Uncategorized – LIBERTY PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION

Parapsychology: Postmortem Survival refers to the hypothesis that,…

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

Near-Death Experiences (NDEs)

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.

After-Death Communications (ADCs)

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.

Deathbed Visions

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?

Mediumship Research

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

Reincarnation Research

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

Apparition Studies

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

Parapsychology: Mutual Dreaming refers to the claim that two or more people share the same dream:

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.

Types of Mutual Dreaming

Simultaneous Shared Dreams
- Two people report dreaming of each other or participating in the same dream scenario during the same night.
- They later compare notes and find similarities.
Reciprocal Dreams
- Person A dreams about Person B, and Person B dreams about Person A at roughly the same time.
Dream Telepathy Claims
- Some researchers in parapsychology have suggested that information may occasionally be exchanged between minds during dreaming.

Psychological Explanations

Mainstream psychology offers several explanations for apparent mutual dreams:

Coincidence: People often dream about common themes, relationships, or shared concerns.
Selective Memory: Similarities are remembered while differences are forgotten.
Expectation Effects: After discussing dreams, people may unintentionally reconstruct memories to fit each other’s accounts.
Shared Experiences: Close friends, couples, or family members often have similar daily experiences and emotional concerns, which can produce similar dream content.

Parapsychological Perspective

Within parapsychology, mutual dreaming is sometimes viewed as a possible form of:

Dream telepathy
Mind to mind communication during sleep
Shared consciousness experiences

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.

Example

Suppose two siblings independently report dreaming that:

They were walking through the same unusual house,
Met the same deceased relative,
Heard the same message.

If the reports were recorded before either person discussed the dream, researchers might consider it a potential case of mutual dreaming worthy of investigation.

Related Concepts

Dream Telepathy
Telepathic Communication
Lucid Dreaming
Conscious Dreaming
Shared Apparitions
Phantasms of the Living

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

Parapsychology: a Shared Apparition is an apparition that is reportedly perceived by two or more people:

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

Parapsychology: a Shared Apparition is an apparition that is reportedly perceived by two or more people:

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

Shervan K Shahhian

Interpersonal Violence refers to the intentional use of physical force or power by one person against another person:

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.

Types of Interpersonal Violence

Family and intimate partner violence
- Child abuse and neglect
- Intimate partner violence (domestic violence)
- Elder abuse
Community violence
- Youth violence
- Assault by strangers or acquaintances
- Sexual violence
- Workplace violence
- Bullying and harassment

Possible Risk Factors

Substance abuse (alcohol, drugs)
Poverty and unemployment
Family conflict
History of abuse or exposure to violence
Poor social support
Mental health problems

Possible Consequences

Physical injuries and disability
Mental health disorders (depression, anxiety, PTSD)
Substance misuse
Social and economic problems
Death in severe cases

Possible Prevention Strategies

Strengthening family relationships and parenting skills
Promoting healthy relationships and conflict resolution skills
Reducing access to alcohol and drugs
Community education and awareness programs
Legal protections and support services for victims

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:

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.

Key Features

Inability to remember important autobiographical information.
May be linked to trauma, abuse, accidents, disasters, combat, or overwhelming stress.
Memory loss may involve specific events, certain time periods, or, in rare cases, a person’s entire life history.
The forgotten information is stored in memory but becomes temporarily inaccessible to conscious awareness.

Types of Dissociative Amnesia

Localized Amnesia
- Inability to remember events during a specific period of time.
- Most common type.
Selective Amnesia
- May recall some, but not all, aspects of a traumatic event.
Generalized Amnesia
- Loss of memory for one’s entire life history or identity.
- Rare.
Systematized Amnesia
- Memory loss related to a particular person, place, or category of information.
Continuous Amnesia
- Inability to form conscious memories for ongoing events from a certain point forward.

Possible Symptoms

Memory gaps concerning personal history.
Confusion or distress about missing memories.
Difficulty recalling traumatic experiences.
Feeling detached from oneself or reality (sometimes occurring alongside other dissociative symptoms).

Dissociative Fugue

A rare subtype in which a person:

Suddenly travels away from home or work.
Becomes confused about their identity.
May assume a new identity temporarily.

Possible Causes

Severe trauma or overwhelming stress.
Childhood abuse or neglect.
Combat experiences.
Natural disasters.
Interpersonal violence.
Major emotional conflicts.

Possible Treatment

Treatment may focus on safety, stabilization, and gradual processing of underlying trauma:

Psychotherapy (the primary treatment)
Trauma-focused therapies
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
Clinical hypnosis (when appropriate and conducted by trained professionals)
Stress management and grounding techniques

Shervan K Shahhian

Stress Induced Dissociated Behavior:

Stress Induced Dissociated Behavior may refer to dissociative symptoms or behaviors that emerge when a person is overwhelmed by acute or chronic stress.

What Is Dissociation?

Dissociation may be a disruption in the normal integration of:

Awareness
Memory
Identity
Emotion
Perception
Body sensation

It may exist on a spectrum, from mild spacing out to more severe fragmentation.

How Stress Triggers Dissociation

When stress becomes overwhelming, especially if it feels inescapable, unpredictable, or threatening, the nervous system may shift from:

PLEASE, CONSULT WITH A MEDICAL DOCTOR

Fight or flight: sympathetic activation
to
Freeze / shutdown: parasympathetic dorsal vagal dominance

This shutdown response may produce dissociative phenomena.

From a trauma framework, dissociation is understood as a survival adaptation when active defense fails.

Common Stress Induced Dissociative Behaviors

1. Depersonalization

Feeling detached from oneself

“I feel like I’m watching myself.”
Emotional numbness
Robotic functioning

2. Derealization

Feeling detached from surroundings

World feels unreal, foggy, dreamlike
Sensory distortions

3. Dissociative Amnesia

Memory gaps during stressful events
“I don’t remember parts of what happened.”

4. Behavioral Auto Pilot

Functioning competently but with reduced awareness
Emotional disconnection while performing tasks

5. Identity Shifts Under Stress

Sudden personality changes
Childlike states under overwhelm
Regression patterns

Neurobiological View

“CONSULT WITH A NEUROLOGIST”

Under extreme stress:

Amygdala: hyperactivation: consult with a Neurologist
Prefrontal cortex: reduced regulation: consult with a Neurologist
Hippocampus: memory fragmentation: consult with a Neurologist
Opioid system: emotional numbing: consult with a Neurologist

This creates a protective analgesic state, emotional and sometimes physical: consult with a Neurologist.

Acute vs. Chronic Patterns

Acute stress dissociation

During accidents
During conflict
During panic episodes

Chronic stress dissociation

Trauma history
Attachment disruptions
Prolonged relational threat
Complex trauma patterns

Chronic forms may evolve into clinical conditions such as:

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Dissociative Identity Disorder
Depersonalization/Derealization Disorder

Why the System Does This

Dissociation is adaptive when:

The threat cannot be escaped
The person cannot fight
Emotional pain is overwhelming

It reduces subjective suffering, but long term it impairs integration and embodied presence.

Clinical Markers to Watch For

Flat affect during intense material
Sudden cognitive fog
Rapid shifts in eye focus
Voice tone change
Time distortion reports
Memory inconsistencies

Treatment Considerations

Nervous system regulation (bottom-up): consult with a Neurologist
Somatic grounding
Trauma processing (carefully titrated)
Attachment repair
Strengthening executive functioning before deep trauma work

Premature trauma exposure without stabilization may increase dissociation.

Shervan K Shahhian

Podcast Episode: Parapsychology And Consciousness

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.

Psychokinesis: From Table Tipping to Large-Scale PK

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.

Psychic Experience and the Question of Non-Human Intelligences

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.

When the Mind Hears What Isn't There

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,…

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

Continuing Bonds Theory is a grief and bereavement theory:

Continuing Bonds Theory is a grief and bereavement theory that suggests healthy adaptation to loss does not require completely “letting go” of the deceased. Instead, people often maintain an ongoing psychological, emotional, or symbolic relationship with the person who died.

The theory is associated with the work of certain researchers, grieving meant severing attachments to the deceased.

Core Ideas

The bond with the deceased often continues after death.
Maintaining that bond may be a normal and healthy part of grieving.
The relationship changes form rather than ending completely.
Grief involves integrating the loss into one’s life and identity.

Examples of Continuing Bonds

Talking to the deceased internally.
Keeping photographs or treasured possessions.
Visiting gravesites or memorials.
Celebrating the person’s birthday or other meaningful dates.
Drawing guidance or comfort from memories of the deceased.
Feeling that the deceased remains part of one’s life story.

Strengths of the Theory

Reflects how many bereaved people actually experience grief.
Recognizes cultural and spiritual practices that maintain connections with the dead.
Reduces pressure to “move on” or “get over” a loss.

Criticisms

In some cases, an ongoing bond may become problematic if it prevents adaptation to current life demands.
The theory may not clearly distinguish between healthy continuing bonds and more complicated forms of grief.

In Practice

Modern grief counseling may incorporate the principles of Continuing Bonds Theory by helping individuals find meaningful ways to maintain a connection with the deceased while continuing to engage with life and relationships in the present.

Shervan K Shahhian