My Terminology

The Canada-born Psychiatrist late Dr. Ian Stevenson of the University of Virginia (USA) who is considered the pioneer of the Empirical research on Reincarnation, devised specific Terms (words, phrases, abbreviations) for documenting the scientific investigation on the Reincarnation in general and the Memocariate in particular.

By the way, Empirical i.e. “Officially” Scientific research on Reincarnation especially focuses on the possible existence of the Memocariate. If the existence of Memocariate [JATISMAR in Sanskrit, pronounced JATISWAR or to be precise JATISHWAR in my language Bengali] is proved consciously or subconsciously, then it just follows — by the definition of the MEMOCARIATE — that Reincarnation too is proved consciously or subconsciously.

Ian Stevenson termed the claimed Memocariates in his Case Studies as simply the “Subject”. A very neutral and compact term indeed. Also used in the field of Psychology. He abbreviated it as “S”.

Since I wished to promote the word Memocariate, I wanted to use an alternative term here: “Seeming Memocariate”. I abbreviated it as “SM”. But I later realized that Stevenson’s term is compact enough to beat my proposed phrase here! So I now have given up on my term proposed here. I emphasize the compactness indeed.

Dr. Jim Matlock (USA) — an Author of more than one Book on the Reincarnation topic and General Editor of the Psi Encyclopedia — wants to promote the Reincarnation research into the mainstream publication. And perhaps in order to do so, he wants to improvise over even the Stevensonian term “Subject(S)”.

In Psychology, by the way, the word “Subject” is used for experimental phenomenon. But in Reincarnation research, the Subjects (seeming/claimed/apparent memocariates) usually are not subjected to any experiments. They generally do not enter any laboratory/clinic and undergo any experiment/therapy.

Aware of this, Jim Matlock aims to propose the term “Experiencer” (abbreviated as simply “E”, or may be E with some suffix) instead of Ian’s “Subject” in the Reincarnation research.

By “E” here, Jim means essentially that the so-called Subject experiences the Memory of possibly their own past life.

To tell further, Stevenson called the Subject’s claimed past life’s identity as “Previous Personality”. But Jim wished initially to change it to “Previous Person”, the possible abbreviation however could be common (PP).

But Titus Rivas (the Netherlands) — also an author of more than one Book on such topic and a very active Reincarnation researcher at least in his own country — did not endorse it (the term Previous Person) and continues to support the Stevensonian term Previous Personality.

By the way, I personally agree here with Titus. Although I coined a new term here too viz. “Extra Identity (EI™)”, I still endorse Stevenson’s term here as a parallel.

Currently for an upcoming Book Project in the USA, a new term “Deceased (D)” is aimed here by Jim to bypass the dispute about the PP.

Thus it is clear that the Terminology standardization is a hard thing to achieve — especially if you want to make it International or raise it into the Mainstream publication.

It also seems that no Terminology would be 100% perfect.

But we have to embark on one.

So forget perfection!

And here is My Terminology in a Table form now, compared with the University of Virginia’s standard set by Ian Stevenson:

Concept	IAN Stevenson	ME
‘Memocariate’ (Seeming Memocariate)	Subject (S)	Subject (S) / Central Character (C™)
The deceased whose life the ‘Memocariate’ remembers	Previous Personality (PP)	Previous Personality (PP) / Extra Identity™ (EI™)
Case Study	Case Of the Reincarnation Type (CORT)	Case Of the Reincarnation Type (CORT) / Case Of the Seeming Memocariate™ (COSM)™
Period between death and rebirth	Intermission Period, or simply, Intermission	Intermission Period, or simply, Intermission
Past Incarnation Memory that the ‘Memocariate’ claims		Past Life Memory (PLM)
Memory between the death and reincarnation that the ‘Memocariate’ remembers		Discarnate Memory™ (DM™)
Total Memory before the reincarnation that the ‘Memocariate’ remembers		Pre-Incarnation Memory (PIM) PIM = PLM + DM
The first person to report the ‘Memocariate’ account to the Case investigator		First Informant of the Case™ (FIC™)
Past Life Regression (PLR)	Hypnotic Regression	Para-Hypnosis™ / Hypnotic Regression / Regressive Hypnosis / Past Life Hypnosis (PLH™)

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My Terminology

IAN

Stevenson

ME