I agree with Peter Harzem's sensible suggestion that it's time to give this topic a rest. I think I now understand the underlying basis of my disagreement with Jim Guinee. It's that he thinks that assertions based on "experience" are science, and that belief trumps evidence. There's nothing left to say after that. Except this (ok, last word, I hope):
On 9 Mar 2007 at 23:09, Jim Guinee wrote, with just a hint of sarcasm, in response to my citing a less than complimentary journalistic account of Kubler-Ross (Rosenbaum at http://slate.msn.com/id/2107069/): > So basically it's not okay for me to develop my clinical impressions > outside of the lab, but you're willing to trod on some dead theorist's > memory on the basis of hearsay? > > Wow. Of course we know it's all true because you read it in that > article. > > Hmmm...what does that sound like? If Jim had intended to seriously question Rosenbaum's account rather than merely to disparage me by innuendo, he could have easily researched his concern himself. But I'll help him out. The most outrageous claim in Rosenbaum's article is this: "Enter the spirit medium of Escondido-a guy she had invited to her workshops, who somehow facilitated intercourse between the grieving widows and the "afterlife entities." The scandal erupted when several of the widows came down with similar vaginal infections, and one turned on the light during a session with an "afterlife entity" and discovered the opportunistic spirit medium himself, naked except for a turban. (He offered the completely plausible explanation that the afterlife entities had "cloned" him-and the turban, too, I guess-to help enable the afterlife entities to engage in the pleasures of the flesh.)" Rosenbaum felt it necessary to protest "I'm _not_ making this up". Well, was he? The respected library reference work _Current Biography Illustrated_ from the H.W. Wilson Company has this to say about the incident: " [Kubler-Ross] in the mid-1970s was much in demand on the lecture circuit... on... life after death, or "life after life," as she put it; in 1976, began an unfortunate (as she would later acknowledge) association with the spiritualist "healers" Jay Barham and his wife Marti and their San Diego-based Church of the Facet of Divinity... established [at Escondido] a teaching and healing center called Shanti Nilaya (Sanskrit words meaning "Home of Peace"), envisioned by her as the first of a worldwide network of retreats affirming "survival of the spirit after death in the form a living entity"; participated with the Barhams in gatherings at which they, as mediums, or "channelers," claimed to materialize "spirit guides" into human form; found her own reputation undermined when scandal struck in 1979, in the form of charges that Jay Barham, masquerading as various "spirit entities," had sexually seduced a number of females, including, allegedly, an underage girl". The two accounts focus on different details, but it's clearly the same event (_The Guardian_ for August 31/04 says so also, BTW). Kubler-Ross was gulled by an patently absurd charlatan into risible belief. And yet Jim would have us accept that her years of professional experience made her accounts of death and dying "evidence". And there's this, from Robert Yahnke (The Gerontologist, ,2005, v. 45, 426-428), reviewing a film on Kubler-Ross: "The film is admirably honest about the strange relationship Kübler-Ross developed with a spiritualist charlatan that led to the closing of Shanti Nilaya, the center she founded in California. It is common knowledge in the "death and dying" community that in a dark room the charlatan embodied the spirits of dead husbands and suggested he have sex with their widows. Kübler-Ross's sister tells how she tried to dissuade Kübler- Ross. She calls channeling spirits "hocus pocus" and "hogwash." Chaplain Imara says that what happened in those séances was transparently fake." So I'd say that Rosenbaum's account of this exploit of that wacky woman has been confirmed. There's also this observation of interest from Yahnke: "Her five-stage theory of dying has been largely discarded by scholars and practitioners. The theory could neither be empirically validated nor did it prove useful in making care plans for hospice patients. Her later writings were largely restatements of her first book or were claims about spiritual realities, especially life after death, that rested on faith, not science". Just so. One final note. We've discussed here that Kubler-Ross originally intended her stages to apply to facing one's own imminent death, but that others have enthusiastically extended them to those experiencing the death of another. Among those others, apparently, was Kubler-Ross herself. Schatzman (August 28, 2004, in _The Independent_) notes: "She [Kubler-Ross] was later to say that people go through the same stages when faced with any kind of loss: losing a spouse, a job, a maid, a parakeet--even, in some cases, a contact lens". A parakeet? A contact lens?!!!! Oh heck, you check it out, Jim, and let us know if and where she says it. (Hint: It could possibly be in an interview she gave to _Playboy_ magazine. For some reason our university library doesn't carry the journal). Stephen ----------------------------------------------------------------- Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Department of Psychology Bishop's University e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 0C8 Canada Dept web page at http://www.ubishops.ca/ccc/div/soc/psy TIPS discussion list for psychology teachers at http://faculty.frostburg.edu/psyc/southerly/tips/index.htm ----------------------------------------------------------------------- --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english
