| Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation | |
| Author: | Ian Stevenson |
| Language: | English |
| Subject: | Reincarnation research |
| Publisher: | University Press of Virginia |
| Pub Date: | 1966 (1st. ed.); 1974 (2nd. ed.) |
| Pages: | 396 |
| Isbn: | 0-8139-0872-8 |
| Oclc: | 7810141 |
Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation is a 1966 book written by psychiatrist Ian Stevenson on claims of spontaneous recall of information about previous lives by young children. The book focuses on twenty cases investigated by the author. It has been translated into seven foreign languages.
Stevenson describes his general approach as following an "almostconventional pattern":
Stevenson set up a network of volunteers to find these spontaneous past life recall cases as soon as the children began to speak of them. He then would carefully question both the family of the living child and the family of the deceased to ensure that they had no contact and that no information would be passed between them. He would obtain detailed information about the deceased, including information not fully known to anyone involved, such as details of the will, that he would use to verify that the child actually did know the information required.
The publication of the book was delayed when it was discovered that one of Stevenson's interpreters had been accused of dishonesty. Stevenson claimed that the translator was dishonest in some matters, but "did not think the man had deceived him".[1] Nevertheless, he returned to India, where the interpreter had been used, and examined the cases in question again, with different interpreters. He found them to be even stronger evidence for reincarnation than he had previously thought.[2]
Stevenson concluded that reincarnation was the "best possible explanation" for the following reasons:
In 1977, the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease devoted most of one issue to Stevenson's work in which psychiatrist Harold Lief described Stevenson as "a methodical, careful, even cautious, investigator, whose personality is on the obsessive side...Either he is making a colossal mistake, or he will be known ... as 'the Galileo of the 20th century.[3] When philosopher Leonard Angel criticized one of the cases in Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation personally handled by Stevenson,[4] Stevenson published a rebuttal which argued the critique itself was flawed.[5] Mainstream scientists tended to ignore or dismiss Stevenson's research. Some questioned his objectivity, claimed he was credulous and suggested his investigations were flawed.[3]
Reviews of Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation have been published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, British Journal of Psychiatry, British Journal of Medical Psychology, Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease and some other journals.[6]
Empirical evidence for reincarnation? examining Stevenson's ' most impressive ' case