Contemporary parapsychology tends to be preoccupied with ESP (telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition) and psychokinesis. In contrast, this cutting-edge anthology assembles an international team of experts from the fields of psychology, parapsychology, philosophy, anthropology and neuroscience to examine critically what is referred to as the survival hypothesis: the tentative statement or prediction that some aspect of our personhood (e.g., consciousness) persists subsequent to the death of the physical body.

The appraisal of the survival hypothesis will be restricted to the phenomenon of mediumship; that is, humans who ostensibly communicate with the deceased. The book has been divided into four main sections: Explanation and Belief; Culture, Psychopathology and Psychotherapy; Empirical Approaches; The Present and Future. The issue of postmortem survival is supremely relevant to us all because the human encounter with death is, of course, a certainty.

“an excellent book destined to become a standard reference in mediumship studies...provides an unprecedented overview of research on mediumship and supplies a good synopsis of the state of the art...a job well done...recommended highly”—Journal of the Society for Psychical Research.

Adam J. Rock is a lecturer at the School of Behavioural, Cognitive and Social Sciences at the University of New England, Armidale, NSW, Australia. His primary research interests are in the area of altered states of consciousness, mainly focused on shamanism, the conceptual problem of consciousness, and mediumship.