Jim Tucker

Jim Tucker, MD, is medical director of the Child and Family Psychiatric Clinic, and assistant professor at both the Division of Perceptual Studies and the Division of Child and Family Psychiatry at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Life Before Life: A Scientific Investigation of Children’s Memories of Previous Lives, which presents an overview of more than 40 years of reincarnation research at the University of Virginia Division of Perceptual Studies. Tucker, a board-certified child psychiatrist, worked for several years on this research with Ian Stevenson before taking over upon Stevenson’s retirement in 2002.
Tucker has also appeared in print as well as broadcast media talking about his work. His investigation of the case of Cameron Macaulay was featured in the Channel 5 documentary Extraordinary People - The Boy Who Lived Before.
Biography
Tucker attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a BA Degree in psychology and a medical degree. He is currently Assistant Professor of Psychiatric Medicine, and in addition to conducting research, he is the medical director of the University of Virginia Child & Family Psychiatry Clinic.
He lives in Charlottesville, VA with his wife, Christine McDowell Tucker, a clinical psychologist, and has presented at academic and public conferences.
Tucker felt unfulfilled by his work in child psychiatry, but was open to the possibility that humans are more than their physical bodies and wished to investigate the matter further. Though raised as a Southern Baptist, Tucker does not subscribe to any particular religion, and claims to be skeptical about reincarnation,
but sees it as providing the best explanation for phenomena associated with the strongest cases investigated to date. After reading work Tucker became intrigued by children’s reported past-life memories and by the prospect of studying them in an objective, scientific manner.
Reincarnation research
Although critics have argued there is no physical explanation for the survival of personality, Tucker suggests that quantum mechanics, particularly the Copenhagen interpretation, may offer a mechanism by which memories and emotions could carry over from one life to another. He argues that since the act of observation collapses wave equations, consciousness may not be merely a by-product of the physical brain but rather a separate entity in the universe that impinges on the physical. Tucker argues that viewing consciousness as a fundamental, non-physical, part of the universe makes it possible to conceive of it continuing to exist after the death of the physical brain. He provides the analogy of a television set and the television transmission; the television is required to decode the signal, but it does not create the signal. In a similar way the brain may be required for consciousness to express itself, but may not be the source of consciousness.
Tucker reports that in about 70% of the cases of children claiming to remember past lives the deceased died from an unnatural cause, suggesting that traumatic death may be linked to the hypothesised survival of personality. He further indicates that the time between death and apparent re-birth is, on average, 16 months, and that unusual birthmarks might match fatal wounds suffered by the deceased.
Tucker has developed the Strength Of Case Scale (SOCS) which evaluates four aspects of potential cases of reincarnation; "(1) whether it involves birthmarks/defects that correspond to the supposed previous life; (2) the strength of the statements about the previous life; (3) the relevant behaviours as they relate to the previous life; and (4) an evaluation of the possibility of a connection between the child reporting a previous life and the supposed previous life".
Media coverage
Since taking over the research into claimed past life memories from Ian Stevenson in 2002, Tucker has been interviewed about reincarnation in print and broadcast media in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada.
Selected publications
*Tucker JB. Religion and medicine. Lancet 353:1803, 1999.
*Tucker JB. Modification of attitudes to influence survival from breast cancer. Lancet 354:1320, 1999.
*Keil HHJ, Tucker JB. An unusual birthmark case thought to be linked to a person who had previously died. Psychological Reports 87:1067-1074, 2000.
*Tucker JB, Keil HHJ. Can cultural beliefs cause a gender identity disorder? Journal of Psychology & Human Sexuality 13(2):21-30, 2001.
*Tucker JB. Religion and Medicine. In Medicine Across Cultures: History and Practice of Medicine in Non-Western Cultures, Selin H (ed.). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 373-384, 2003.
*Tucker JB. Reincarnation. In Macmillan Encyclopedia of Death and Dying, Kastenbaum R (ed.). New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 705-710, 2003.
*Keil HHJ & Tucker JB. Children who claim to remember previous lives: Cases with written records made before the previous personality was identified. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 19(1):91-101, 2005.
* Sharma P & Tucker JB. Cases of the reincarnation type with memories from the intermission between lives. Journal of Near-Death Studies, 23(2):101-118, 2005.
* Tucker JB. Juvenile-onset bipolar disorder? Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 44(10):966, 2005.
* Tucker JB. Life Before Life: A Scientic Investigation of Children's Memories of Previous Lives New York: St. Martin's Press, 2005, 256pp. ISBN 0-312-32137-6
* Pasricha SK, Keil J, Tucker JB, Stevenson I. Some bodily malformations attributed to previous lives. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 19(3):359-383, 2005.
*Tucker, J.B. Children's reports of past-life memories: A review. EXPLORE: The Journal of Science and Healing, 4(4):244-248, 2008.
* Tucker JB & Keil HHJ. Experimental birthmarks: New cases of an Asian practice. International Journal of Parapsychology, in press.

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu