INREES’ 2008 major project
The « Extraordinary Experiences Clinical Handbook »

In Paris on November 3rd, the first working meeting was held to create Inrees’ « Extraordinary Experiences Clinical Handbook ». This initial team -- composed of psychologists, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, other specialists and some individuals who’ve had extraordinary experiences -- began its work under the direction of Dr Bernard Castells, Stephane Allix, and Paul Bernstein PhD (who came especially from Boston for this meeting). The team clarified the Handbook’s range of clinical approaches and outlined its contents. Sub-teams were then constituted to draft chapters for each category of extraordinary experience (see list below).

Inrees considers the completion of the « Extraordinary Experiences Clinical Handbook » to be its top priority. We need your support in order to assemble all the research that has been done across many fields, to organize training for mental health professionals, conferences, and a group meeting with renowned researchers in psychiatry, psychology, and human sciences, and to coordinate the editorial work. Inrees’ efforts are financed by the generosity of people like you, who believe in an open and respectful science.
Please make a donation today, and support our activity. Help us to respond to experiencers with the respect they deserve.

The « Extraordinary Experiences Clinical Handbook » will classify and present the totality of Extraordinary Experiences known to date, and will also introduce the reader to recommended therapeutic approaches and methods for working with experiencers. For cases where formal therapy is not indicated, the Handbook will discuss other forms of support that have proven helpful to experiencers. The Handbook will focus on key questions such as: What is the extraordinary experience’s subjective impact on the experiencer, and on his or her relationships? How can the health professional best distinguish the pathological from the non-pathological?

The Handbook will present current hypotheses that address such experiences (their phenomenology, differential diagnosis, possible diagnostic confusions...) and will also be very much concerned with the disturbing or traumatic aspects of such experiences. It will thus propose training and support for professionals, as for experiencers, to integrate experiences that may appear to remain unexplainable after all possible pathological causes have been eliminated.


Your experience could be of great help
Health professionals : If you are working as a psychologist or psychiatrist and you wish to participate in Inrees’ activity, or share with us a particular experience you have had or witnessed, please write to :
professionnels@inrees.com

Witness/experiencers : If you have had an extraordinary experience, traumatic or not, and you wish to talk about it, your testimony can help Inrees’ research, so please write to :
temoignages@inrees.com


Categories included in the « Extraordinary Experiences Clinical Handbook »