Wednesday, March 6, 2013

#452: Dianne Arcangel


Dianne Arcangel’s schtick is past life regression, and using her skills to make up stuff that people can be convinced has something to do with their “previous lives” and can help them understand their present lives (some cold reading skills come in handy as well). Arcangel calls herself “an expert in the field of facilitated apparitions”. I think one should stress “facilitated”. She has also been associated with, among other pseudoscience groups, The Forever Family Foundation (FFF), which aims to “further the understanding of Afterlife Science through research and education while providing support and healing for people in grief;” that is, delusional crackpottery founded on the exploitation of the grieving. Charming.

Arcangel has presented her stuff internationally, including (of course) on Oprah, and written a pretty execrable book, “Afterlife Encounter”. Her book even contains research: “[…] Arcangel’s groundbreaking five-year international survey, the first of its kind, revealed the positive effects afterlife encounters have on witnesses.” Sounds rigorous. And it is endorsed by Larry Dossey.

Diagnosis: I don’t think she’s a fraud. She seems to genuinely believe that she is researching the afterlife and actually helping people. She isn’t, of course. Completely lost.

3 comments:

  1. Hey. This woman is my grandmother, she never exploited grieving and isn't the heartless magician you make her out to be. She did her research to stave off the people like you that would insult her work, which she conducted not to exploit the grieving but to console them. She could relate, she took to writing after my grandfather died and she experienced loss herself.
    Look, all I'm asking is ou take her off this list, she did nothing to harm anyone, and doesn't deserve to be on this list

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  2. You are right Silas. Your grandmother has a huge loving heart and would never hurt anyone. I have called her friend and helper.

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  3. Great enterprise, this. Stabbing people in the front for doing the best job they can.
    You should be ashamed of yourselves.

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