Book Review: The Near-Death Experience: Problems, Prospects, Perspectives Page: 68

                                
Anabiosis-The Journal for Near-Death Studies

fulfills a long-awaited need: it presents in brief compass four articles
by care-givers who have had extensive experience in working with
patients who report NDEs. In chapter 15, psychiatrist Raymond
Moody, Jr. addresses the need for physicians to respect the patient's
experience and to avoid countertherapeutic labeling based on igno-
rance. Emergency care nurse Annalee Oakes in Chapter 16 provides
specific nursing intervention methods to ease the recent near-death
experiencer's readjustment to a normal life. Anthony Lee, managing
editor of RN Magazine, in Chapter 17 draws upon his own experi-
ence of cardiac arrest in developing a nursing care plan for reducing
stress during near-death events and providing support for post-
resuscitation patients. Critical care social worker Kimberly Clark
draws from her rather considerable experience in working with more
than 100 near-death experiencers and outlines specific social work
interventions with patients and their families during and after an
NDE. Incidentally, Clark reports one of the most fascinating ac-
counts of an out-of-body experience during an NDE I have ever read.
One of Clark's patients reported being out of the body while being
driven to the hospital and seeing a tennis shoe on the ledge of the
third floor of the hospital. At the patient's urging, Clark went
through the patients' rooms on the third floor and found the shoe
on the ledge that matched details the patient had earlier reported.
Part V, "Consequences of Near-Death Experiences," presents
three chapters on the aftereffects of the NDE, one of the new and
promising areas of NDE research. Greyson, in Chapter 19, notes
the paradoxical finding that though the NDE would seem to "ro-
manticize" death and make it more attractive for the person who
attempts suicide, research indicates that having an NDE greatly
reduces the risk that the person will try suicide again. Psychiatrist
Noyes, in Chapter 20, approaches the question of "The Human
Experience of Death or, What Can We Learn From Near-Death
Experiences?" Noyes summarizes the changed attitudes toward
death on the part of near-death experiencers. One of the most
interesting is a sense of "aliveness," as contrasted with "deadness,"
that comes as a result of the ego-death/rebirth experience ac-
companying some near-death experiences. Cautiously bracketing
the religious implications, Noyes reflects on how the sense of
"aliveness" found in the mystical experience and the NDE might
be made available for therapeutic purposes. This suggestion of
Noyes has always seemed filled with insight and potentiality, and
I am glad that the editors are making this suggestion available to

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