Out-Of-Body Experience

One of the spookiest topics that we have learned about this semester is Out-of-body experiences. An out-of-body experience is a sensation of being outside one's own body, typically by being able to observe oneself from a distance. According to Jonas, "out of body experiences are just one of a larger group of experiences called autoscopy, which is from two Ancient Greek words: autos, meaning"self", and skopós, meaning "watcher"" (Jonas, 2020). As weird as that may seem, out-of-body experiences actually happen to many people whether they are healthy or sickly. There are two ways one can experience this: spontaneous out of body experience or induced out of body experience. Within these two categories becomes even deeper reasons one can experience autoscopy such as: visual and somatosensory hallucinations, and heautoscopy proper. 

One of the most famous cases of out-of-body experiences that became a case study is Miss. Z. This woman would claim that at her own will she was able to leave her body. Now Dr. Tart didn't exactly believe her and decided to experiment. When she was asleep he had placed a number on the shelf in front of her and required her to let him know what the number was when she woke up. In fact there was no way for her to know what number was placed in front of her at all, but when she woke up she stated the correct number leaving him in shocked. Dr. Tart started and I quote, 

            "My informal observation of her over a period of several months (undoubtedly distorted by the fact

            that one can never describe one's friends objectively) resulted in a picture of a person who in some

            ways was quite mature and insightful, and in other ways so extremely disturber psychologically

            that at times, when she lost control, she could possibly be diagnosed as schizophrenic"

            (Martisiute, 2018).

Insight on Out-of-Body Experiences. Association for Psychological Science - APS. (2011, August 19). https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/insight-on-out-of-body-experiences. 

Jonas, C. (2020, October 26). Out of body experiences: Dr Clare Jonas. That Thinking Feeling. https://www.thatthinkingfeeling.co.uk/blog/out-of-body-experiences. 

Martisiute, L. (2018, January 24). 4 Bizarre Out-Of-Body Experiences That Turned Into Case Studies. All That's Interesting. https://allthatsinteresting.com/out-of-body-experiences.