Harvey Irwin's "Flight of Mind: A Psychological Study of the Out-of-Body Experience"

Abstract

Among the many recent books on the out-of-body experience (or OBE) Flight of Mind provides one of the best reviews of research findings, as well as presenting a new theory to account for them. Irwin, an Australian psychologist, takes a primarily psychological approach and begins by redefining the OBE -as an experience in which "the center of consciousness appears to the experient to occupy temporarily a position which is spatially remote from his/her body".Among the advantages of this helpful definition are that it assumes no theoretical position nor even that the experience has to be visual. Of course, as Irwin makes clear, the notion of a center of consciousness is purely phenomenological and not objective.