Gee, I don't really want to enter this, but I was amazed to see how similar Marc's response was with arguments for ghosts, ESP, and psychic powers. People (so-called professionals especially) tend to use pop-psych concepts to color/justify their interpretations of events. I would value more anecdotal reports PRIOR to the stage view because those after are likely products of confirmation and hindsight biases. Probably a more relevant issue with a lot of flimsy psych ideas, is how easily some of them get in to textbooks/seminars, and become accepted by clinical workers, and later classroom teachers. Well it is always fun to go over Kubler-Ross's stages in class, and you can easily foster confirming examples from people in class--indeed, you could use it to illustrate the way you can present ideas to be almost non-falsifiable. If you ask students to think of situations where there would be no denial or doubt, they might get on this skeptical bandwagon and come up with different, opposing anecdotes. We explore the types of death or dying they might be familiar with, and soon we can apply the stage or other views to almost any event. We also bring up the inferences that observers/family members might be making versus the experiences of the dying person in relation to the type of drugged condition and disease they may have. We often end up talking about "loss" generally---like someone stealing something, or what happens when an appliance/cell phone/computer is broken or dying. Soon the discussion can turn to how such ideas might have become popular in the first place, and what would be necessary for a more adequate framework of scientific observation and study. Staying out of this, Gary Gerald L. (Gary) Peterson, Ph.D. Professor, Psychology Saginaw Valley State University University Center, MI 48710 989-964-4491 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
--- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english
