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Distressing near-death experiences

Greyson, Bruce & Bush, Nancy Evans (1992)

Published
Feb 1, 1992
Journal
Psychiatry · Vol. 55 · No. 1
DOI
10.1080/00332747.1992.11024583
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At a GlanceAI

The classification of distressing NDEs into inverse, void and hellish types, based on 50 accounts.

SummaryAI

Greyson and Bush examined 50 self-reported frightening near-death experiences and proposed three types: "inverse" experiences with the usual features but felt as unpleasant (the most common), experiences of an eternal void, and the rarest, hellish experiences with frightening landscapes and beings. The paper illustrates each type with first-person accounts but gives no counts per type. The classification is still the standard one; Cassol et al. (2019) confirmed it on a new sample.

Method SnapshotAI

Qualitative analysis of collected case accounts.

BackgroundAI

None.

In Collections

Psychology28 papers

Near-death experiences: reports, measurement and explanations

Some people who come close to death later report leaving their body, a tunnel, a bright light, meeting deceased relatives or a review of their life. This collection follows how psychology and medicine have studied these reports: from the first case collections (Moody, Ring) and the Greyson NDE Scale, through prospective studies of cardiac arrest survivors, to neurobiological, psychological and cultural explanations, distressing NDEs, and what changes in people's lives afterwards. What NDEs are is still debated, and the verdicts here are ours. Terms: * NDE: near-death experience * OBE: out-of-body experience * WCEI: Ring's Weighted Core Experience Index, an early measure of NDE depth

ES
Evgeny Smirnov

Three types of distressing NDEs: "inverse", void and hellish. The classification still holds; Cassol et al. 2019 confirmed it.

— ES