Literature Review #2

 

Citation:

  Keil, H. H. Jürgen, and Jim B. Tucker. “Children Who Claim to Remember Previous Lives: Cases with Written Records Made before the Previous Personality Was Identified.” Journal of Scientific Exploration, vol. 19, no. 1, 2005, pp. 91–101.

Summary:

Within the article, “Children Who Claim to Remember Previous Lives: Cases with Written Records Made before the Previous Personality Was Identified,” H.H. Jürgen Keil and Jim B. Tucker dove into a total of four prominent cases, which then fueled the analysis of cases which they explain later on. Briefly, the cases included one about two boys who started to speak on his past life experiences at the age of 2 ½,  a girl from India, and another boy who began to speak at 3 ½ years old. One of the cases they emphasized was one with a boy who lived in Hatay, Turkey. His experience was with a married Armenian man who lived a luxurious life in Instanbul. What makes this case compelling is that no Armenians were known to live in Istanbul. While they found a house that matched the description, they could not find any evidence of the subject’s suggestions. Until a local historian born in 1924 then revealed about the only “Armenian in Cengelkoy area” (Keil and Tucker 94). Other details then began to confirm. Another interesting point was the subject’s birthmark, which he said played a role in his death and his wife’s involvement. While no substantial evidence was ever found, the local historian did mention the talk of the wife’s involvement with his death. Later, Keil and Tucker explain the overlaps of cases. Both Keil and Tucker find the collective age of both the starting of recollecting past life experiences and the decline. They find that individuals began to speak around the 32-month range and then shortly stop at 72 months. Another exciting aspect is the use of distance/time between the past individuals and the children who relive their experiences. Usually, the physical distance is medially around 14 km (8.6992 miles), and the years between them have gone from 16 months to around 50 years (this text was written in 2005, while this time frame has not stayed consistent with other cases I have viewed they quote that this was not unusual). Lastly, the authors say that the discussion of written records “poses a serious challenge to the socio-psychological hypothesis for the phenomenon” (Keil and Tucker 100). 

Author(s):

J.B Tucker is a child psychiatrist who has the main interest in the phenomenon of children who remember their previous lives. His work includes two books dealing with cases that he has explored. His second book, “Return to Life: Extraordinary Cases of Children Who Remember Past Lives,” is the primary source that I will be looking into for my project. 

H.H. Jürgen Keil is a psychologist who spent time with Ian Stevenson, a very “famous” psychiatrist who has written multiple texts about this phenomenon. Keil has now released many publicans about reincarnation.  

Key Terms:

Socio-physiological hypothesis: the idea that children who have been engaged in a household that can promote reincarnation tend to lead to making claims that families falsify. 

Overlapping attributes: as discussed, there have been various features that the research has seen been a continuous cycle with other cases as well.  

Three Quotes:

“The very early age when the subject began talking about a previous life is the norm for these cases, and in the 1200 cases that have been coded and entered into our computer database (out of 2500 registered cases), the median age is 32 months. Similarly, his report of forgetting some of the details is very common, as the median age for the subjects to stop talking spontaneously about the previous life is 72 months.” (Keil and Tucker 99)

“The socio-psychological hypothesis of exaggerated credit has appeared to provide the most reasonable way to explain through normal means many of the cases of children who claim to remember previous lives. It fails completely, however, to explain ones in which written records document” (Keil and Tucker 100)

“The one using normal means that is most frequently given is the socio-psychological hypothesis (Brody, 1979). It can be summarized as follows: In a culture having a belief in reincarnation a child who seems to speak about a previous life will be encouraged to say more. What he says then leads his parents somehow to find another family whose members come to believe that the child has been speaking about a deceased member of their family. The two families exchange information about details, and they end by crediting the subject with having had much more knowledge about the identified deceased person than he really had had. (Stevenson & Samararatne, 1988: 237)” (Keil and Tucker)

Value:

While the cases from this article have compelled me, the primary value I find from this article includes the socio-physiological hypothesis and the debunking of it. The discussion of patterns also adds some insight into what I have personally noticed within all the cases I have been reading. Additionally, the age range increases the knowledge/information that I can include about “the fade” that occurs within children.