Many cultures accept that a person may die and then come back to life in another form, but Westerners have traditionally rejected the idea. Recently, however, surveys conducted in Europe indicate a substantial increase in the number of Europeans who believe in reincarnation, and numerous claims of reincarnation have been reported. This book examines particular cases in Europe that are suggestive of reincarnation. The first section provides a brief history of the belief in reincarnation among Europeans. The second section considers eight cases from the first third of the twentieth century that were not independently investigated, but were reported and sometimes published by the persons concerned. The third section covers 32 cases from the second half of the twentieth century that were investigated by the author. Many of these cases involved either children who exhibited unusual behavior attributed to a previous life, or adults who experienced recurrent or vivid dreams attributed to a previous life. In the fourth section, the author compares European cases suggestive of reincarnation with those of other countries and cultures.

Cases of responsive xenoglossy thus add to the evidence concerning the survival of human personality after death.

This is the revised edition of Dr. Stevenson's 1987 book, summarizing for general readers almost forty years of experience in the study of children who claim to remember previous lives. For many Westerners the idea of reincarnation seems remote and bizarre; it is the author's intent to correct some common misconceptions. New material relating to birthmarks and birth defects, independent replication studies with a critique of criticisms, and recent developments in genetic study are included. The work gives an overview of the history of the belief in and evidence for reincarnation. Representative cases of children, research methods used, analyses of the cases and of variations due to different cultures, and the explanatory value of the idea of reincarnation for some unsolved problems in psychology and medicine are reviewed.

For the past forty years, doctors at the University of Virginia Medical Center have conducted research into young children's reports of past-life memories. Dr. Ian Stevenson, the founder of this work, has always written for a scientific audience. Now, in this provocative and fascinating book, Dr. Jim B. Tucker, a child psychiatrist who currently directs the research, shares these studies with the general public. Life Before Life is a landmark work—one that has the potential to challenge and ultimately change our understandings about life and death. Children who report past-life memories typically begin talking spontaneously about a previous life when they are two to three years old. Some talk about the life of a deceased family member, while others describe the life of a stranger. They may recount details about previous family members, events in the previous life, or the way they died in that life. The children tend to show a strong emotional involvement with the apparent memories and often cry to be taken to the previous family. In many cases, parents have taken their children to the places they named, where they found that an individual had died whose life matched the details given by the child. During the visits, some children have recognized family members or friends from that individual's life. Many children have had birthmarks that matched wounds on the body of the deceased individual. Researchers have studied more than 2500 such cases, and their careful investigations have produced an impressive body of work. JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, stated in a review of one of Dr. Stevenson's scientific books that, "in regard to reincarnation he has painstakingly and unemotionally collected a detailed series of cases . . . in which the evidence is difficult to explain on any other grounds." Life Before Life explores the various features of this world-wide phenomenon, describing numerous cases along the way. We meet a boy in Michigan who, after being born with three birthmarks that matched wounds on his deceased brother, begins talking about events from the brother's life; a boy in Turkey who gives a number of accurate details, including the name, of a man who lived 500 miles away and died fifty years before the boy was born; and a girl in Sri Lanka who is able to recognize the family members of a deceased stranger as they are presented to her one by one, giving specifics about their lives that she could not have known from their appearance. Dr. Tucker presents this material in a straightforward way, relating extraordinary stories that have been amassed with a scientific approach. He then considers how best to interpret the evidence, and he lets readers reach their own conclusions—which, for many, will be profound.

Children who claim to remember a previous life have been found in many parts of the world, particularly in the Buddhist and Hindu countries of South Asia, among the Shiite peoples of Lebanon and Turkey, the tribes of West Africa, and the American northwest. Stevenson has collected over 2,600 reported cases of past-life memories of which 65 detailed reports have been published. Specific information from the children's memories has been collected and matched with the data of their claimed former identity, family, residence, and manner of death. Birthmarks or other physiological manifestations have been found to relate to experiences of the remembered past life, particularly violent death. Writing as a specialist in psychiatry and as a world-renowned scientific investigator of reported paranormal events, Stevenson asks us to suspend our Western tendencies to disbelieve in reincarnation and consider the reality of the burgeoning record of cases now available. This book summarizes Stevenson's findings which are presented in full in the multi-volume work entitled Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects, also published by Praeger.

An in-depth study of the correspondence between birthmarks or birth defects and previous lives, covering many cases in various countries.