Published Articles
By Dr. William R. Morrow

“Your Relationship to Past Lives”

Some days life can be complicated. For instance, just when you thought you were beginning to settle down and get things straight in your beleaguered life, there is this one remaining thing about your relationships that you overlooked: Your relationship to your past lives!

Isn’t it enough, you say, to get it right with lovers, mates, or troublesome parents? Maybe not, according to some out there who say: tap into the resources (emotional clutter?) of the other lives you have lived. When? You say, did I do this, and, besides, wouldn’t I have remembered to clean this matter up before my last reincarnation? Sounds a bit off the wall, yet apparently the notion of past-life-regression has a devoted following in some quarters.

One theory of emotional problems such as your typical phobias, anxieties, or unwanted habits, says that in some other life you messed up, or got into some bad weed, which now complicates your life. According to this notion, until you clear this up via past-life-regression, and pay off your karmic debt, you will stay stuck with your problems. Past-life-regression (herinafter denoted as PLR) is only slightly more scientific in my way of thinking than tarot cards and crystal balls. At least PLR is normally administered by an otherwise trained hypnotherapist.

Dr. Brian Weiss, a mainline educated psychiatrist, who grew up taking things too seriously, was slipping into his own mid-life crisis when he wrote about his patient, Catherine. “Many Lives, Many Masters” is the narrative about therapy with Catherine, who resolved her fears by telling him about her memories of former incarnations. According to the guy at the book store, this is a popular book. I was surprised, and decided to look into it.

I found myself wondering if this pivotal book would eventually go the way of another famous book in the history of PLR, “The Search For Bridey Murphy”. For those of you too young to remember, this book (and movie) from the ‘50’s was subsequently proven to be a case of false memories.

PLR, in the past twenty years, has gotten more publicity, yet still remains on the fringe of what should be considered conventional clinical hypnosis. If it has any validity, it is not because of any advancement of the paranormal. It is not because of any powers of hypnosis to produce extraordinary memories in an individual. In my opinion its worth is in the ability of remembered fantasies to heal the wounds of this life. The appearance of the past-life memories is most likely to be metaphorical representations of some otherwise unapproachable problem of the patient.

Just to set the record straight since I have an ad in the yellow pages under hypnotherapy: I do not do PLR, and presently find it a matter of skepticism, although I firmly believe that the mind has an incredible capacity for storing and recalling information , including information that may predate normal cognition (albeit in ONE person’s lifetime).

Hypnosis, I must say, is a powerful tool when used as a treatment mode in a proper clinical setting. It suffers from various myths and misunderstandings about what it is and what it does.(Stage hypnosis, television and movie portrayals notwithstanding.) The ability of some therapists to practice their trade on the theoretical horizon, and some stage hypnotists to entertain, does not detract from the tremendous benefit of clinical hypnosis. And you don’t have to believe in PLR or reincarnation to experience healing of common emotional and relationship problems by way of conventional hypnosis in the hands of licensed professionals.

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