"M.H." is a psychotherapist who does primal-type work with many different issues and is not exclusively a "past life" therapist. He is a medical doctor and clinical psychologist. His interests include medicine,
neurology, biology, evolutionary principles, analysis and object relations,
animal psychology, regressive work, primal therapy and hypnotherapy.
-- John A. Speyrer, Webmeister, The Primal Psychotherapy Page
After many encounters with past lives in patients and once in
myself, I still am not a full believer that we have past lives.
However, I
find them challenging both intellectually and philosophically, as
some of
the documentation is compelling.
As a medical doctor, for initially ten years, I categorically
refused
to accept
past lives both theoretically and clinically. I denied the
experiences to
both myself and others. Later clients started dropping into past
life
relives without any steering from me and though tempted to
challenge
them, I refrained, as the patients would be in deep feelings and
"connecting", later expressing relief followed by reports of
symptom
removal.
Theoretically, it makes sense to postulate that past lives
and
interlives are veiled memories or fantasies conjured up because
of the
deep pain of the unconscious issues. In the clinic, however, when
these
memories are arrived at via the feeling route, they process like
current
life memories with the emotional theme being fully relevant to
current
life. Whereas, in dreamwork the symbols of the dream finally
revert to
real characters and events, the "symbols" in the past life will
not
necessarily revert to real characters or events from the client's
current
life.
Some of the characters in the past life relive may be
recognized as a
person from one's current life. But the past life drama or pain
processed
will not necessarily lead back to an, as yet, unfelt drama from
current
life, thus challenging classifying past life characters and
issues as regular
symbols, as in their reliving they do not dissolve as regular
fantasies or
dream symbols do.
However, resolving a deeply repressed feeling and issue in a
past
life experiential will frequently and almost always help in
resolving
more and more in current life trauma whether it is early
preverbal or
infancy, childhood or adult.
In this fashion, it is clinically worthwhile to allow these
experiences
to be processed in the normal fashion as they most probably will
be
followed by breakthrough in an otherwise blocked case. Past lives
process, as usual, clinically, with fear, pain, guilt, sorrow, etc.
The
experiencer is in need of a witnessed release and resolution and
integration.
As a clinician I find it rewarding to process past life
material when
it pops up, as it helps the whole case. Blocking it when it feels
genuine
to the patient, simply on theoretical ground, is
counterproductive. The
only time I would discourage a person from talking about past
life is
when there is no accompanying emotional charge that is exerting
pressure for release through deep feelings and that would help
resolve
the case.
For example, some patients come in and they start telling
long
stories devoid of any hint of emotion about an incident in their
past life;
they are neither close to feelings nor in a useful altered state.
They may
be attention seeking or merely delusional and need to be
processed at
where they are in their particular process. This is very
different from a
clinically useful past life relive.
Many years ago I accidentally fell into what seemed to be a
holographically visual past life without hypnosis or chemicals or
any
thing other than being stuck in my feelings. The past life opened
up a lot
of old, old sadness for me. Because of these findings with
clients mostly
and this one experience with myself, I decided not to quickly
challenge
a patient who reports past life material, especially when they
are
successfully expressing unfelt feelings and integrating them.
I still do not know the secret of past lives but I will work
with the
experiences considering them of clinical relevance and
usefulness. If
worked properly and spontaneously with no steering, forcing or
dogma
on the part of the therapist, these experiences will not carry
any negative
side effects. Only if force is used and dogma is laid on the
patient will
there be a possible negative outcome.
But then again this is true of any other non past life issue,
For
example, telling a patient to express anger at a parent and to
swing at the
wall with a bat when the patient is not even close to their
feeling and
then laying dogma on the patient that her father was necessarily
an
abusive bastard or else "you wouldn't have turned out unhappy
like
this" is probably more dangerous for some patients than any past
life
material. ( I have personally seen this exact scenario with the
bat happen
in at least three different centers. )
The spontaneous "primalling" of a past life trauma will give
observable symptom removal in many cases of patients or
therapists that
have no theoretical framework to explain the results in accepted
scientific terms. Is it placebo. Is it really a past life? Is it
a powerful
fantasy? Is it a borrowed metaphor that fits the feeling locked
by the
trauma? Is it even possible? I do not have a good answer as to
theory,
however, as a result of powerful re experience and freeing of
affect,
many of my clients experienced symptom removal.
When this first happened neither I nor the patient had any
belief
whatsoever in such situations, but I opted to continue and
process it as I
would a current situation and it proceeded to take the form of a
deep
emotional release and a flood of insight as it would with a
connected
traumatic situation in childhood.
Re experiencing one's past life or interlife state is a very
emotionally
powerful and frequently nurturing experience. I cannot prove
these
states really exist outside a patient's psyche, however they are
a
phenomenological and felt reality and as experiences they are
very real.
_________________________
Also read on the Primal Psychotherapy Page:
Primal Theory Vs. Past Lives Theory by Réal Beaulieu
An Argument For Past-Life Therapy by Bob Holmes
Symbolic Trauma Resolution In The Regressive Psychotherapies
The author has also written:
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