What Is Past Life Regression, and Is It Real?

A vivid scene that arrives under hypnosis can feel like proof: a name, a place, the weight of clothes from another century. Past life regression is the practice built on that experience, using hypnosis to recover what practitioners believe are memories of previous lives. The experience is real for the person having it. Whether the content comes from a previous life is a separate question, and the research on it points to memory, imagination and suggestion instead.

What happens in a session?

According to the Wikipedia article on past life regression, the person answers a series of questions while hypnotized, designed to bring out the identity and events of an earlier life. Some practitioners begin from a current problem and “bridge” back to a past-life story connected to it, on the belief that unresolved issues from earlier lives can cause present difficulties.

A research version of the induction, used by Nicholas Spanos of Carleton University in Canada, gives a sense of the questions. Participants were told they were now reliving another life they had lived before, then asked what name to call them by, what they were wearing and where they were. People seek out sessions for two broad reasons, the article notes: as a spiritual experience, or in a psychotherapy setting.

Where did the idea come from?

The idea of recalling earlier lives is old. The same article traces a practice called prati-prasava, literally “reverse birthing,” to Patañjali’s Yoga Sutras in the 2nd century BC. The hypnotic version is much newer. An early report dates from 1923, when Edgar Cayce, in a trance, spoke about the past lives of the publisher Arthur Lammers. Hypnosis for past life regression is said to have been developed by A. R. Martin of Sharon, Pennsylvania, who published a book on it in 1942. In the 1952 Bridey Murphy case, the hypnotist reported that a Colorado woman under hypnosis had recounted memories of a 19th-century Irishwoman.

What has research found?

Researchers have tested past-life accounts in two ways: by checking their details, and by looking at what predicts who produces them.

The details. When the Bridey Murphy case was investigated, the memories turned out to come from the woman’s own childhood rather than a past life. Examinations of three cases, Bridey Murphy among them, found speech patterns borrowed from films and novels rather than the period described, a historical date matching a known printing error, and in one case information identical to a 1947 novel set in the same era, down to the name. A subject who described life as a Japanese fighter pilot in World War II could not name Hirohito as the emperor.

Who produces them. Psychologist Robert Baker found belief in reincarnation to be the main predictor of whether a person reports a past-life memory. A 1976 study found that 40 percent of hypnotizable subjects described new identities and used different names when told to regress past their birth. In a series of experiments in the 1990s, Spanos found that the expectations conveyed by the experimenter shaped what people reported, and that how credible participants found their own memories tracked their beliefs about reincarnation more than their hypnotizability.

The explanation the article gives is cryptomnesia: forgotten information, imagination and the hypnotist’s suggestions combining into a story that feels remembered. The Wikipedia article summarizes the studies as suggesting that past lives are likely false memories, and notes that memories created under hypnosis can be indistinguishable from real ones.

How do mental health professionals view it?

As a psychiatric treatment, past life regression has little professional support. In a 2006 survey described in the Wikipedia article, a majority of a sample of doctoral-level mental health professionals rated past lives therapy as “certainly discredited” as a treatment for mental or behavioral disorders.

A 2017 paper in the Journal of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine by Gabriel Andrade notes that the technique is not supported by psychiatric associations, though few medical associations have condemned it as unethical. Andrade argues that it is unethical for two reasons: it is not evidence-based, so patients cannot give properly informed consent, and it carries a serious risk of implanting false memories.

If you are considering a session

• Decide what you want from it. As a spiritual or reflective experience, a session is an experience. As treatment for anxiety, a phobia or depression, it is not an evidence-based option, and you should ask a licensed clinician about treatments that are.
• Hold the content lightly. Treat names, places and scenes as products of the session, not as historical records about you.
• Keep it away from present-day decisions. Do not reinterpret relationships, health problems or family history on the basis of what came up.
• Stop if it distresses you. If a session leaves you frightened or unsettled, talk to a licensed mental health professional.

This article is general information, not medical or psychological advice; talk with a licensed clinician about your own situation.