There are hundreds of people out there Jon, hundreds. Google it.

Look up Jon Chase for example, he runs full on seminars on this subject and past life parties.

I listened and watched as the tale of a local man who is supposed to have had a past life as a warrior (he is very good with a bow and arrow apparently) was told… He has bought 23 acres somewhere in the local area because he knew he had to … and is now under the guidance of a shaman. …..

Some had the look of ‘Absolute rubbish!’, others commented, ‘Oh, I believe in all that’…. ‘Me too!’ yet others remained on the fence…

For me, until I meet the warrior I can only listen to a story …

It is a great story anyway, and certainly keeps life interesting …

From personal experience with regression where I have been among other things .. a tiger … For me each experience was a symbol or metaphor for something I was/had experienced and made absolute sense to me. The tiger I was drawing upon an animalistic motherly protection as during the regression a huge male tiger was going for my cubs. … (he didn’t get anywhere near them!!). Whether I was a tiger in a past life … who knows?! I could speculate about being born in another culture …

As a trainee therapist I have read with interest the discussion and comments on disclaimers and False Memory Syndrome. At the moment I don’t intend promoting myself as a past life regressor though feel comfortable working with regression in general and theoretically if a client’s past life came up I would be happy to go with it.

I am aware, and now even more so, of how aware I am to be as a therapist!

Would I be happy to ask my client to sign a disclaimer ?.. Yes, if I had to (not just before they were about to be regressed!) Would it protect the general public against FMS? … I will learn more about it before I comment.

FAscinating stuff…

Ali, thank you also for your input.

Your responses are warmly received. Thanks again.

I believe that the factuality and reality of PLR doesn’t matter as much as long as the regressions or recall are done ethically and for therapeutic value. I don’t know what I believe about the phenomenon either, but whether it’s real or not, the therapeutic modality can be powerfully healing and transformative. Is it all just metaphor or archetypes, or maybe tapping into some kind of subtle energy, cellular memory, or quantum entanglement? Or is it real? Who knows. But it works as a therapy if handled correctly whether or not people believe in it. And hey, what about rescripting and rebirthing and reframing and all of those modalities where people consciously re-write their memories and play out an idealized birth or childhood or whatever? Do people have to sign waivers for those too? I totally understand the harm FMS can do, but on the other hand, I don’t think it needs more legislation and government-mandated paperwork. I think it’s probably more about educating both the client and the practitioner.

Research = well in my experience, whoever can do the best google search wins the argument. There is always research to back up an argument for and against. And what research could prove that past lives exist in such away as to persuade Richard Dawkins and Sri Sathya Sai Baba that they don’t?

Experience = personally I have loads of experiences since childhood that I could term either as spiritual or as psychological. I have benefited gratefully from working with shamans, yogis and spiritualists on all sorts of things but they can mostly be explained in western psychological terms too.

So I guess for me it comes down to two things, belief and personal ethics / responsibility.

Belief = for me, while I have tried hard to resist believing in reincarnation for a long time, I do now. At a core level of being, there is something energetic that I can only interpret in those terms. However…I don’t see the need to delve in past lives in the way that others do. If reincarnation is about learning life’s lessons, for me it is about learning them in this life. Although eastern religions give a framework of understanding with which to understand those lessons, surely the idea is that they are played out in this life? Isn’t that the whole point? At school, I never understood people that role played and stayed as far away from the drama department as possible so maybe this is just an adult extension of that. I found expression in other ways.

Ethics and personal responsibility = I must admit at times, I found the shamanic, spiritual and tantric interpretation of ‘things’ disturbing as it was completely outside of anything experience I have had previously. My mind looks for commonality and even if I believed that the symbolism and metaphors were just that, symbols and metaphors, those symbols and metaphors are so open to interpretation that they may not be wholly therapeutic as regards the presenting issue. Although I (fingers crossed) believe that I haven’t been adversely effected by any of it, I believe that anyone who is happy to take others into past lives in a therapeutic setting needs to caveat what they are doing somehow, otherwise they run the risk of completely traumatising people who are looking generally looking for relief from pain, not answers to the great questions of life (although a sense of purpose and understanding may be a deeper part of the same issue). This is especially true if the client has no reference points outside of the therapeutic session which is generally true of most people in our society.

Also, one of the most important things for me is the accessibility of therapy to people.

Access = a lot of people looking for therapy are new to any kind of ‘self help’ and may be running the risk of derision and resistance from their family and friends and doctors. One of the benefits of hypnotherapy is that it is more acceptable to a western mind than other therapeutic practices so steeping it in the mysticism that surrounds reincarnation may alienate people who would benefit from it from going for therapy in the first place. For example, I have a friend who has breast cancer and whilst around her home the other day, I witnessed her family deride quite nastily for even contemplating complementary therapy to sit along side the western medicine, however they were quite open to hypnotherapy as they new that famous sports people used it. So to my mind, if an issue can be dealt with as effectively using current patterns of behaviour in this life time, I wonder why there is a need to delve into past lives at all?
Anthony De Mello writes about the difficulties of believing in a spiritual and therapeutic path at the same time in ‘Awareness’. They don’t always sit comfortably together.

So…it goes back to results.

Results = If past life regression works just as well or more effectively than not using it (and it may do simply because of the metaphoric nature of it) then I am all up for people doing it, especially as there are those that will actively want that kind of therapy. However, how do you prove that it does? Even if the presenting issues and therapists are consistent, the life experience of the client will never be.

Therefore…I would agree that in a western environment, clients and therapists who want to use past life regression therapy should enjoy the benefits it brings but at the same time thoroughly explain the process upfront and the fact that it isn’t proven, temper it with a little caution and a lot of sensitivity and discuss and provide aftercare.

For once, I am with Adam on this one. If you are comfortable with this form of therapy great but I too would, at this stage, refer clients to someone with whom is confident. If you do not believe in what you are doing how can you expect your clients to benefit.

Mainstream psychological research on memory clearly demonstrates the “reconstructive” nature of this sort of memory and clinicians are (or should be) well aware of the issues surrounding the false memory syndrome controversies of the 1990s. Research on past-life regression has consistently failed to produce any credible positive evidence. Meanwhile, research on age regression has consistently shown how easy it is to install false memories of early childhood experiences.

There are obvious criticisms of past-life regression methodology. I think the most telling one is that people who are regressed have never been shown to re-acquire the language spoken. (Despite some anecdotal claims.) I’ve seen people “regressed” to ancient India and Rome, etc., but they continued to speak modern English and any conversations were recalled in English -though they must have been spoken in Sanskrit or Latin, etc.

Some believe that it is blatantly a glorified role-playing game.

I would say that it is natural and reasonable to be sceptical when there’s such an obvious lack of basic evidence, and a weight of counter-evidence in relation to past-life regression. I was not claiming to be sceptical by the way, just speaking for the other side of your argument…

Not one single instance of someone acquiring the ability to speak an ancient language like Latin, for example, has ever been demonstrated under controlled conditions. The problems with recovered memory techniques have been well-publicised for several decades now. The notorious case of Bridey Murphey exposed the gullibility of people when it comes to these kind of supernatural claims.

I assure you I am not being dismissive but I’d prefer to think I’ve weighed up the facts carefully and chosen to be congruent to my own beliefs… Many PLR therapists seem to reject the counter-evidence out of hand, though, without even wanting to read it. Which strikes me as a much more dismissive attitude, no?

😉

Okay, so here’s the real moral dilemma… If the client says, “I want regression”, do we have a legal/moral obligation to explain the reconstructive nature of memory to clients, for informed consent?

A recent review of the clinical and research literature in this area by five leading authorities on the subject concluded by recommending that the American Psychological Association (APA) should actually change its codes to make it mandatory for psychologists to have clients sign an informed consent agreement before undertaking regression of any kind, that explained in writing that contemporary research provides overwhelming evidence that these memories are “reconstructed” rather than “recovered.”

Arguably, that just takes the existing duty of care under civil law and elevates it to the status of a more explicit written contract, because they were concerned that psychologists were fudging it when it was purely verbal, failing to properly explain the issues to their clients.

I think we also need to look what the evidence says and what’s legal, ethical, and in the client’s interests.

If you don’t think it matters whether recovered memories are real or not then I suggest you might want to look at the literature on victims of false memory syndrome. FMS has been the basis for the most expensive (multi-million dollar) civil litigation in the history of the American psychiatric profession. It’s a massive legal and moral issue with extremely serious implications for the whole field of psychotherapy and hypnotherapy.

This whole debate exploded in the media in the 1990s and so it should be thoroughly common knowledge by now that there’s cause for concern. Most professional bodies were forced to issue policy statements on the risks attached to false memory syndrome, including past-life regression.

FYI: Here’s the conclusion of the systematic review of the research on recovered memory, I mentioned,

“We further contend that if therapists decide to use memory recovery techniques, then they should provide their clients with a written informed consent document that apprises them of

(1) accurate, scientifically grounded information about the reconstructive nature of memory, … Read more
(2) the fact that recovered memories must be corroborated before they can be given special credence, and
(3) information regarding laboratory studies of memory pertinent to the technique employed.”
(Lynn, Lock, Loftus, Krackow, & Lilienfeld, 2003)

Do you think that telling a client that research on recovered/false memories is irrelevent (because you think the Western scientific world-view is flawed) is ethical and meets your legal duty of care in regard to past-life regression?

The contention of the research team quoted above was that therapists have a legal and ethical obligation to explain current evidence regarding the reconstructive nature of memory, etc., in order to fulfil their duty of care and obtain informed consent from their clients. I guess that’s a tough point to swallow, and raises some interesting and pretty deep moral questions about the practice of therapy.

I know it’s a controversial issue, and with it being your field, I hope you do not take offence, but it’s also a very interesting dilemma in professional ethics.

If anyone else reading this really is not familiar with the issue see, for example, the website of the British False Memory Society, a group set up to protect victims of false memory syndrome. To be clear, I’ve met several people over the past 15 years who have been left pretty disturbed by false memories installed during past-life regression.

I have had equally good arguments made FOR past life regression and can make an equally good case for it… Certainly much better than most past life regression therapists seem able to offer up… I’ve had some amazing experiences, however, my key point is that I do not believe you should work with people if you do not believe or have the conviction in what you are doing… because I think it is rendered impotent.

Best wishes, Adam.