ABSTRACT
Barbara sits in traffic when a Payloader backs into her car, its engine crashing through her windshield, stopping inches from her face. Terrified, she is unhurt. When she moves, Barbara realizes she’s dead. People act as if she is alive, but she knows she’s dead. After several weeks the dissonance of being both dead and alive subsides. Both dead and alive, Barbara was living the life of Schrödinger’s Cat.
Years later a psychic tells Barbara, “I see you died in a car accident,” accurately describing the event. Barbara bursts into tears. Barbara says, “Somehow he’d gotten inside my experience. I hadn’t told anyone! I’d been an extremely well-adjusted, high-functioning dead person. How could he know?”
Barbara’s unusual experience is examined from two theoretical perspectives: a psychoanalytic conflict/defense model, and Everett’s multiverse/Many Minds model. Dissociation, the splitting of consciousness, and “double consciousness” have been studied since Janet and Charcot. The Many Minds model is considered as a basis for dissociative identity disorder.
