Kenneth Ring (born December 13, 1935) is an American psychologist, born in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

. He is the co-founder and past president of the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS) and is the founding editor of the '' Journal of Near-Death Studies''.Author biography in Kenneth Ring and Evelyn Elsaesser Valarino, ''Lessons from the Light: What we can learn from the near-death experience'', Needham, MA: Moment Point Press (1998). He currently lives in

Kentfield, California Kentfield (formerly Ross Landing, Tamalpais, and Kent) is a Unincorporated area#United States, unincorporated community in Marin County, California, United States, just north of San Francisco. Kentfield is located southwest of downtown San Rafae ...

Biography

Among his first publications was the book ''Methods of Madness: The Mental Hospital as a Last Resort''. The book was released in 1969 and was co-authored with Benjamin Braginsky and Dorothea Braginsky. Ring's book ''Life at Death'' was published by William Morrow and Company in 1980.Asher, Catherine G. Book review: Ring, Kenneth. Life at Death: a scientific investigation of the near-death experience. ''Library Journal'', September 15, 1980, page 1870Hamby, Warren C. Reviewed Work(s): Life at Death: A Scientific Investigation of the Near-Death Experience by Kenneth Ring. ''Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion'', Vol. 21, No. 3 (Sep., 1982), pp. 289-290 In this book Ring presented the ''Weighted Core Experience'' Index, a

psychometric Psychometrics is a field of study within psychology concerned with the theory and technique of measurement. Psychometrics generally covers specialized fields within psychology and education devoted to testing, measurement, assessment, and rela ...

instrument constructed to measure the depth of a

near-death experience A near-death experience (NDE) is a profound personal experience associated with death or impending death, which researchers describe as having similar characteristics. When positive, which the great majority are, such experiences may encompa ...

.Greyson, Bruce. The Near-Death Experience Scale. Construction, Reliability and Validity. ''Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease'', Vol 171, No. 6, 1983, pp. 369-375 In 1984, the company published Ring's second book, ''Heading Toward Omega.''Buehler, David A. Book review: Ring, Kenneth. Heading Toward Omega: in search of the meaning of the near-death experience. ''Library Journal'', August 1984, page 1455 Both books deal with

s and how they change people's lives.Sharon L. Bass
You Never Recover Your Original Self
''New York Times'' August 28, 1988. In 1992 he published ''The Omega Project: Human Evolution in an Ecological Age'', a book that dealt with near-death experiences and UFO-encounters.Shields, Maureen R. Book review: Ring, Kenneth. The Omega Project: Human Evolution in an Ecological Age. ''Library Journal'', April 1, 1992. 1998 saw the release of ''Lessons From the Light. What We Can Learn From the Near-Death Experience'', co-authored with Evelyn Elaesser. The book discussed a wide range of paranormal phenomena, including out-of-body experiences, children's near-death experiences, near-death experiences in the blind, as well as healing and paranormal abilities in near-death experiencers.Book review: Lessons From the Light. What We Can Learn From the Near-Death Experience. ''Publishers Weekly'', Oct. 26, 1998, p. 55 Another co-authored release appeared in 1999. This time Ring co-operated with Sharon Cooper for the release of ''Mindsight: Near-death and out-of-body experiences in the blind''. In the book Ring & Cooper discussed the possibility of sight and vision among blind near-death experiencers.Twemlow, Stuart W. Book Review: Mindsight: Near-Death and Out-of-Body Experiences in the Blind, by Kenneth Ring and Sharon Cooper. ''Journal of Near-Death Studies'', 21(1), Fall 2002 In November 2008, Ring visited Israel as part of a peace delegation and subsequently protested the Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip as completely disproportionate.Richard Halstead
Marin has mixed response to Israel's bombing of Gaza
, ''Marin Independent Journal'', 29 December 2008. Accessed 2009-06-02. Kenneth Ring also is a co-author of ''Letters from Palestine'' (2011).

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Ring, Kenneth 1935 births Living people Near-death experience researchers American parapsychologists 21st-century American psychologists People from Kentfield, California 20th-century American psychologists