Professor of psychiatry and parapsychologist known primarily for his research on the evidence of survival after death through the examination of memories of past lives. Stevenson was born on October 31, 1918, in Montreal, Quebec, and received his medical degree from McGill University in 1944. He held various teaching positions prior to his becoming chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia School of Medicine in 1957. He published a number of papers on parapsychological topics, developed a belief in reincarnation, and concluded that memories of past lives provided some of the best evidence of that opinion. In 1961, he wrote a prize-winning essay in honor of William James on The Evidence for Survival from Claimed Memories of Former Incarnations (1961).<\/p>\n
Through the 1960s, Stevenson compiled and correlated the rather detailed accounts of reincarnation. Many of these he had investigated personally. They largely featured young people who claimed to be someone else, usually someone in a nearby town, and backed their claims by showing extraordinary knowledge of details of that prior existence. Stevenson\u2019s approach resembled the one used by Tibetan monks to discover the child whom they believe to be the incarnation of a deceased lama: They rely on the child\u2019s ability to recognize some articles formerly owned by the lama.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Professor of psychiatry and parapsychologist known primarily for his research on the evidence of survival after death through the examination of memories of past lives. Stevenson was born on October 31, 1918, in Montreal, Quebec, and received his medical degree from McGill University in 1944. He held various teaching positions prior to his becoming chairman […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-211386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-i"],"yoast_head":"\n