Coma: The Dreambody Near Death

Arnold Mindell's work with comatose patients offers a new direction in psychotherapy and in the study of near-death experiences. He argues that people in such states are not merely vegetables, but human beings in an altered state of consciousness that may be an important experience for them: some report experiences of insight, ecstasy and self-knowledge. Offering verbatim bedside reports, theoretical discussion and practical exercises, the author demonstrates his techniques for communicating with the comatose person based on his own process-orientated psychology. In showing that the comatose person is able to communicate with others, the author argues that such patients can often make conscious, rational decisions, thus adding a new dimension to ethical and legal debates about near-death conditions.