The psychological value of mediumship, and other exercises

Here's an unexpected article from the New York Times:  someone writing about how various ways of sensing the ongoing existence of a deceased loved one (including via mediumship) should be seen as a useful, healing thing, regardless of veracity.   (I think that's a reasonable summary, and I didn't even ask an AI to come up with it!)

There are some things I had not heard of before, so I will extract those so as to avoid future link-rot:

In study after study, the sensation of contact with a deceased loved one plays a rather remarkable role in alleviating grief. In one recently published review of 14 psychological studies across seven countries, spanning over 1,900 participants, researchers found that a majority of those who reported experiencing the sensation of their lost loved one had had some sort of “emotionally restorative experiences that contributed to coping with their grief.” That doesn’t surprise me. It is bleak finality that leaves the griever reeling.

Though the experience is most often reported as overwhelmingly positive, many grievers feel a kind of shame. They don’t really want to talk about it, for fear of being dismissed, or of having someone blow away the tiny fibers of relief — even joy — that the experience can bring. At least one study found that mental health professionals might undermine the good that comes from such a sensation by trivializing the experience.....

This next part reminds me of something:

In 1971, Dr. William Dewi Rees conducted a study of 227 widows and 66 widowers in Wales in which nearly half — half! — reported what was referred to as “hallucinations” of their lost spouse. Most of them had told no one. Dr. Rees noted the episodes were considered “normal and helpful,” and nodded to the similar experience of widows in Japan.

Yes, my mother told us that following my father's death (which followed a painful decline from cancer, so it was not unexpected), she swore she heard his breathing beside her in the bed on (I think) at least a few occasions at night when she was in bed in the dark.   She found it comforting.    

I had not heard of this:

Last year in Adelaide, Australia, 43 participants in a controlled study received two 90-minute sessions of a directed, short-term therapy derived from the trauma treatment known as Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, or E.M.D.R., called Induced After-Death Communication. (I recognize that this name alone might invite skepticism.) Participants received directed stimulation, achieved through alternating tapping, or holding buzzers, or following directed hand movements, and were asked to turn to their most profound moments of sadness regarding their lost loved ones. Nearly 80 percent of the patients reported that during these sessions they sensed the presence of the dead, and most of that group later reported a notable decrease in sadness. Dr. Tom Nehmy, the lead researcher, told me it was the most powerful tool in terms of speed and action against profound grief he had seen in 20 years of working with the bereaved.

An Italian psychologist, Fabio D’Antoni, wrote me over email that he has observed that between 75 percent and 79 percent of those who try I.A.D.C., or its next iteration, something called Reparative Experience Based Grief Therapy, have felt the presence of a loved one during their session — and felt better for it. Dr. D’Antoni noted the experience is less about encountering something paranormal, and more about our relationship to death. It comes out of a therapeutic theory that posits that we don’t end a relationship in death; we alter it.

Dr. D’Antoni told me the first time he reported to colleagues how a patient described feeling the perceived presence of a lost loved one, the experience was “minimized, ridiculed or relegated to the category of a ‘transitory psychotic break.’” That reaction made him initially hesitant to revisit the idea. Now he wonders about missed therapeutic opportunities. “Mainstream discussions” in his field, he wrote, “frequently reduce these extraordinary encounters to a sterile binary choice: Either they must be objective proof of life after death, or they are merely ‘brain fantasies’ or ‘bereavement hallucinations.’”

He thinks more psychologists should invest in seeing the clinical power of emotional events that offer resolution, and a sense of peace, without trying to explain it away or insist that each such experience is the product of a short-circuiting brain.

 All very interesting.  The writers own experiences of presence of her own deceased daughter are mentioned, but they are not especially impressive.  But her overall point in the article seems reasonable.