Ian Stevenson — father of modern parapsychology

“If at first the idea does not seem crazy, then it is not worthwhile” (Albert Einstein).

Recently, more and more specialists have appeared who offer clients to remember their past lives under hypnosis, and sometimes without hypnosis, or even at all — for quite substantial sums, they “read information about the past lives” of the applicant in absentia from a photograph. On the website of the Association of (Russian) regressologists, the list of ideas for regression dives even includes such items as memories of life in the body of an animal/bird/dinosaur/fish/insect/plant/waterfall/rock/stone or cloud.

They usually explain the purpose of such “memories” in an extremely vague manner, and the explanations themselves are, as a rule, quasi-esoteric in nature, unrelated to academic psychology. However, regressologists themselves insist that their approach is purely scientific and often refer to the research of the famous doctor of psychiatry Ian Stevenson. This article will be devoted to this extremely extraordinary and interesting figure.

Ian Pretyman Stevenson was born on October 31, 1918 in Montreal (Canada), and died on February 8, 2007 at the age of 88 in Charlottesville (Virginia, USA). He received a Bachelor of Science degree from McGill University in Montreal in 1942, an MD the following year, and in 1957, at the age of 39, became chairman of the department of psychiatry at the University of Virginia.