for over a century. These cases are often examined because they may help distinguish between purely individual experiences and events reported by multiple observers.
From a scientific standpoint, shared apparitions remain unexplained reports rather than established evidence of ghosts or survival after death. They are studied as part of the broader field of Parapsychology and the psychology of anomalous experiences.
Shervan K Shahhian
A shared apparition is an apparition that is reportedly perceived by two or more people at the same time. In these accounts, multiple witnesses independently report seeing, hearing, or sensing the same figure, presence, or phenomenon.
Key Characteristics
Multiple witnesses experience the event simultaneously.
Witnesses may describe the apparition similarly, though details can vary.
Shared apparitions are often considered especially interesting because they appear to involve more than a single person’s subjective experience.
Reports have occurred in homes, battlefields, hospitals, religious settings, and during emotionally significant events.
Examples
Several family members report seeing the deceased relative standing in a room.
Two friends simultaneously observe a figure that later disappears.
Multiple witnesses claim to see a religious figure, such as an apparition of certain prophets.
Possible Explanations
Different perspectives offer different interpretations:
Psychological Explanations
Suggestion and expectation.
Misinterpretation of ambiguous stimuli.
Emotional contagion within a group.
Shared beliefs influencing perception.
Parapsychological Explanations
Some researchers propose that shared apparitions may represent a genuine anomalous phenomenon.
Others suggest a form of telepathic or psi-mediated experience among witnesses.
Environmental Explanations
Lighting conditions, shadows, reflections, or unusual environmental factors may lead multiple people to interpret a stimulus similarly.
In Psychical Research
Researchers associated with organizations such as the Society for Psychical Research have collected and analyzed reports of shared apparitional experiences for over a century. These cases are often examined because they may help distinguish between purely individual experiences and events reported by multiple observers.
From a scientific standpoint, shared apparitions remain unexplained reports rather than established evidence of ghosts or survival after death. They are studied as part of the broader field of Parapsychology and the psychology of anomalous experiences.
Shervan K Shahhian
Interpersonal Violence refers to the intentional use of physical force or power by one person against another person that results in, or has a high likelihood of resulting in, injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation.
Some organizations classify interpersonal violence as a major public health problem because of its significant impact on health and well-being worldwide.
Shervan K Shahhian
Dissociative Amnesia is a psychological condition in which a person is unable to recall important personal information, usually related to traumatic or highly stressful experiences. The memory loss is more extensive than ordinary forgetting and it might not be explained by a physical condition, substance use, or typical memory problems.
A rare subtype in which a person:
Treatment may focus on safety, stabilization, and gradual processing of underlying trauma:
Shervan K Shahhian
Stress Induced Dissociated Behavior may refer to dissociative symptoms or behaviors that emerge when a person is overwhelmed by acute or chronic stress.
Dissociation may be a disruption in the normal integration of:
It may exist on a spectrum, from mild spacing out to more severe fragmentation.
When stress becomes overwhelming, especially if it feels inescapable, unpredictable, or threatening, the nervous system may shift from:
PLEASE, CONSULT WITH A MEDICAL DOCTOR
This shutdown response may produce dissociative phenomena.
From a trauma framework, dissociation is understood as a survival adaptation when active defense fails.
Feeling detached from oneself
Feeling detached from surroundings
“CONSULT WITH A NEUROLOGIST”
Under extreme stress:
This creates a protective analgesic state, emotional and sometimes physical: consult with a Neurologist.
Acute stress dissociation
Chronic stress dissociation
Chronic forms may evolve into clinical conditions such as:
Dissociation is adaptive when:
It reduces subjective suffering, but long term it impairs integration and embodied presence.
Premature trauma exposure without stabilization may increase dissociation.
Shervan K Shahhian
Pip: Liberty Psychological Association — building what it calls the most comprehensive online library on mental health, psychology, and parapsychology in the world, which is either a mission statement or a very committed filing system.
Mara: Shervan K Shahhian and Liberty Psychological Association are covering serious ground today — psychokinesis and how researchers try to measure it, psychic experience and the question of non-human intelligences, and auditory hallucinations on the clinical side.
Pip: Let's start with things that move without being touched.
Mara: The question this territory is asking is whether the mind can directly influence physical matter — and if so, at what scale, and how would you even test it?
Pip: The table levitations post sets the historical baseline. Nineteenth-century spiritualist gatherings, hands lightly placed, tables rocking. The post notes that researchers studied these claims and concluded "many cases could be explained by unconscious muscular movements exerted by the participants."
Mara: That's the ideomotor effect — people producing small muscle movements without conscious awareness, and those movements combining across multiple participants into something that looks dramatic but isn't.
Pip: So the séance table was basically a group ouija board running on collective fidgeting. Scientifically humbling, but also kind of elegant.
Mara: The large-scale PK post extends this into much bigger claimed effects — weather modification, disruptions to power grids and electronic systems, and collective consciousness influencing random number generators, as in the Global Consciousness Project. These are called macro-PK claims when effects extend beyond localized environments.
Pip: And then there's micro-PK, which is the quieter end of the spectrum — subtle statistical influences on random number generators, radioactive decay, quantum-level events. Not visible to the naked eye, detectable only across many trials.
Mara: The micro-PK post is careful to note that mainstream science attributes reported effects to statistical fluctuations, experimental error, and publication bias. The evidence hasn't met the bar for replication required for scientific acceptance, though parapsychology researchers continue investigating.
Mara: The scale question matters — from a table tilting in a Victorian parlor to weather anomalies to dice outcomes — it's the same underlying hypothesis about consciousness and matter, just tested at very different levels.
Pip: Which raises the question of what counts as a psychic experience in the first place.
Mara: The psychic phenomena post maps the full terrain — telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, remote viewing, mediumship — and offers a working definition: "experiences or alleged abilities involving the acquisition of information or influence that appear to occur outside the currently recognized mechanisms of the six senses or known physical processes."
Pip: That's a carefully neutral framing. It doesn't claim proof, but it doesn't dismiss the reports either.
Mara: Right — and the post is honest that psychological processes like pattern recognition, confirmation bias, and unconscious social cue detection can account for many experiences that feel psychic. The open question is whether any remainder survives that explanation.
Pip: The non-human intelligences post pushes into stranger territory. NHIs are hypothesized entities — spirit intelligences, extraterrestrial or interdimensional beings, collective consciousnesses — believed by some researchers to interact with people through psychic means.
Mara: Associated experiences include telepathic communication, apparitions, UAP encounters, and near-death experiences. No scientific consensus that NHIs exist, but the concept sits at the intersection of parapsychology, ufology, and consciousness studies, and the post treats it as a live research question rather than a closed one.
Pip: And there's a podcast episode in this batch — Psi, UAPs, and Consciousness — that pulls these threads together directly, which tells you something about how seriously this library takes the overlap.
Mara: Both posts land in the same place: whether these experiences represent independent intelligences, aspects of human consciousness, or something else remains genuinely open.
Pip: From entities that may or may not exist, to experiences that are very much real — and need clinical attention.
Mara: The auditory hallucinations post is clinical and direct: these are "hearing sounds, voices, music, or noises that are not actually present in the environment," ranging from simple buzzing or ringing to complex voices.
Pip: The causes run wide — schizophrenia, severe depression, sleep deprivation, substance use, epilepsy, dementia, even high fever. The post is explicit that treatment depends on identifying the cause, and that persistent or distressing experiences warrant professional evaluation.
Mara: The warning signs flagged are specific: voices commanding harmful actions, difficulty distinguishing hallucination from reality, sudden onset with medical symptoms. The post directs anyone in that situation to seek urgent help immediately.
Pip: From tables lifting in Victorian parlors to statistical anomalies in random number generators to voices that need a clinician — it's a wide library.
Mara: The common thread is taking unusual experience seriously enough to ask the right questions. More from the library next time.
Psychodrama is a form of psychotherapy that may use guided role playing, dramatization, and action methods to help people explore emotions, relationships, conflicts, and life experiences.
How Psychodrama May Work
A participant (called the protagonist) reenacts a situation from their life, such as:
A difficult relationship
A traumatic experience
An unresolved conflict
A future challenge or decision
An internal struggle
Other group members may play the roles of significant people, emotions, or aspects of the protagonist’s personality.
Common Techniques
Role Reversal: Taking the role of another person to understand their perspective.
Mirroring: Watching someone else act out your behavior so you can see yourself from the outside.
Doubling: Another person expresses thoughts or feelings that the protagonist may be struggling to verbalize.
Future Projection: Acting out a future situation to prepare for it.
Benefits
Psychodrama may help people:
Increase self-awareness
Process unresolved emotions
Improve communication skills
Develop empathy
Gain new perspectives on problems
Practice healthier behaviors
Example
A person who has unresolved feelings toward a deceased parent might speak to an empty chair representing that parent, expressing thoughts and emotions that were never communicated. This may help create emotional insight and closure.
Uses
Psychodrama may be used in:
Individual and group therapy
Trauma treatment
Addiction recovery programs
Family and couples therapy
Personal growth workshops
Organizational and team-building settings
Limitations
Psychodrama may evoke strong emotions. It is generally most effective when led by a trained psychodrama therapist who may provide structure, safety, and support.
In modern practice, psychodrama is may be integrated with other approaches such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Family Therapy, trauma informed therapies, and experiential therapies.
Shervan K Shahhian
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